The Fastest Way To Realize Results. Even During Chaos.

These are chaotic times. Never in our lifetimes has the global economy nearly ground to a halt. Never in our lifetimes have we been asked to work from home. Never in our lifetimes have we had to conduct meetings only on video conference. And do things in a way that might be totally new to us in a lot of respects. Even with communities starting to open up, they’re opening in a new way, with new rules and new restrictions.

There are a couple of places you might be in this chaos. Your business might be completely upside down; having to take a physical business entirely online or maybe even finding a new job. You might be an online business that is growing in new and different ways. Or you might be somewhere in the middle. You might be ok with how things are. Or you might be waiting for some normalcy to return.

Yet, no matter where you’re at amidst the chaos, it’s revealing a method that has proven the first step of creating order for generations. It’s served royalty, military leaders and business leaders since the beginning of time: word. We can speak order into chaos. 

We have to think something before we can do it. If we’re going to pick up a pen, we must first have the thought (consciously or unconsciously) to bend down and pick it up. If we want anyone else to do something with us, we have to communicate that thing. If I want to go to the store with you, I need to ask you. Words (or more precisely, stories) are at the core of everything we do and how we function. 

And talking comes easily for most of us. The “price” of voicing words or typing a caption is so low that oftentimes we don’t even notice it. We write it off because it’s so easy and everyone can do it without remembering it’s the foundation of everything. We only see glimpses of the power of words through experiences from people like Helen Keller when "the mystery of language was revealed […] That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!”

We spend thousands of hours inside our businesses. Making sure the back office is setup, the website looks great, AP and AR is sorted, processes are in place, supply chain is handled, knowing our target market, coming up with the latest innovation, etc. etc. etc. Now, all of those things may or may not apply to you, but the idea certainly does. Creating the business takes a ton of time.

And with all of that blood, sweat and tears, you would think that when it comes down to the moment that matters, the presentation to a client, customer or prospect that can literally make a massive difference, we’d use every toolset we had to deliver a moving and compelling conversation, right? Well not really. *reference The typical approach is to understand that it takes at least 8 cold calls to reach a client, so we make 9. We take these little tactics (which we should do by the way) and leave the “presentation” and the results as a given, and spend little to no time preparing exactly what there is to say and how to say it. 

I was talking with one of our new Presentation Mastery participants the other day. Like many, she has spent the last year preparing a startup business to launch. And as a startup she has spent many long days, weeks and months getting it all ready, an estimated 3,120 hours (60 hours a week x 52 weeks). She even spent over a week preparing a deck for a potential investor meeting. How many hours did she spend ordering key points, creating stories, understanding how to tell stories, to make the delivery as effective as possible? None. “I simply thought about what I was going to say while I was creating the slides”. 

That lack of attention to the presentation, in the point that makes the real difference, leaves us abstracting sales metrics, chasing leads and constantly running on the treadmill of: who is my next prospect? Trying to convince and cajole the next client into signing. Effective presentations leave people literally moved into action. They can see themselves inside your stories to take the next step. 

There is a science to doing that, to speaking effectively. A science to presentations. A science to story telling. And when mastered, it can take the standard 5 follow ups to a presentation to get to an answer and reduce it to 4, 2 or even leave the potential client calling you. Having studied countless fields including brain science, ontology, sales tactics, philosophy and many others, there’s a specific formula. A hero’s journey (a consistent standard of success) of sales, pitching and presentations of any kind.

At the simplest level, there are four steps to pay attention to. 

1. Strategy of the presentation: What is the aim? What’s the intended outcome? Write it down so there’s no forgetting. 

2. Structure: What’s the narrative arc of the presentation? There’s an old saying: facts tell and stories sell. *reference It’s because 63% of people remember stories. Only 5% will remember statistics. How are you going to order key facts and important stories for the most impact? How are you going to remember what to say?

3. Delivery: Is all about how it leaves your mouth and lands on others’ ears. Online, in person, large group or small, there are specific ways to present to be most effective in each situation. 

4. Assessment: And like everything else, gather as much information, as much data as possible to rewrite and tune the presentation based on what worked and what could be improved. 

When I first started speaking professionally about 3 years ago, I was living what sounded like a bad country song: my latest startup had crashed, I was out of any meaningful cash, my girlfriend even broke up with me. I was down and out for some time, but I knew I had something to say. I responded to a conference invite with a simple: “why don’t you have me speak? Best, Sterling”. Somehow I get on the phone with the conference director sharing my aim and we come to an agreement to speak. I spent literally months preparing, structuring, restructuring. Practicing literally hundreds of times to adjust wording, tense, emphasis, vocal variety and volume. Many of those times in front of my sister who would correct me word-for-word, so much so, she could probably give the presentation herself. And when I finally gave that presentation (yes, I was super nervous), it was voted the best presentation of the entire conference. And that conference director put me in touch with all of his conference director friends to speak at their conferences. He was literally called into action. It’s not a story to pat myself on the back. It’s a story to share that there’s a science to effective of sales, pitching and presentations of any kind. A science that we can all learn with some hard work and practice. 

Speaking order into chaos isn’t easy. It takes something to give it the time and effort that’s required to make a difference. While we’re under varying degrees of changes, we can use part of this time to first speak new things into order and then craft narratives to do consistently better.