His students still remember Ron Rebholz.
At first, few were excited to hear from Ron. He was going to talk for three months about Shakespeare. What little Shakespeare the college students already had read in high school seemed to have been written in another tongue.
They could roughly decipher the lines in Romeo and Juliet, "Sin from my lips, oh trespass, sweetly urged! Give me my sin again!" for example. It had to do with kissing, and possibly more. Otherwise, the Bard's words baffled them.
So few were excited on that sunny fall day many years ago when Mr. Rebholz took the stage and they prepared to satisfy the school's requirement that they take a literature class.
Within minutes, all that changed. They were excited -- no, enthralled -- because Rebholz was. At the very least, each of them could tell -- because this man obviously felt it deeply -- that Shakespeare really mattered. The students sensed that if they could hold out, read carefully, and look past the quaintness of Shakespeare's language to the enduring truths it conveyed, their lives might be changed.
Where would they feel that change? Where it matters most: in their spirits.
No presentation that you give -- whether it's about Hamlet or the need for better traffic signals at the corner of First and Main -- will succeed solely on its merits. You often think you have made your material interesting and spoken well. But only when you feel, and feel the difference that acting on our words will make, do others respond.
Their heads go nowhere until your heart leads them there.
You learn this if you speak often. In your first presentations, you make sure every argument is airtight, every fact well-presented, all your logic irrefutable. Then you close, walk from the podium -- and realize nothing has changed.
Another phenomenon illustrates this point. It's the experience of many people who speak often over many years. Eventually, someone approaches them after a speech and, in the course of conversation, says, "You are an excellent motivational speaker."
Many speakers feel wounded when they hear that. All that work and study, they decide, and I'm just one of those hand-wavers you see on television, bouncing across a stage like a high school cheerleader? Not long after that, however, they realize what an effective presentation actually communicates.
They realize a great presentation must be motivational.
Regardless of what any effective presentation says, what it conveys is that its subject matters. It matters to you to retain my services, read this article I read, consider voting for my candidate. And where does it matter?
In the heart and soul. Great presentations are not intellectual; they are spiritual. You must reach the heart and soul.
Effective financial planners do not sell you on quadrupling your money in 25 years; they sell you the feeling you will experience when you do.
College football recruiters do not sell young men nine wins, two losses, and the chance to play in televised bowl games. They sell the feeling of being among people you like, of hearing the echoes in your helmet from the cheers of 80,000 fans, and all the other sensations summarized in a feeling every football player knows: the sensation that one observer called "the thrill of the grass."
(Please know: No one can adequately explain this feeling, but few feelings equal it.)
Every great presentation motivates.
THE LIGHTER SIDE
Tis the season to do "Best of 2005" lists, so here is Beckwith Partners' slight twist:
Music: Rolling Stone's variation on this "Best of" tradition was its "500 Best Albums of All Time" issue. At #2 they chose The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. Granted, the album inspired Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Roger McGuinn's mixes for the Byrds, and for that and more ranks among the ten most influential albums ever. But music is more than ingenious mixing and three-part harmonies, and the lyrics are as teen-aged as the love they try to describe.
Oscars: Knowing that two of you vote on these awards, our push: Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Some marvel at his ability as a mimic, but Hoffman's real chops show here, as the mendacious, narcissistic and doomed protagonist.
On the other hand, thumbs down on A History of Violence. Ed Harris and William Hurt, perhaps emboldened by their Academy Award nominations in previous years, apparently decided they needed to rescue this movie from its lesser-known stars. Unable, unwilling or afraid to reign them in, the director let them go. Every time Harris or Hurt appears, the movie transforms into a cartoon.
Our Best Picture: Crash. Too bad they released it so early.
The Movie That Mesmerized Us: March of the Penguins. Overlooked Too Long: actor Don Cheadle. Boogie Nights, Hotel Rwanda, Traffic, Crash; he just makes you watch.
Name of the Year: Umbrella, for our UK cosmetic surgical practice. Wait 'til you see it executed!
Campaign: iPod. The campaign of the decade and near-perfect marketing communication: unique, vivid, simple and memorable.
Wish of the Year for You: Health, hope and love, and the time to enjoy all three.
Excerpts from Harry and Christine Clifford Beckwith's new book, You: A Field Guide to Selling Yourself (Warner Books September 2006).
Interview clients of personal service firms, and ask, "Why do you continue to work with the person and the firm?"
You assume you know their answer. It's skill. People like to work with skilled people.
Judging from advertising, prospects must love skill. Time and again, ads and brochures stress the company's "commitment to excellence." Surely, clients seek the most skilled firms, and retain them as long as they demonstrate their talent.
But they don't. That is not the reason most clients continue to work with services, nor is it the reason they continue to work with you. Skill is their minimum requirement, and they assume many people can meet it.
Instead, their answer is one word. You hear this word from clients more than all their other words combined.
The word is comfort.
Hearing this answer dismays the people in these firms. They want to believe, and often do, that they are the best. But overwhelming evidence shows that clients do not choose the "best" firm. If they did, one firm in every industry would own a monopoly.
Among other reasons, clients never feel convinced, even after long study, that they have all the information they need to decide who might be best. They have heard some firms referred to as the leaders, for example, but a smattering of colleagues and friends have made them question that. They have not even interviewed all the possible contenders for the title of "best."
They cannot conclusively decide who is the best. That's the same problem you face almost every week.
You never feel certain which is the best coffee machine, life insurance provider, dry cleaner, veterinarian or CPA, or the best of thousands of choices you make in your lifetime.
You do not make the best choice. You do not maximize, as experts on decision-making insist. Instead, you "satisfice." You choose what makes you feel good.
Consider the words you use when you make such a choice. How do you explain your choices?
You do not. Your words are not words of reasoning; they are emotional.
"It just felt right."
Or to repeat it again, you make the comfortable choice. Almost everyone with whom you come in contact makes that choice, too.
For that reason, it's worth resisting the advice, "First, qualify the lead," or "Identify their hot buttons," or any number of other recommended first things. Instead, before you do anything else, make the other person comfortable.
If making the person comfortable isn't the first thing you do, the first thing you do likely will be the last.
A relationship starts with comfort.
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Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 14 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 13 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has |
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made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. |
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