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Another competitive event.

This time we are giving the keynote for our friends at Holbrook Business Systems.  The event is called "Creating Competitive Advantage" and is being held at their offices on May 2nd.  It's invitation only so if the postman brings you a nice fat envelope make sure you reserve your place with some urgency.

Check here for more details.

Having just put the last event to bed, we're moving on to the next one already.

Learn how to compete.  Properly.

Hilton, Sheffield, April 15th.  £50 including VAT and lunch.

Book yourself a place!

Plain Advice stuff is now available

Feel the quality!

Why not go to our website and tell us what you are up to and what you are hoping to acheive.  We will give you some free ideas about how to get to where you want to be.  No catches.  No gimmicks.  No obligation.

If you're pitching for funding for your business we can help you get to the point.

If you're about to give a presentation to your customers we can tell you how to make it more memorable.

If it's appraisal time at your company, we can tell you how to make your acheivements throughout the last twelve months seem all the more creditable.

Try us out.

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You know this already. If you are looking for a way to make your ideas, your products and your services more widely known then you need to talk about them in a way that can be easily spread. You need to tell stories that are easily remembered and easily repeated.

Think for a second about the stories that you know and how those stories have spread. We all know the same nursery rhymes and fairy stories. Until the Brothers Grimm wrote these stories down they had been passed down through the generations verbally. There has never been a need to change these stories and they have hardly ever been the subject of the curse of 'Chinese Whispers' – save perhaps Cinderella where there is a good deal of conjecture that the famous glass slipper was a result of a mistranslation from the original French into English and that the slipper was in fact green (vert = green, vers = glass, although the words are pronounced identically. You can see how this could happen when making the leap from an aural tradition to a written one). Magical footwear notwithstanding, how many 'little pigs' where there? How many bears lived in the house that Goldilocks ransacked? “There was an Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman” - remember those stories? Let's aim a little higher now – how many times was Jesus denied by Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane? This is known by scholars in this area as 'The Rule of 3'. Easy to remember isn't it? Now that you know it, use it to your advantage.

How does it apply to you?  Well, think about the noble art of selling things because that is what keeps the wheels of industry turning and puts food on all of our tables somehow or other. If there is only one reason for someone to buy from you, they are likely to go elsewhere. If your battery life is better, or your user interface is easier to use, or if your peas are the freshest, then that on its own is not enough to secure a sale. Two things are better – your battery life is great and your user interface rocks; your peas are the freshest and they are sourced from local farmers. Great – you've almost got me, but your price is too high or your product looks like crap or any one of a thousand other objections. Give me three reasons to buy from you – three reasons that no-one else can offer in quite the same way – and then I will throw my money at you. Your user interface rocks, your batteries last for ever AND your product is undeniably cool? Your peas are fresh, locally sourced AND packaged in an environmentally sound way? Not only am I going to buy from you, I'm going to tell my friends AND I'm going to tell them exactly the same story you told me. I am now effectively working for you with no greater reward than the pleasure I get from seeing my friends behave like me.

The bottom line here is that if you have three compelling messages it is easy to trust your story.

Let's go back to the rule of three and think for a second about politicians. I am going to try to keep this as close to a second as possible, because none of us like to think about politicians. We don't like to think about them precisely because we don't trust them. This makes them an excellent example to use here.

When a politician is pushed onto the radio or TV to give an interview they are briefed on one or perhaps if they are luck, two key messages. The report shows that they are doing a great job. The figures actually stack up this way. The judge said that we were not doing anything illegal when we invaded a sovereign foreign territory. Add your own here if you like. As the interview progresses you will have noticed how they always return to repeating their one or two key messages. “Before I answer that I would like to say this”, “You might see it that way, and no doubt many will agree with you, however I am here to tell you what the judge said”, and so on. When you only have one or two things to say it is almost impossible to turn it into a coherent and trustworthy message. You will always be missing out somewhere – there will always be a hole in your story and people will remember what is missing rather than what you said. To give the politicians their dues, it takes extreme skill to keep returning to your message in spite of the fear of ridicule or scorn – if you have to deal with the press it is a skill that is worth learning. But, if you deal with the press, remember that these people (also worthy of scorn and ridicule in many circumstances) have to write a story too. Give them their story and remember the Rule Of 3 when you do it. You'll find that your message spreads exactly as you gave it to them and that you won't be misquoted or misrepresented.

Early results from our Presentation Survey suggest that a remarkable number of presentation are sailing past their intended audience.  Almost all presentations are deemed 'boring and a waste of time'.  Interestingly, sales people are currently heading the list of the most boring presenters.  Have your say by clicking the link above or going to:

http://plain-advice.com/survey/survey.htm

Our suggestions are either:

1. Liven up and do something extraordinary next time you stand up to present.

2. Get some fresh ideas

3. Don't do a presentation - use a different medium (how about trying speaking without a PowerPoint slide deck behind you?  Or use a blog that peoplecan contribute their own ideas to? Or record a video showing the problem/success story you were going to talk about?)

If you keep doing what you are doing there is a huge chance that you will be ignored or quickly forgotten.  The message has to come first - a presentation may not be the most appropriate medium.

That's not a very nice question to find in your inbox, but here is my answer.

"'Thought Leadership' is an ...   more »

While we're on the subject of the psychology of presenting, let's have a think about sounds.

The auditory sense is the strongest sense we have. 

You may not believe it, but there it is. 

While humans are very visual, it is our ears that we rely on most.  Our eyes work like a laser in a bracode scanner.  They take in small amounts of information  from a single direction and pass it up to the brain for interpreting. 

When you drive home tonight and you get a second to yourself - after the phone has stopped ringing and the radio is playing a song you don't want to sing to, and the anouncer isn't saying something fabulous - ask yourself this question; what was the last thing I looked at?  Was it the rear view mirror, the gear lever, the handbrake, the nearside wing mirror, the guy to the left singing to the same song as me, the horizon, those hills off to the right, the horizon, the moon? 

You will have no idea. 

But when you hear the siren of the ambulance going to treat the victim of the crash that's causing the queue that you're sitting in you will know exactly where it comes from.  If you don't, you will look for it.  Please get out of it's way.  And then tell me which sense is the strongest.

Alarm clocks don't look good because they don't need to.  A beautiful alarm clock would not get you out of be in the morning.  A beautiful alarm clock would be a disaster.  Dreams are beautiful - waking up in the morning often isn't.  Waking is jarring and needs jarring things.  Loud noises are jarring.  Our hearing is three hundred and sixty degrees, twenty four by seven.  It is there for us when jarring things happen.

So while humans are programmed to respond to visual stimullii, we are always listening.  So please, for your sake, learn to modulate you voice when you speak.  Modulate just means change.  Nothing too flashy.  One of the prime complaints from people who have just sat through a dull presentation is "he/she spoke in a monotone".  Don't do that.  Practice.  Sing.  Tell stories, fairy stories, and do the voices of all the characters.  If you have children, read bed-time stories in character.  Keep the voices consistent.  Read a whole Harry Potter book like that.  I dare you.

Use your voice.  It is the thing that people will subconsciously judge you on the most.  Forget what you look like.  Your suit will make the first impression, after that it is useless.  Use your voice to add colour, light and shade to what you are saying.  Use it to bring drama - a little theatre.  Use your voice to make you stand out from the crowd.  Use your voice to make you remarkable.

We have learned over the years that people are pre-programmed to do certain things.  It's really easy to use this ...   more »

Got to pass this story on.

Last night we had an impromptu takeaway with some friends.  We decided on a Chinese place that they had had food from before and thought was quite good.  My wife set about ordering enough food for a small army even though there were only four of us eating.  But what the hell, it's not Friday night every night.

Two things to mention about the ordering process. 

Firstly (and this may be quite common, but it's the first time I've ever heard of it) the woman taking the order knew where we were - extremely handy for my wife who didn't know our friends address.  Now, the technology behind this isn't very complicated I guess, but the takeaway was in Worksop, which is hardly the centre of the Hi-Tech Universe.  Pretty impressive, at least to me.

Second thing was that there was a £2 charge for delivery because we were outside the free delivery radius.  Whether this was calculated by the same piece of software that gave our location, I don't know.  I do know that you might want to waive the charge for what eventually came to a £50 order.

So anyway, the food arrived and we had just chomped our way through the starters when the doorbell rang.  The owner of the restaurant was on the door step full of apologies because they hadn't delivered a portion of boiled rice that we had ordered.  Furthermore, to make up for any inconvenience, he also gave us a bottle of fizzy orange.  We hadn't even noticed it wasn't there.

Now, what stands out about this is that most places I know would have just said "to hell with the boiled rice".  I have lost count of the number of times I have had things missed from a takeaway order.  Complaints are normally brushed off with stories about how the driver is really busy so he won't be available from at least another hour.  Going the extra mile like this is incredibly powerful - more so because of the industry we're talking about and the usual cynicism you get from the guy on the phone once he knows he has your cash. 

Now, I know that the guy would almost certainly have still made a profit on the meal as a whole, but that portion of boiled rice would be barely breaking even.  Would you be prepared to make a loss on your boiled rice?  When it comes to post-sales problems do you try to brush them aside - sorry, we're too busy now but we'll try to get to you as soon as we can?  Can you fix things before your customer even realises there is a problem?  And do you have the good grace and humility to apologise AND offer compensation? 

Stand up and be counted Worksop Express.  Get the best customer service from any takeaway ever by calling 01909 484888.

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