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Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.
"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war," General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan. "PowerPoint makes us stupid," ...
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When companies bet the farm on new products, their standard operating procedure is to throw an elaborate launch party for industry influencers and the press.
These "Big Tent" events often are centered on a demonstration of the precious newborn product. As anyone who has ever attended or, more to the point, participated in these events knows, the Demo Demons can strike suddenly, smiting the demo with a software crash, hardware jam, power outage, blown lamp, dead
battery, mouse malfunction, pop-up menu, sound system failure, or the dreaded blue screen of death. Pure commonsense, anticipation, preparation, and redundant equipment will avoid or counteract most of the physical and logistical pitfalls, but there is still the vital matter of showmanship: How do you integrate all the
elements of your demo: its physical components, your voice and body language, and your all-important audience? The Demo Demons may even give you a free pass and let you proceed without crashing, but you still have to make the demo go smoothly. After all, you are the surrogate for your audience -- if you can't make your
product work easily, how can they? Here are seven simple steps to make your next demo a success...
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The significance of any chart lies in its ability to visually represent complex data as a trend that an audience can easily grasp.
So if you create a complex chart with too much detail, you ironically might be creating confusion out of simplicity -- even if you aren't aware that you are doing it. One of the easiest ways to make your charts look simpler and less intimidating is by using fewer major units in the "Y" axis -- and if that sounds like something that's
difficult to understand, then stop worrying and start following this easy tutorial...
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It's no secret... the higher up the corporate ladder you go the more important your pubic speaking skills become.
If you have your sights set on increased responsibility and the position and salary that go with it, you'll need to position yourself ahead of the crowd in advance. At all stages of your career you need to sell yourself, your ideas, your value, and your ability. Positioning yourself for promotion requires learning what it takes to
sell yourself and your ideas to senior management. What's the worst reaction you've ever received when you've delivered a presentation to senior management? It would likely come in second to the one I just heard about...
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Objections are Not Your Enemy An engaged client means a repeat customer, work with objections instead of against them.
Those 'obstacles' actually demonstrate an engaged customer.
One of the many disturbing scenes in the 2000 movie "Boiler Room" is the alpha-salesman-speak of Ben Affleck's character, who concludes:
There is no such thing as a 'no sale' call. A sale is made on every call you make. You either sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can't. Either way it's a sale. The question is, who's gonna close, you or him?
If you've taken sales training courses, or read books on improving selling skills chances are you've heard lots about "handling" objections. Usually with objections represented as obstacles to your ability to close a sale. At the risk of appearing arrogant or even heretical, let me offer a radical suggestion to you; the whole
idea of objections is misguided--you need to re-think most of what you've learned. To start, what are you really thinking when you talk about handling objections?...
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SUMMARY: Although economists see the recession waning, the recovery is expected to be long and slow.
In this environment, email marketers need programs that maximize the revenue potential of customers who are spending again. Read this classic Sherpa case study to see how one team boosted email-generated revenue 322% by targeting recent big spenders in their database. They created a new segment based on
purchases, developed a preferred-customer program, and created post-purchase offers to generate additional conversions...
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SUMMARY: Real estate on the first page of search results is scarce and valuable.
Now, Google is giving some marketers four additional links for their PPC ads at the top of the page through its new Ad Sitelinks program. Read how one team took advantage of this new paid search advertising format, which helped them lift clickthrough rates 14%. Includes three important details to know about the program
and five tactics to help with your own tests...
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Ley Borlo (Mad About Incentives) and Joshua Klapow (Science Behind Incentives) look at the scientific principles behind--and propel--what most of us in the industry at least attempt to do every day: create successful incentive programs.
Most organizations don't understand what must be done to make incentive programs successful. In 2003, a groundbreaking study titled "Incentives, Motivation and Workplace Performance: Research & Best Practices," conducted by researchers for the International Society of Performance Improvement, proved that
incentive programs can boost performance by 25 to 44 percent, "but only if conducted in ways that address all issues related to performance and human motivation." The study found that most organizations lack the knowledge or will to create properly constructed programs. In our opinion, the top three reasons that so many
incentive programs fail are:...
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The Apple founder birthed the personal computer, was banished from his empire and then saved it from ruin. Along the way, he changed the way we work, play and communicate. And he's not done yet. On a foggy, cool day in January, Steve Jobs and Apple are bidding to change the world again. Jobs sits comfortably in a leather chair in front of a rapt San Francisco auditorium crowd, a large video screen tracking his hand movements on a thin, slate-looking object resting comfortably in his hands. Dressed in his
trademark blue jeans, dark turtleneck, and New Balance shoes, the wire-framed Apple co-founder and culture-shaper peppers his speech with "remarkable, awesome" and "amazing" references to his company's latest new wave-a notebook device called the iPad. This "truly magical and revolutionary product"
fills a category need between his company's successful laptop and iPhone and iPod business lines, Jobs says.
When Your Own Words Undo You Watch what you say, even if you think it is confidential, as Goldman Sachs found out the hard way...
Goldman Puts Spotlight on Self-Evaluations
Printed on the front of Fabrice Tourre's performance review was a message: "Not intended for disclosure outside the firm." At Senate hearings last week he and a few other Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executives learned there was an exception: Congress. As they grilled the executives about their roles in the financial crisis,
senators quoted from the executives' performance reviews, noting the self-congratulatory tone they regularly used. "It should not be a surprise to anyone that the 2007 year is the one that I am most proud of to date," Goldman managing director Michael Swenson wrote in his self-evaluation. The comments could be an argument
for a bonus, but Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) used them to tie Goldman to trades that now have the bank in the hot seat. Employees long ago learned to watch what they put in emails, which often are monitored, saved and used as evidence. But even human-resources professionals were surprised to learn that
self-assessments aren't really confidential,...
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Guidelines for Ethical Business Practice. We are committed to the proper use of
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