Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Dear Burnsie_the_Great,

Walk with me.

Out into the cool fresh Delaware air of a mid June day. It's a tad cloudy now, but the sky early this morning? Azurely glorious, and all the better for ripening my tomatoes.

Do you like tomatoes? Ever tasted a fresh, juicy, pungent, aromatic, delicious, plump tomato straight from the vine?

Come with me.

Like my hothouse? Built it myself out of old window frames. Cost me $150. Well, that and sweat equity. Open the door, and in we go. Lordy! My glasses are fogging! Smell that? That's Mother Nature doing Her "thang!"

You go girl!

My tomatoes are over here. Impressive, aren't they? Planted them in April and they've just gone bonkers. See? The tendrils of that one must be nine feet high. Good, sturdy stems, tight frames, and look at the fruit! I'm going to be giving lots of this stuff away. Lots of it!

Here, this one's a good 'un. nice and plump. S'cuse my pocket knife. It is clean. Sort of.

Put your hooter close to the stem there. Smell that? Nothing like that smell. Now, let's slice this one open. Oops, sorry about the juice on your shoes there.

Taste.

Go on, it won't kill you.

Good, eh? God! Every time I walk in here I'm just amazed by the Earth's fecundity! Come one, let's get back tot he house. The coffee'll be ready by now ...

FADE TO BLACK.

Tell me Burnsie. Is your mouth watering?

What you've just read is called a Pattern Interrupt. An NLP technique that stops people in their tracks. We live our lives based on patterns.

Day in, day out. Which means things become mundane. Predictable. And dull.

In order to stand out, the first commandment is simple:

Thou shalt not be dull.

With me? Splendid.

Group Marketing Manager's slot, eh?

Splendid. The job's yours you know. There, ripe for the picking. Low hanging fruit. Juicy, pungent, aromatic, delicious.

All you have to do is get into the zone. Walk yourself through the meeting (see it as a meeting, not as an interview. Changes everything). See yourself in the room. Note the colour of the carpets, the walls, the angle of the table, the feel of the floor beneath your feet and your unwavering knowledge that you know your stuff and that you are the leanest, most talented mo fo to set foot in that room. See yourself giving a flawless presentation. See yourself knowing your stuff, see yourself taking command of the room, doing it, being "the man", being THE candidate.

See yourself winning the game. See yourself taking the trophy.
Visualization is an incredibly powerful thing and it can set you up to win, or to crash and burn.

Choose one.

Yes, I know it's a big presentation, but whoever it is you're meeting with does not put their trousers on any differently than you do: one leg at a time.

Secondly, forget about your competition and how stuff it is. It's what you do in that room, one on one that counts. You can do nothing about the other chaps, so ignore them.

Third, what you're NOT going to do is offer the same old dull PowerPoint fare. Personally, I loathe PowerPoint. I think it's an abomination. And this is where your pattern interrupt comes in.

I don't know what your company sells: widgets, thingys, doo-dahds? Whatever. Could be sky hooks, moonscrews, and anti gravity spray for all I know.

But the point is this:

What the company sells is NOT important. The PRODUCT is not important. Its design, mechanics, price, and features are NOT important.

What DOES matter is the effect the product has on people's lives.
And that's where a great Group Marketing Manager comes into his or her own. Having the skill to KNOW what matters. Being able to SOLVE people's problems by addressing points of pain with the most astonishing salves.

The usual PowerPoint presentation is slide, chat, slide, chat, slide, slide, chat, and normally with the chat being the parroting of the text on the slide.

Dull, dull, yawny old dull. This ins't a presentation, it's a Snoozefest Zzzzzzzzzzzz! I've seen dozens of these things and they've all been a waste of time, dull, boring, and pointless.

A pattern interrupt stops all of the tedium in its tracks. When everyone else is using a pea shooter or a BB gun, a pattern interrupt is the equivalent of being loaded for bear.

Two resources for you. the first is three and a half minutes of bliss from MadMen. Two guys walk in from EastMan Kodak and the ad men give a presentation that commands the room. i've seen this dozens of times and it gets me every time. it's incredibly powerful because the Kodak guys think they're selling a machine that uses a wheel. What they get is waaaaay more than that. Watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY

The second is a blog entry from Seth Godin on the use of PowerPoint. Read. Enjoy.

https://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/really_bad_powe.html

And good luck with your meeting.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

P.S. If you've found this post is of value, I'd greatly appreciate your testimonial. Click my name at the top of this post and you'll find my profile and my e-mail address. Thanks for reading.