Author Archives: hippotential

Simple Stories Make Great Pitches

 

ABC’s hit show, Shark Tank, is one of my very favorites on TV. It attracts entrepreneurs of all ages, levels of experience, and backgrounds to come pitch their business idea for angel investment by one or more of the sharks. One of the young ‘treps who pitched this past year is Joseph Draschil, co-founder of SpyGames.me.  Draschil is currently participating in Start-Up Chile (written about here a few months ago) while enrolled in an MBA entrepreneurship program at Babson College. 

His first major assignment in a Babson course was to create an opportunity storyboard for a business idea, limited to a single PowerPoint slide. The storyboard became a rocket pitch: a three minute, three slide, live pitch in front of his professor and classmates in the entrepreneurship class. Draschil was then encouraged to enter the Babson Rocket Pitch event, to pitch his idea in front of investors, professors, members of the community and the student body.

The following week, his team entered the Big Idea Competition, for which they were required us to upload a three-minute pitch video to YouTube, secure the most “likes” and move to the finalist round to pitch on stage for three judges. Within one week of being named one of two winning teams, Draschil received an e-mail from the director of the entrepreneurship center at Babson. Two of the “sharks” were to visit the school and hear the pitch. Here’s the young entrepreneur’s perspective on the experience:

Although I was terrified of failing in front of entrepreneur celebrities and all of Babson, I committed to participate and the pitch went great. My partner and I stumbled a couple of times during the Q&A session, but that’s okay. You make mistakes, learn from them, and improve — that’s the essence of the startup journey. After the event, Mark Cuban mentioned to us that he believed if we could get the marketing down, we would kill it.

While I continue to work on the business, I have learned a few key lessons about creating a dynamic pitch:

  1. Be visual. Please, no slides full of bullet points. Use simple and clean images that clarify and complement what you’re saying — not complicate it. When slides are cluttered and busy, the audience will be focused on deciphering them instead of focusing on you. Don’t forget that for most investors, the entrepreneur is more important than the product or idea being pitched.
  2. Tell a story. Storytelling lies at the heart of who we are as humans. Remember, you are not a court lawyer trying to amass evidence for the jury as to why your idea is destined to make millions. If your pitch is just a crowd of facts, figures and pie charts, you may lose your audience.
  3. Practice, practice, practice. Get in front of others and pitch — a lot. Don’t worry about your pitch being bad the first few times you do it. It most definitely will be. As you practice, though, you will learn which parts your audience is responding to and which parts need to be adjusted. Over time, your confidence and delivery will improve.

These 3 lessons are important for any entrepreneur. Pay attention to Draschil’s advice to be simple & clear in your slides. Way too much information in the presentations of many. The difference between an engaged audience and a bored one is your ability to weave a compelling story. Finally, the admonition to practice is so practical, fundamental, and predictive of one’s likelihood of success.

Endurance Runners Are Like Entrepreneurs

In writing for Inc magazine, Patricia Fletcher draws a comparison between entrepreneurs and marathon runners. In addition to being a little crazy, she says both have a plan to follow that prepares them for success. The performance for which you are judged is predictable from the “practice” that leads up to it. Here are Fletcher’s observations about the right mindset both need–

Get comfortable being uncomfortable for long periods of time.  Believe it or not, this will become a badge of honor.  Most of your work as an entrepreneur requires you to try new approaches, to push yourself beyond your limits. This means that you will fail a lot. You will struggle for funding–a lot. You will lose customers and opportunities–a lot. It’s all part of the training process. Your response to rejection is as good a determinant of your entrepreneurial ability as your response to success.

Adopt a resilient mindset. You are going to have some tough days; days when you question your own sanity and want throw in the towel.  Much like a marathon, the entrepreneurial experience is long, twisting, and filled with ups and downs. Every successful entrepreneur and marathoner I have talked with believes mindset is either your biggest asset or your biggest barrier. The pros handle it by maintaining an objective mindset that looks at setbacks as opportunities for improvement.

Embrace others like you. Working in a vacuum is not going to help you finish the race. Runners find running partners or join running clubs. They get faster because they push each other. They become stronger because they share tips for nutrition and avoiding injury. You can do the same thing. 

Connect with other entrepreneurs. Get together to practice your pitches, test your demos, and talk about go-to-market strategies. Working together will give you practice and insights while creating the relationships that will push you forward.

Don’t over-train. In my first few years as a runner and professional, I over-trained, thinking it would make me stronger and better, and prove that I belonged. Instead, I burned out. You will not succeed if you have 10 No. 1 priorities. Identify your top three goals. Don’t do anything that won’t make a big impact on your progress toward those three.

At conferences, I have heard several speakers tell up-and-coming women entrepreneurs and executives that they should say yes to any high-profile opportunities. I disagree. Go after new opportunities only if they’ll help you achieve one of your three big goals.

Measure. A good plan incorporates key performance indicators to track your progress. It also helps lessen risk by proactively addressing problems. What measurements will tell you that you are making progress?  How often should you track your progress?  What are your biggest obstacles?  Which do you need to address and which can be ignored? 

As someone who has been a distance runner for over 30 years, I can relate to each of these. When I was competing, I had a mental edginess honed from the daily effort I put into psyche and development of my skills. As an entrepreneur, I have  been more successful when I have brought my “A” game to what I do. How about you?

 

Delegating By Degrees is Effective Leadership

In advising private businesses, I am frequently trying to help owners delegate more effectively to their teams. It is hard to get the executives to give up making all the decisions. Making fewer decisions is part of the challenge; influencing less decisions is even harder.

Sergio Zyman, the former Chief Marketing Officer at Coca-Cola, in his book “The End of Marketing As We Know It,” wrote about the decision making process he used with his team, broken down into 5 levels:

  • Level 1 – His decision with no input from the team
  • Level 2 – His decision with input from the team
  • Level 3 – Consensus decision
  • Level 4 – A team member’s decision with his input
  • Level 5 – A team member’s decision with no input or influence from him

When other organizations have experimented with processes similar to Zyman’s, some employees found the five level decision making process difficult. Others perceived it as freeing because the knew in advance what was required to keep an initiative going.

Many organizations have a disproportionate number of Level 2 and Level 3 decisions. Level 5 is the least common. A critical success factor seems to be selectively choosing what to care about (not to be confused with apathy.) The evolution needs to be towards a focus on being involved personally only in decisions that are strategic in nature and require knowledge or experience unique to your role. What is likely to ensue is a new paradigm in which the executive’s willingness to let go creates unexpected, but still very positive outcomes. It may not look the way it would have with your hand print, but can still “work out.”

 

 

How To Grow Business All the Time

 

Whether your trade is producing software, computing tax liabilities, or manufacturing tangible goods, the success of your organization is going to be tied to strong sales (business development/ “bizdev”) performance over the long haul. Yet, few organizations are able to create a bizdev model that is sustainable and that constantly fuels the capital needs of the enterprise. Bizdev, however, is something that far too many senior executives (or, business owners in the SMB world) think must be acquired through osmosis or tenure. While I don’t actually believe that they think that, their actions would indicate otherwise.

Virtually everyone in North America has had a frustrating experience with bad sales execution. Either one has been on the end of trying to convince someone to buy, or the other end where we hate to be the recipient of “sales.” There’s much wrong with the selling models that are so pervasive that negative experiences abound on both sides of the equation.

Mahan Khalsa, who led the Sales Performance Group at FranklinCovey for a number of years, is one of my favorite authors on the subject of business development. His background included developing instruction for one of the old Big Eight CPA firms, then turning his attention to training almost 100,000 salespeople and consultants from all over the place in many different verticals.

Khalsa says, “Most professional sellers have good intent. They know manipulation and deceit hurt rather than build long-term sales success. They know that building trust is essential to both creating and capturing value. So they eliminate a lot of what would otherwise be dysfunctional—no surprise there. Yet most also consistently engage in actions that are not value adding–for them or for their customers. Even when great intent is present, there is a lot of room for improvement in eliminating dysfunctional behaviors.”

Both Khalsa and Neil Rackham find the tendency to jump to solutions before having completed the questioning process to be the bane of many folks involved in bizdev. I have observed noted rainmakers stumble in prospect meetings over this very subject. It’s as though the brain clicks into autopilot and, rather than seeking to understand, hubris takes over and the rainmaker is intent on being understood. Often, the solution that is recommended is premature–it doesn’t bear the wisdom of listening and consultative due diligence.

“Looking a little more holistically we could say the missing link is the ability to successfully blend excellent inquiry with excellent advocacy – to do a superb job of matching our story to the client’s story. Good inquiry is essential and most often the more undeveloped portion of the balance – and it is still only part of the equation. I’ve seen people get good at inquiry and still not be able to convert on advocacy.” (Khalsa)

When Khalsa left FranklinCovey, part of his intent was to transform the way business developers approach their work. He felt there was room for continuous improvement over an entire career. To that end, he began to wed together the twin concepts of business development and change management, with a sprinkling of performance measurement. In order to see strong long-term results, he argues, there must be an environment supportive of continuous improvement and a repeatable process that can be practiced and refined. 

Edward Deming once said, “It is not enough to do your best. You need to know what to do and then do your best.” So the quality of the practice and application is as important as the quantity of practice – and the quantity is essential. Khalsa subscribes to this concept as it relates to bizdev, stating “What I find liberating and motivating about the research is that everything, repeat everything, we need to do in order to get really good at sales is learnable – if we are willing to practice. It doesn’t have to do with our DNA, our native IQ, our personality type or social style, our years of experience. If we are willing to engage in a high number of repetitions of quality practice we can become as great as we want to be. That’s powerful.”

A key factor in effective bizdev is the ability to build a trusted relationship with the other party. Khalsa firmly believes that trust can be built intentionally and that it is tied strongly to value and information flow. In fact, he would argue that anyone who has two can obtain the third. Fundamentally, a rainmaker will have to become consistently better at doing what is promised and establishing a culture where the other party feels safe to share meaningful information.

 

INtrapreneurship On the Rise (at Big Companies)

 

Yes–we’ve previously written blog posts on the bureaucracy and lack of innovation in many big businesses. However, there are many big companies that “get it” when it comes to innovation–not just 3M, Apple and Coca Cola. Internal entrepreneurship programs in “sleeper” companies are intriguing. Dan Schwabel of Millenial Branding brought up the famous Skunk Works program of Lockheed Martin that produced the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird plane designs from an intrapreneurial program internally back in the day.

Schwabel writes, “companies are starting new entrepreneurship initiatives because they need fuel for innovation, desire top talent and need to sustain a competitive advantage. Smart companies are catering to entrepreneurs, allowing workers to pitch their ideas, and even funding them. They are holding entrepreneurship contests, investing in startups and bringing on entrepreneurs in residence (EIR). In the war for talent and innovation, companies have to think entrepreneurially in order to survive and thrive:

Intrapreneurship is on the rise

Companies have embraced intrapreneurship to drive innovation, stay ahead of the competition and as a recruiting tool.  This trend has been driven in large part by Generation-Y, a generation of entrepreneurs that want to reinvent the business world as we know it.  Google is a great example of a company that understands this. If you work there, you are in a startup culture within a major corporation. 

Corporate entrepreneurship contests

Companies are using .. contests to engage their own workforce and as external recruiting and branding tools. Ernst & Young, for instance, has “The Innovation Challenge,” which is an internal competition where employees come up with new service offerings for their clients. PwC, another major consulting company, runs the “PwC PowerPitch”, which is an innovation contest where the winning team receives the sum of $100,000 to implement their idea. Amazon Web Services has the “Start-Up Challenge,” which is a competition for start-ups that use its Web, e-commerce and cloud-computing technology to build their infrastructures and businesses. 

Companies are investing in startups

Companies are investing in startups instead of just acquiring them. The most recent example of this is Microsoft’s “Bing Fund”, which is a new angel fund and incubator program that seeks to partner with entrepreneurs that focus on the mobile and web experience spaces. Last month, Dell announced the “Dell Innovators Credit Fund,” which provides entrepreneurs up to $100 million in financial and scalable technology resources. American Express announced last year that they would invest $100 million in digital commerce startups that would help fuel their digital transformation. 

Entrepreneurs in Residence

Both Google and Dell have recruited EIR’s to stay ahead of the curve and to advise them on startups. Stacy Brown-Philpot has been an entrepreneur in residence at Google Ventures since May. While Stacy never started her own business, she led operations for more than forty different products, including Google Search, Chrome and Google+.

More brands will start to bring on EIR’s in the future, especially in the technology industry, where acquisitions and investments are the norm. EIR programs are promising because they have knowledge on what startups are worth investing in, can oversee entrepreneurship programs, and can be used to attract new startups into corporate ecosystems.

Entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship programs drive business results

Industry experts believe that 30% of large companies now provide seed funds to finance intrapreneurial efforts. One of the most notable successes comes from 3M, who created the “Bootlegging Policy,” which is a program that allows employees to spend 15% of their time at work doing creative projects. In 1987, Art Fry took advantage of this program to create the ultra profitable “Post-it Notes” product.

Google, Facebook, & PwC have not only followed suit, but “upped the game! It’s interesting to mention a CPA firm in a sentence about corporate innovation alongside such stalwart consumer brands. Yet, it mid-sized and large businesses are to compete globally for talent, brand presence, and profits, more companies who may not be in innovative industries must learn how to spur intrapreneurship!