Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

01/31/2010 in Book Review, Motivation, Presenting, Sales | by Territory.com | Leave a comment

Mesmerized by Steve Jobs iPad Keynote this week, I decided to read The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo.  Mr. Gallo is a “communications coach for the world’s most admired brands”.  Being a long time Apple fan, I added the book to my kindle months ago and then lost track of the book.  (Kindle, your days are numbered.)  I am glad that Mr. Jobs masterful performance made me remember to read Mr. Gallo’s book.

Mr. Gallo’s provides a number of insights on how Mr. Jobs crafts his message, presents his ideas, leverages demonstrations and ultimately creates “a reality distortion field” for his audience.  While written for any presenter, Mr. Gallo’s analysis is especially relevant for those in sales and alliances.  Mr. Gallo writes:

Throughout this book, ask yourself, “What am I really selling?”  Remember, your widget doesn’t inspire.  Show me how your widget imrproves my life, and you’ve won me over.  Do it in a way that entertains me, and you’ll have created a true evangelist.”

Mr. Gallo strucutres his book into 3 Acts:

  • Act 1 – Create The Story
  • Act 2 – Deliver The Experience
  • Act 3 – Refine and Rehearse

    • Rather than jumping right into powerpoint or keynote, Steve Jobs begins his planning on paper or “in analog.”  Further, there are no bullets in a Steve Jobs presentation.  “It’s the story,” writes Gallo, “not the slides, that will capture the imagination of your audience.”  Mr. Gallo outlines nine elements of great presentations such as making use of headlines, metaphors, analogies, demonstrations, endorsements and “the rule of three.” Mr. Gallo advises first and foremost to, like Mr Jobs, keep the audience front of mind at all times.  He stresses the need to answer the why before the how.  Not just in presentations, but in any interaction with customers, Mr. Gallo urges ditching the buzzwords and complexity.  “The majority of press releases,” writes Mr. Gallo, “are usually self-indulgent, buzzword-filled wastes of time.”

    Fueling Jobs style and all great presenters, observes Mr. Gallo, is real passion and a deep sense of purpose.  By having a clear sense of purpose, like Jobs, you are able to passionately and clearly tell the audience the one thing they need to hear.  Mr. Jobs does this in the presentation and beyond by creating twitter like headlines that the press quickly adopt.  “Jobs takes the guesswork out of a new product, ” writes Mr. Gallo, “by creating a one-line description or headline that best reflects the product.”  Mr. Gallo’s analysis makes you truly appreciate the simplicity and symetry of Steve Jobs:

    • Not just the ‘iPod’, its “1,000 songs in your pocket”
    • Not just the ‘iPhone’, its “Apple reinventing the phone”
    • Not just the ‘MacBook Air’, its ‘”the World’s thinnest notebook”
    • Not just the ‘iPad’, its “the Internet in your hands”

    Mr Jobs presentations never need an agenda slide.  “Jobs draws a verbal road map for his audience,” writes Mr. Gallo, ” a preview of coming attractions.”   Mr. Jobs also never uses bullets!  Mr. Jobs instead keeps the customers attention by sharing the stage, incorporating compelling demonstrations and making use of testimonials and video.   Mr Jobs makes the road map that much clearer for his audience by applying the “Rule of Three.” (A powerful example of this is Mr. Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement speech – “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.”)

    From there Mr. Gallo goes on to provide Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and Mr. Gallo himself.   I leave it to the aspiring presenter to read for themselves!

    Presentations, big or small, are often the cornerstones of business in general and certainly sales and alliances.  Mr. Gallo’s book detailing the secrets of Mr Jobs presenting prowess, provides a very good read for those seeking to improve their presentation skills.   More deeply, however, Mr. Gallo’s book gives great insight into one of the great business minds of our age.  I cannot help but think that Steve Jobs’ presentations have as much to do with Apple’s success as the innovations they present.  Jobs the presenter clarifies and motivates jobs the inventor.  I wish that Mr. Gallo would have provided more insights from his other coaching engagements.  I enjoyed the few non Jobs examples he provided and felt like there was room for more non-Jobs examples to only fruther strengthen the Jobs examples.   Yet then again, As Mr. Gallo writes, “there is not a better teacher than Apple’s master showman.”

    For more on Carmine Gallo, see http://www.CarimineGallo.com.

    Mastery

    01/24/2010 in Book Review, Sales | by Territory.com | Leave a comment

    When explaining to a mentor the self determination precepts detailed in Daniel Pink’s book Drive (Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose), the mentor recommended George Leonard’s book Mastery.  I am glad for the mentor’s recommendation.  This book written in 1991 is an oldie but goodie.

    Mr. Leonard writes from the perspective of an Aikido master.  The core premise of his book is that the true mastery comes from the path (aka practice) itself.  Mr. Leonard writes, “you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself.”

    Offering a perspective that certainly holds true almost 20 years later, Mr Leonard writes in his first chapter, “The modern world, in fact, can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery.”  Mr. Leonard presents 3 profiles in disguised or attempted Mastery: ‘the Dabbler’, ‘the Hacker’ and ‘the Obsessive’.  Any reader will resonate with these profiles (as this Dabbling Hacker did for himself).  Then Mr. Leonard observes how modern consumerist life is presented as an unending sequence of climatic moments:

    “One epiphany follows another.  One fantasy is crowded out by the next.  Climax is piled upon climax.  There’s no plateau.”

    Instead of the “quick-fix” mentality that permeates education, business, personal life and society at large, Mr. Leonard advocates the intrinsic path of the master.  Introducing his “mastery curve”, Mr. Leonard writes:

    “To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of     competence.  But while doing so – and this is the inexorable fact of the journey – you also have to be willing to     spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere.”

    Drawing upon his Aikido teaching experience, Mr. Leonard outlines 5 “Master Keys”:

    Key 1 – Instruction
    Mr Leonard outlines what makes a good instructor as well as what it takes to be a good student

    Key 2 – Practice
    “For one who is on the master’s journey, however, the word [practice] is best conceived of as a noun, not as something you do , but as something that you have, something you are … akin to the Chinese word ‘Tao’ and  Japanese word ‘Do’ both of which mean, literally, road or path.”

    Key 3 – Surrender
    Surrender to your teacher, be willing to sacrifice, even take a step back to advance your mastery.

    Key 4 – Intentionality
    Positive mental awareness – “Thoughts, images and feelings are indeed quite real.”

    Key 5 – The Edge
    After accumulating many years of Instruction, Practice, Surrender and Intentionality, the master, writes Mr. Leonard, is able to “not only engage to test the edges of the envelope, but also to walk the fine line between endless, goalless practice and those alluring goals that appear along the way.”

    From there Mr. Leonard provides an overview of tools to help Mastery stick.  Mr. Leonard outlines 5 approaches to overcoming the homeostasis resistance that naturally counteracts any change and then provides 7 very helpful pointers to increase your energy while pursuing the path of mastery.  My Leonard also details no less than 13 “pitfalls” to Mastery and techniques for overcoming them.  I leave this wisdom for the reader to find on their own.

    Mr. Leonard ends his book with two gems.  The first gem is that he circles back to his 5 Master Keys and applies them to relationships.  Mr. Leonard writes, “It’s truly bizarre, when you stop to think about it, that we are sometimes quite willing to give full attention to developing our tennis game while leaving such ‘commonplace’ things as relationships completely to chance.”  In his second and ending gem, Mr. Leonard tells the story of how the founder of Judo, Jigaro Kano, instructed his students to bury him in his white belt when he died.  Ending his book, Mr. Leonard writes,

    “Are you willing to wear your white belt?”

    Sales and alliances are ripe for the principles outlined in Mastery.  While sales and alliances certainly require a deal to close, there is a never ending practice to improve upon behind the deals to master.  The book has some dated references but the maxims hold true.  Are you pursuing the path of mastery?  Find out for yourself in a quick read of Mr. Leonard’s book.

    Copyright King Mediary, Inc. 2010

    The 50th Law: Nihil Timendum Est

    01/17/2010 in Alliances, Book Review, Sales | by Territory.com | Leave a comment

    I received The 50th Law by Robert Greene as a gift over the holidays.  The book has the look of a medieval journal with a stiff black cover, gold edging with a prominent dagger and latin inscription on the back cover which reads: ‘nihil timendum est‘ ~ ‘fear nothing’ or perhaps more precisely ‘there is nothing to be afraid of.’  Judging the book by the cover, I assumed that it must be some Knight Templar-like historical fiction.

    Intrigued, I flipped to the first page of the forward and chuckled as I read: “I first met 50 Cent in the winter of 2006.  He had been a fan of my book The 48 Laws of Power, and he was interested in collaborating on a book project.”  After seeing the 48 Laws of Power appear on the shelves of clients, partners and co-workers a few years ago, I bought a copy and made it part way through before choking on what I considered to be too much Machiavelli.  Disappointed, I decided to give The 50th Law a chance, however, based on the stated thesis of the book at the end of the forward:

    “…this is a book about a particular philosophy of life that can be summed up as follows – your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action.  The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.”

    The beginning of The 50th Law is a naked, unapologetic expose on fearlessness and self awareness.  Interspersed with snapshots of the street life extreme’s of Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent), Mr. Greene’s Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 3 and  4 offer any reader a valuable perspective on fear and self reliance.  First, Mr Greene frames the animal origin and now pervasive nature of fear:

    “As for any animal, this emotion had a protective function …  For us humans, it served an additional, positive purpose – we could remember the source of the threat and protect ourselves better the next time …  Fear is the oldest and strongest emotions known to man, something deeply inscribed in our nervous system and subconscious … Over time, however, something strange began to happen … Instead of a simple, intense fear of something powerful and real, we developed a king of generalized anxiety.  It was as if the thousands of years of feeling fear in the face of nature could not go away – we had to find something at which to direct our anxiety, no matter how small or improbable.”

    Mr. Greene aptly observes, “we are all to afraid.”  Sharing historical examples from FDR, Napoleon, Frederick Douglas and yes 50 Cent, Mr Greene builds up to ‘The 50th Law’: “The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves …” Observing the 50th Law, writes Mr Greene, “opens possibilities, brings freedom of action, and helps create a forward momentum in life.”  Continuing, Mr Greene says the key to possessing this power is to “assume the active mode in dealing with your fears.”  Mr Greene introduces what he calls “reversal” writing, “overcoming the negative of a particular fear leads to a positive quality – self reliance, patience, supreme confidence and on and on.”

    Paradoxically, Mr Greene writes that the reader needs intense realism more than Fifty because “Your world seems cozier and less violent, less immediately dangerous.”  Further, he observes “the greatest danger you face is your mind growing soft and your eye getting dull.”  To counteract this numbing to reality, Mr Greene recommends fearlessly: (1) rediscovering curiosity; (2) knowing the complete terrain; (3) digging to the roots; (4) seeing further ahead; (5) looking at people’s deeds not words and (6) reassessing yourself.

    Shifting to self reliance, Mr Greene paraphrases the sages: “True ownership can come only from within.”  Only a ruthless realism, coupled with a spirit of self reliance, provide any sense of true security.  His book not starting yet to fray, Mr Greene points out the alluring alternative, “Think of it this way: dependency is a habit that is so easy to acquire.  We live in a culture that offers you all kinds of crutches…”  Mr Greene provides a 4 step blueprint to establish self reliance: Step One – Reclaim Dead Time; Step Two – Create Little Empires; Step Three – Move Higher Up The Food Chain and Step 4 – Make Your Enterprise A Reflection Of Your Individuality.  Mr Greene writes inspirationally at the end of Chapter 2:

    “Understand: you are one of a kind.  Your character traits are a kind of chemical mix that will never be repeated in history.  There are ideas unique to you, a specific rhythm and perspective that are your strengths, not your weaknesses.  You must not be afraid of your uniqueness and you must care less and less what people think of you.”

    Mr Greene delves into Opportunism aka “Turn Shit into Sugar” in Chapter 3 and Calculated Momentum in Chapter 4 “Let go and move with the chaos that presents itself to you.”  Putting an interesting spin on flow, Mr Greene recommends turning fear into fluidity by mastering 4 types of flow:  (1) Mental Flow; (2) Emotional Flow; (3) Social Flow and (4) Cultural Flow.

    From there, Mr Greene lumbers rather ungracefully into the clouds of ends justifying the means with Chapter 5 “Know When To Be Bad”.  Yet he mostly comes back from the dark side in the remainder of the book which I leave to the reader to sort out.

    I cannot say that I recommend this book in total, but I would have to admit that the first half make the book clearly worth buying.  An understanding of fear is crucial for any sale.  Those trying to sell are afraid to not make the sale and those being sold are just that, afraid of being sold!  Given this inherent sales transaction tension in human nature, ‘intense realism’ is needed to qualify, self reliance is needed to explain, opportunism is needed to recover and flow is just needed.   While Mr. Greene is correct that “the less you fear, the more power you will have.”  Yet in sales, business and ultimately life, the more you do for others, the more you get for yourself.

    Copyright King Mediary, Inc. 2010

    Drive

    01/10/2010 in Book Review, Motivation, Sales | by Territory.com | Leave a comment

    I first encountered Daniel Pink when seeing his TED talk Video Podcast last year. After a slightly flat beginning compared to other speakers, his presentation picked up momentum and his argument struck home – we need to renovate how we motivate.

    In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Mr. Pink does an admirable job of making his case that individuals, parents, managers, businesses, schools and society at large need to move from Extrinsic motivation, aka Carrot and Stick, to Intrinsic motivation, aka Flow. Mr Pink writes:

    “THIS IS A BOOK about motivation. I will show that much of what we believe about the subject just isn’t so … The problem is that most businesses haven’t caught up to this new understanding of what motivates us. Too many organizations—not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well—still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. They continue to pursue practices such as short-term incentive plans and pay-for-performance schemes in the face of mounting evidence that such measures usually don’t work and often do harm.”

    Mr. Pink begins with a brief history of human motivation writing:

    “In our very early days—I mean very early days, say, fifty thousand years ago—the underlying assumption about human behavior was simple and true. We were trying to survive … Call this early operating system Motivation 1.0 … As humans formed more complex societies, bumping up against strangers and needing to cooperate in order to get things done, an operating system based purely on the biological drive was inadequate … We also had a second drive—to seek reward and avoid punishment more broadly … call it Motivation 2.0.”

    Motivation 2.0 worked wonders. By rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior, man literally built modern society. Further, Motivation 2.0 is “simple to monitor, and straightforward to enforce.” Mr. Pink, however, weaves together behavioral studies which question the reigning “if-then” motivational paradigm. Mr. Pink recounts studies which show the performance of the task itself offering the reward – hence providing INtrinsic motivation accompanied by the holy grail mental state of “FLOW”. Further, Mr Pink examines studies which have shown that extrinsic motivation (carrot and stick), actually stifle the FLOW that accompanies intrinsic motivation. Whereas carrot and stick incentives can produce results by focusing activity (aka left brain), that same focus stifles creativity (right brain). Indeed, Mr Pink outlines seven deadly flaws of carrot and stick motivators:

    1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.
    2. They can diminish performance.
    3. They can crush creativity.
    4. They can crowd out good behavior.
    5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.
    6. They can become addictive.
    7. They can foster short-term thinking.

    Instead, Mr. Pink advocates the fostering of three motivators (autonomy, mastery and purpose) which encourage what he calls “Type I” behavior (I as in Intrinsic). Type I behavior is based on “self determination theory” which, Mr. Pink writes, “begins with a notion of universal human needs. It argues that we have three innate psychological needs—competence [mastery], autonomy, and relatedness [purpose]. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy. When they’re thwarted, our motivation, productivity, and happiness plummet.”

    My Pink’s formula for allowing Type I behavior hinges first on Autonomy. The four essentials for autonomy, Mr. Pink writes, “emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team.” Unlike motivation 2.0 which leads to increasing compliance, autonomy leads to increasing engagement. This distinction, writes Mr. Pink, “leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters.” Finally, as Mr. Pink writes, “Autonomous people working toward mastery perform at very high levels. But those who do so in the service of some greater objective can achieve even more.”

    Mr. Pink ends the book with a really interesting Type I toolkit containing motivational gems for leaders, managers, parents, teachers and even sales people. I will leave it to the reader to explore this motivational treasure trove as a valuable yardstick to measure how they are motivated and how they motivate.

    While not targeted at sales directly, Mr. Pink’s broad exploration of extrinsic motivation weaknesses certainly apply to sales: ‘IF you make the sale, THEN you get paid the commission’ is clearly still the paradigm for most. Mr. Pink’s examples mostly involve smaller, entrepreneurial companies which would seem to be more naturally intrinsically motivating. When he does reference larger companies like Google and 3M, he is speaking of engineering and product group Type I adoption examples. Hence it is not exactly clear how Type I would work as applied to sales. However, it is alluring to think that you could find the right level of compensation to unleash the creative energy of a sales force. As Mr. Pink writes, “Type I’s don’t turn down raises or refuse to cash paychecks. But one reason fair and adequate pay is so essential is that it takes the issue of money off the table so they can focus on the work itself. By contrast, for many Type X’s, money is the table.” Regardless, Mr. Pink’s Type I theory proposed in his book Drive offers a very compelling yardstick for anyone seeking to motivate themselves or others. Do you pursue/foster Autonomy, pursue/foster Mastery and possess/instill Purpose?

    For more on Daniel Pink visit http://www.danpink.com/.

    Copyright King Mediary, Inc. 2010

    Negotiate This! : By Caring, But Not THAT Much

    01/03/2010 in Book Review, Negotiation | by Territory.com | Leave a comment

    A few years ago, a family member debated starting his own business or not.  His existing employer was changing hands and he didn’t know whether to negotiate a deal with the new company or to go off and start his own company.  I offered what advice that I could and gave him Herb Cohen’s book, Negotiate This! : By Caring But Not THAT Much.  I gave Mr. Cohen’s book on negotiation to encourage my family member to walk away from a negotiation with a crumbling past employer and move to a self motivated negotiation with a partner on a new business.

    Mr. Cohen’s book offers insightful perspective on negotiation while also discussing the broader challenge of negotiating life.  In the opening acknowledgments, Mr Cohen writes:

    “It is negligence, arguably even mild masochism, to permit your life to just happen or to live by what somebody else thinks you should be doing.  Playing the negotiating game is the respectable means to bridge the gap between creed and deed, who you are and what you might achieve or become.  But more, it is the most practical mechanism to affirm a person’s freedom against all attempts to reduce him to an abstraction, an automaton propelled by conventional wisdom, peer pressure, circumstances, or unbridled authority.”

    Juxtaposed against this heavy emphasis on negotiating life itself is the paradoxical negotiating wisdom to  always be willing to walk away from the table.  From the almighty, to kids, to clients, to dictators, Mr Cohen’s book applies timeless principles of negotiation.  As Mr. Cohen writes, “Negotiating, in the sense of one human being attempting to affect another’s behavior, is older than recorded history.”  Mr. Cohen’s recipe for “Caring, but not that much” is one of empathy, patience, respect, style, wisdom and humor.

    Mr. Cohen’s negotiation style begins with empathy.  In his chapter entitled “New Communication Approaches” he provides a communication formula applicable to any sales discussion (pages 16-18):

    1. …begin by asking questions even if you think you know the answers.
    2. …write down what they are saying.
    3. …while taking notes, pause occasionally to read back to them what you have written.
    4. …allow them to tell their story in their own way, which means that they sometimes digress and meander.
    5. …try to control [your] words and reactions.

    On a foundation of attentive empathy, Mr Cohen preaches patience and respect.  Mr. Cohen advises, “…approach virtually all negotiations as an opportunity for mutual problem solving … Slow down, control your response and tread softly.”  Further, Mr. Cohen observes that it is always better to begin any negotiation in a cooperative fashion.  Mr Cohen writes, “if you set a positive, pleasant and cooperative tone there’s a good chance the other party will respond in kind.”  Yet anchoring this cooperative, caring approach, is balanced detachment and even “a low-key pose of calculated incompetence.”

    Setting the table for negotiation, Mr Cohen then applies style and wisdom interjected with humor.  Mr. Cohen writes, “Let me remind you that how you interact will often trump what you are discussing … I am recommending that you exhibit flexibility with respect to means (how), but determination, akin to rigidity, concerning your goals and interests (what).”  Keeping fluid on how and rigid on what, starts with commonality, “start negotiating with congruence – the things you have in common” writes Mr. Cohen.

    As for “Closing the Deal,” Mr. Cohen outlines four major criteria for concluding a negotiation (pages 157-163):

    1. …gain sufficient investment in the process.
    2. …furnish a basis for comparison.
    3. …use the concession rate to signal the best deal.
    4. …after obtaining involvement, provide options or choices.

    From there Mr. Cohen goes on to share a barrage of negotiating wisdom which I will leave for the reader to discover directly.

    For sales leaders and participants, negotiation is typically viewed as a finish line event only.  Mr. Cohen’s book shows that negotiation begins at the very start of any sale and for that matter, the start of every day.  While the book at times meanders, I have to agree with the endorsement of Donald Trump on the cover “Terrific in every way.”

    For more on Herb Cohen you can visit his blog http://www.herbcohenonline.com/.

    Copyright King Mediary, Inc. 2010

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