Archive for December, 2011

Selling through Presentation

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

by Dr. Wesley Carter
Making presentations can increase the heart rate and anxiety level of even the most tenured executive. In business, the oral communication and the physical document are the two most common components of every presentation. Public speaking terrifies most individuals. Thankfully, there are organizations dedicated exclusively to helping individuals develop their speaking skills. A quick search on the Internet will provide a list of resources.

Presentations should be developed based on the specific audience for the information. In business, presentations are typically geared toward selling an idea, product, service, or concept. Therefore, it is critical that the presenter is very knowledgeable about the respective topic.

The oral portion of a presentation is different than the actual physical document used to convey an idea. Both, the oral and physical presentation must tell a story. And both must contain an introduction, middle, and conclusion. However, the oral presentation actually sells the idea, product, service, or concept. Hence, the importance of making a presentation that is memorable, persuasive, and succinct.

Before making a presentation, gain as much knowledge about your audience as possible. Will your audience consist of experts or will your presentation be their first introduction to the topic? If your audience consists of experts on the topic, your oral presentation can be presented at a high level with details included the Appendix, should you need to explain a concept in more detail. However, if your audience is not very knowledgeable of your topic, your presentation should be designed to teach and sell.

Know your topic! Nothing is more ineffective than listening to a presentation made by an individual with little or no knowledge of the topic being presented. Reading to the audience is a presentation no-no. Skilled presenters practice their presentations, and some even choreograph their gestures for emphasis, until they are smooth and natural. The tempo of the presentation should be conversational. Beware of rushing through the presentation.

At the beginning, the presenter should introduce themselves and the topic. Experienced presentations speak clearly, making frequent eye contact with the audience. Attire should be neat and professional to minimize distractions.

Generally, presenters should plan to spend about one minute per presentation slide. Upon the conclusion of the presentation, the key points should be reiterated. The presenter should invite questions. It is wise to repeat the question before responding because the audience may have difficulty hearing the individual posing the question.

The physical presentation typically consists of slides produced on a computer. There are several presentation tools available. It does not matter which tool presenters use as long as it produces professional presentations that can be accessed easily using the hardware that will be available at the presentation site. Design themes and templates should chosen to align with the presentation topic.

The slide layout is absolutely critical. Slides should be consistent and easy to follow. Dark words on a light background are easier to read from different vantage points in the audience. Punctuation, fancy fonts, and words spelled using all capital letters, tend to detract from the presentation. Presentation experts recommend that each slide consist of no more than five bullets, no more than two different fonts, and less than 35 words. However, this is a guide rather than a rule.

Slide transitions and animation should be kept to a minimum. Presentations that include numerous slide transitions and lots of animation are clear indicators that the presenter is a novice. When an audience is presented with heavy animation, it can be a like a dog chasing a squirrel, the audience becomes preoccupied anticipating the next transition. The topic of the presentation gets lost in the animation theatrics.

Just like the oral presentation, slides should be organized with an introduction, middle, and conclusion. Spell-check is a presenter’s friend. Typos can destroy the effectiveness of any presentation. Slides should include page numbers.

Finally, skilled presenters generally arrange for a trusted individual to review the slides before actually making the presentation. Another set of eyes will often uncover errors or inconsistencies missed by the creator of the presentation. A carefully prepared presentation is a valuable sales tool.

WESLEY CARTER DM, authors an advice column that leverages leadership and management strategies to solve common business problems. Carter holds a Doctor of Management (DM) degree with an emphasis in Organizational Leadership, an MBA, and a B.A. in Management. Carter is a partner at KRS Consulting, LLC in Charlotte, NC. If you have a question, email wesley@krsconsult.com. All submissions become the property of Wesley Carter. Call (704) 992-1211 or email to book an engagement. This article originally appeared in “The Charlotte Post”.

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Barrier to Entry for Small Business

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

By Dr. Wesley Carter
Stella stood with her hand resting gently on the whiteboard in the conference room. She had been in the office most of the night and all morning, working on a report for her father, the owner of a small business. Stella’s father had asked her to identify the barriers to entry for potential new competitors, or entrants, into their market. With a supportive pat on the back, her father had posed the question last night.

Stella was intent on convincing her father that she was ready to take over the reins of the family business. She absent mindedly twirled the dry erase marker between her fingers and mentally reviewed what she had learned about barriers to entry in business school and from years of experience in the family business.

New companies must be able to enter the market before they can actually become competitors. Creating strategic barriers is an excellent strategy to stave off competitors and deter entry into a market. Stella’s father posed the challenge to evaluate how the business would fair under Stella’s leadership. Her father’s faith in her ability motivated her to provide a thorough assessment.

Stella recalled Michael Porter’s five strategic market forces regarding barriers to entry for potential competitors. She quickly went through her mental checklist and scribbled her ideas on the whiteboard. Economies of scale can pose a barrier to entry when potential competitors must make large investments to compete in the same market as an established business. Typically, new market entrants will be forced to enter the market on a large scale to threaten an entrenched and established business in a particular geographical area. The access to proprietary technology, an advantageous location, or government subsidies can make it difficult to enter a new market.

Product differentiation creates a barrier to entry when customer loyalty for a particular product or service is strong enough to threaten businesses attempting to enter a new market. Customer loyalty can result from customer service, brand identification, or the status associated with a particular product or service. However, product differentiation is only a barrier to entry for the potential competitor if they do not have access to the capital required to compete.

Capital requirements can make it very difficult for potential competitors to enter the market of an established business. The capital requirements can result from the need for large start-up costs, heavy certification fee requirements, or research and development. Basically, when an industry requires a new entrant to make a large capital investment to enter the market, those capital requirements represent a barrier to entry.

Cost can also represent a potential barrier to entry. When established companies achieve either a lower “cost of doing business” or product/service price advantages, cost becomes a threat to a new company entering the market. If an established company is fortunate enough to operate profitability at a lower cost than a new company entering the same market, the established company has a cost advantage.

Established companies often have greater access to distribution channels than new companies entering the market. Access to distribution channels poses a barrier to entry for a new company if it will be difficult to gain access to similar or more efficient distribution channels.

Government policy and regulations have the potential of posing a tremendous barrier to entry. Industries such as liquor retailing, coal mining, or trucking are examples of government policy interfering with entry into the markets. The government can enact a barrier to entry by limiting the number entrants into a particular market such as public utilities or garbage collection.

The issue is not whether a potential competitor will enter the market, but “how long it will take a competitor to enter and challenge the market space of an established business?” Stella quickly wrote the potential barriers to entry for the family business, took a step back, and admired her work. She smiled with confidence as she prepared for a very positive discussion with her father. She looked forward to hearing her father’s feedback during their lunch meeting. The white board was white, no more.

WESLEY CARTER DM, authors an advice column that leverages leadership and management strategies to solve common business problems. Carter holds a Doctor of Management (DM) degree with an emphasis in Organizational Leadership, an MBA, and a B.A. in Management. Carter is a partner at KRS Consulting, LLC in Charlotte, NC. If you have a question, email wesley@krsconsult.com. All submissions become the property of Wesley Carter. Call (704) 992-1211 or email to book an engagement. This article originally appeared in “The Charlotte Post”.

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The Beauty of Failure

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

By Dr. Wesley Carter
So, you did not get that new job or you did not qualify for a new business loan. Maybe you failed to win a huge contract. Congratulations are due for either of the situations mentioned. It may be too soon to see the value of failure. But, if you remain vigilant, the value of failure will reveal itself.

Top selling business books contain page upon page on the merits of success. Winners are interviewed and held up for all to admire, but, what about the merits of failure? Failure is a powerful and valuable tool. Failure enables transformations and provides a contrast for success. The lessons learned from failure are responsible for many, if not most, wins. There are six critical reasons to appreciate failure.

Teacher: Failure teaches you what will and will not be accepted in a given situation.
Failure also shows you, who you really are. This knowledge equips you with a mental rearview mirror to assist you toward making better decisions in the future. Successful people perceive failure is a lesson rather than a destination.

Resilience: Most people can persevere and survive in the face of great success. Winners persevere in the face of failure. In fact, failure provides an opportunity to test your resiliency skills

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What is Your Change Capacity?

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

by Dr. Wesley Carter
Kevin is a professional, driven, efficient, change agent. Kevin is intent on achieving his personal best in everything he does. Yet, he continues to feel frustrated at the end of every day because he did not successfully complete all of the items on his ‘to do’ list. Perhaps Kevin is too ambitious. Or maybe he is too hard on himself. Kevin’s experience is not unique.

Most busy professionals are on a never ending journey to improve personal efficiency in the hopes of carving out personal time or increasing productivity. Upon discovering new or more innovative strategies professionals must choose whether to change their current practices. Without change, improvement cannot occur. And without improvement, professionals become stagnant and lose their competitive edge.

Before embarking on any change effort, it is important to evaluate your palate for change. Do you typically act on your intentions? Are you able to observe others and imagine yourself performing similar activities? Do you initiate effort and maintain the level of commitment required to complete an action to your standards?

High self-efficacy, your confidence in your capability to execute some action, is a key component of successful change. There are four components of self efficacy; intention, vicarious experience, volition, and faith. Intention is a strong indicator of whether an activity is acted upon. Vicarious experience refers to the capacity to identify and observe how others whether similar changes. This information serves to confirm or dispute the practicality of our intentions.

Volition refers to the power of will. In fact, when we will ourselves to execute some action, we are acting of our own volition. Volition is a combination of initiative, motivation, and commitment. Faith refers to our confidence in our ability to accomplish some objective. Without faith, our efforts will be halfhearted and unproductive. Faith gives us the strength to raise our emotional arousal to the level necessary to sustain our commitment.

While it is impossible to prepare for every change that we encounter, it is totally possible to control how we experience and respond to every change. To do so, we need to make a conscious decision to take 100% ownership of how we navigate change. By owning our power to navigate change we become emboldened to actually achieve our objectives.

High performing professionals never stop driving to self-actualize personally and professionally. Like Kevin, we should all hold ourselves accountable for achieving our personal best. Are you satisfied with your productivity? If not, change.

Dr. Wesley Carter authors a weekly business column in The Charlotte Post newspaper. Carter holds a Doctor of Management (DM) degree from the University of Phoenix with an emphasis in Organizational Leadership, an MBA from the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University, and a B.A in Management from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. This information may not be copied or shared without permission from Dr. Wesley Carter. If you have a question, email wesley@krsconsult.com or call (704) 992-1211.

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Five Reasons to Pick up the Phone

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

by Dr. Wesley Carter

Ask any professional and they will tell you that email is indispensable. Email serves a vital role in the operation process. Unlike live conversations, email enables individuals to rehearse messages before actually communicating to the recipient(s). In addition, email functions as a tool for communication, documentation, archiving, dissemination, invitations, tracking, and organizing.

However, the overreliance on text and email may be negatively influencing interpersonal relationships between professionals. Email simply does not have the potential to replace all communication mediums. There are at least five situations where email is not a very communication medium; debates, emotionally charged messages, private conversations, negotiations, and media richness needs.

The Rule of Six. If more than six emails are exchanged about the same topic between two people, within the same day, it is time to make a phone call. When numerous emails are exchanged within a relatively short period of time, email has outlived its usefulness and a voice-to-voice conversation is a more effective communication tool.

Context-sensitive messages. When the context of an email can be negatively misinterpreted, it is wise to make a phone call. Disagreements and misunderstandings can escalate quickly when emails are perceived negatively or too rigidly. In fact, emotionally charged communications may be exacerbated by email. A phone call provides both parties with the opportunity to clarify points and resolve issues in real-time.

Privacy Needs: One should never assume an email message is private. Electronic communications are never truly private. Most employers have the legal right to access any and all communication that occurs through company property. Truly private messages should never be relegated to email. If an email could be negatively perceived by organizational leadership or law enforcement, it should not be created.

Negotiations. Email is not effective tool for facilitating negotiations. However, after the terms have been negotiated, email is an excellent documentation tool. In a successful negotiation, each party feels fairly heard, represented, and compensated. Unfortunately, the lack of social cues inherent in email communication may not provide each party with enough information to perceive the negotiation positively.

Media richness requirements. Face-to-face communication is considered rich media, whereas text communication, such as email, is considered lean media. The classification of communication modes based on richness and leanness refers to the capacity for accessing social cues via a communication medium. It is easier to share social cues through face-to-face communication than email. Ideally, individuals should meet face-to-face when starting a new working relationship to negotiate the rules of engagement. However, face-to-face meetings are often impractical. In those instances where face-to-face communication is not possible, voice-to-voice conversation is the next best alternative. Email should only be utilized to kick-off new relationship if face-to-face and voice-to-voice are unavailable.

Before typing the next email, individuals should pause and evaluate whether email is the most effective medium to communicate the intended message. Taking a few seconds on the front end could save time, money, and relationships. It is an investment well worth the consideration.

Dr. Wesley Carter authors a weekly business column in The Charlotte Post newspaper. Carter holds a Doctor of Management (DM) degree from the University of Phoenix with an emphasis in Organizational Leadership, an MBA from the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University, and a B.A in Management from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. This information may not be copied or shared without permission from Dr. Wesley Carter. If you have a question, email wesley@krsconsult.com or call (704) 992-1211. This article originally appeared in the Charlotte Post.

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