Client case : sales network animation, 2018
A leading insurance company organised a roadshow for its most important distribution channel. To boost sales, of course. But this time, they had nothing new to announce! Solution? Put new faces on stage: the client service managers. Their mission: demonstrate the fantastic value the company brings to its clients. With no experience in public speaking, no sales background, could they create a Wow moment?
Challenge
The director of distribution channels faced the following challenges:
The speakers struggled:
There was no indication that the presentations would turn out to be a success.
- No big budget to get videos and shiny slideshow from an agency;
- Preparation meeting shows extreme diversity in styles and progress, meaning unpredictable outcome;
- Too many slides, pushy / advertising type communication;
- Some less trained speakers.
The speakers struggled:
- To believe they could appear as legitimate, credible representatives of their company on stage;
- To promote products and services ‘without talking products’;
- To advise the audience on how to talk value with their client (the speakers never trained in value selling, had no sales background);
There was no indication that the presentations would turn out to be a success.
Solution
Every team (one speaker per language, plus one back-up each) got 4 to 6 coaching sessions. The methodology helped the teams develop and test their presentation step by step. I guided through the following creation steps:
- Dry-run the existing drafts to assess current status and define priorities in coaching;
- Clarify presentation goal and key messages as reference points to take decisions during the creation process;
- Guestimate audience expectations, business needs, and reactions to frame the content around the audience’s interest;
- Offer analysis : select services and personas, perform value selling analysis, shape key elements into real cases and fictional stories.
- Test and adjust stories to achieve the highest consistency between goal, stories, messages and audience expectations... and a Wow effect;
- Add the station breaks, transitions and conclusions to highlight the take-aways;
- Set the expectations in introductions that to match messages in conclusions;
- Double check for presence of social intelligence (mirroring audience reactions, …) and speaking techniques to keep bonding with the audience;
- Test drafts with voice recorder then re-write to prevent written language and abstractions;
- Translate the key ideas into visuals to keep them lean and to the point;
- Rehearse in front of the camera without slides to detect stress in behaviour, adjust text to personal style, build confidence; work on body language and stress management in relation to stage set-up.
- Rehearse with camera and slides to finetune the flow and behaviour of speaker (eye contact with audience versus time on slides, …).
Impact
- The speakers regained confidence and energy in preparation process from the first coaching session;
- The presentations were shorter and stronger;
- The roadshow engaged the audience from the very first words;
- The audience enjoyed revisiting the services from a fresh angle, in direct connection with their client situations.
- The audience shared very positive messages among its network.
- (The speakers enjoyed reusing some techniques to improve their regular, internal presentations later on.)