I had an interesting session with a new client.  Let’s call her Fiona.  She came in from the field to take a position in marketing with a major pharma, and has discovered that, at her company, your career depends largely on how you present. 

Amazingly, they don’t offer any developmental support for people coming into the job.  But she pushed her boss for help, and he relented.

Here’s a rough summary of what I learned about her experience in pharma marketing.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I have not heard this before, and I have been deep into pharma marketing for 20 years.

1. Everyone wants to get promoted.  The easiest way to get promoted is to get visibility in front of senior people.  And the easiest way to get visibility is to present to them.

2.  If you’re not a good presenter, your boss will know it and will be reluctant to stand you up in front of the senior execs.  She could be afraid it will hurt your career chances and her image as an up-and-coming executive who is the fire under a red-hot group of high achievers.

3. Presenting marketing information internally is essentially selling ideas, and if you can’t get listeners to understand and believe in your idea, they are unlikely to see you as a good marketer, even though your ideas may be strong.

4.  Finally, everyone listening to your presentation is so busy that they don’t want presentations to go on for too long, and therefore they don’t ask questions.  They’re afraid of being seen as the “problem” person, or the “know-it-all” who makes everyone else look bad.   She said the preferred method of presenting is, “1, 2, 3…Poof!”

This means that you show your slide, say up to three things about it in a confident voice, and then move to the next slide (as in “Poof.  It’s gone!”)  Everyone will be pleased that you got through your material quickly, and displayed confidence and conviction as you spoke. 

5.  Finally, while every product and market is different, the process of marketing is the same across brands.  This causes many presentations to look and sound the same, i.e., they’re boring.  So listeners like it when you’re articulate, energetic, and concise because you save them from the embarrassment of falling asleep.

She says you’re especially valued  if you have a highly expressive voice.

Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun in this big pharma.  But if you want the rewards–the promotion and the fatter check– you gotta  sing for your supper. 

And the name of the song you have to sing?  “1, 2, 3…Poof!”

Yesterday, I sat through 7 identical new-business presentations at a client site.  Each was 15 minutes long. Each was delivered by a team of three.  In addition to the 21 presenters, 20 people from the company were observing.

When the last team ended their pitch, I asked everyone to pick out a strong moment–a moment that caught their attention in a positive way.

Here is what they said, in no particular order of importance.

1.  When someone said, “I love my work.”
2.  Whenever an example was used to illustrate a point.
3.  When one person spoke in a very organized, logical way so it was easy to follow what they said.
4.  When presenters translated facts about the company and its services into benefits for the prospect.

There were others, too numerous to mention here.  But these few responses alone speak to the reliability of ancient wisdom.

Audiences like emotion and personalization. 
Audiences like concrete examples to illustrate broad, general statements.
People want the big idea up front, and the supporting ideas in marching order behind.
They want to hear what they get from the service and how it will make them feel.

It’s easy to ramble through your material, difficult to speak so people will listen, and harder still to speak to the audience, in the language of the audience, about what’s most important to the audience.

The latter is the skill we are all in pursuit of.

Thank Your Wife

My father and I graduated from the same high school, 25 years apart. This past weekend we went to our reunion and watched as one of Dad’s classmates won the lifetime achievement award for his work in cancer research.

The winner was a distinguished gent, a good friend of my father, and a slow, but charming speaker. He told funny stories of his time at the school, and only at the end did he mention his work.

I happen to know, thanks to Dad, that the prize winner’s wife has been a a tower of strength over the years, but he never mentioned her as he recounted the story of his career. There she was, sitting in the front row, but not a single acknowledgment came her way.

The speech was largely well-received, and I certainly enjoyed the stories, but it would have been even better if it had included a gracious and loving tip of the hat to his spouse of sixty-odd years.

Such a remark would have alerted the audience that she was present in the hall, and would have made the remarkable accomplishments of the speaker’s professional life even more salient by drawing attention to his personal graciousness and private character.