“It was engaging – I loved the interactive questions, the doodles, and the message hit home.”
But I wasn’t convinced, because I felt that the CEO hadn’t answered my real question. 🙁
Last Friday (yes – the day after London #SalesforceTour!) I ran an in-workshop on “Being a Compelling and Confident Consultant” for about 60 consultants at an SAP partner. (And yes – Leadership and Consulting skills are actually technology agnostic. 😁)
At the end of the workshop, I asked the CEO for feedback, and he told me what he thought.
However I felt that he hadn’t been completely forthcoming even though the words were positive. 🤨
“Thank you for those kind words, but that does not answer the real question that’s on my mind.”
I took a deep breath.
“You came to me after the first half, saying how much you liked how the workshop was going and you had many lovely and kind words for me.
“However, after the second half, I felt a change in the energy, in how you were interacting with me.
“Can you tell me if my feelings are correct, or if I imagined it all?”
He paused for a second.
“Last week, when I was doing this big presentation for 33 clients in Zurich, there were 5 slides that I skipped. Do you know what they were?”
I was slightly confused. “No. What were they?”
“They were the sales-ey bit. About what we did, what we achieved etc. My sales team would have used it, but not me. I wanted to focus on the problem I could solve for my customer, instead of switching into sales mode.”
“Ah.” I said. “It’s the three slides I had towards the end, talking about my coaching and training offerings.”
I had agreed to run this workshop in return for a generous donation to my #Samaritans branch. I was told that they might want to engage me for further training after this workshop, and so I thought it useful to add those three slides.
I could have taken his initial feedback at face value, but something compelled me to probe further. 🔦
What a valuable lesson here. 💡
My 2 takeaways for these engagements in future:
1. Trust my gut to always ask uncomfortable questions that need answering
2. Make sure I finesse the presentation even more towards the intended audience!
As a solo business operator transitioning from the consulting delivery world, I am still learning, and will need to figure out how to balance sales-ey slides in my presentations. 😬
So, how about you?
How confident are you at asking uncomfortable questions?
#AlwaysBeLearning
#OnThePeiroll
