Saturday, November 6, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
"I couldn't help myself..."
Forgive my occasional typos please as I am still getting used to the iPad.
I have the privilege of having a great deal of contact with event content planners and programmers, as well as sales people in digital marketing. And I hope that sellers know that I luvs them dearly because they make it all possible. But I am also a snarky sumbitch so I gotta say this.
Sellers always complain that they can't get speaking gigs at conferences. And mostly they don't get on stage.
I am going to tell you why. Because so darn many of the sellers that DO make it on stage spend their moments in the sun shilling for their product. I am flying back from adtech right now as I type, and am happy to report that several sellers provided tremendous content and differentiated themselves superbly there. But a few others -- I won't name names -- did nothing but pitch.
It's like you can't help yourselves, and the pitch oozes out like toothpaste. Hence the title of the post.
So I thought I'd lay out five suggestions on how to get on stage, and get asked back.
1. Do not claim you aren't making a pitch and then show us 6 slides from the pitch deck. Regardless of how it makes us feel about you and btw we hate you for it, you will have ticked off the content people. And they have the memories of elephants and you will NEVER appear on stage again.
2. Stay on topic. You were asked to be there for a reason. How can you substantively add to the discussion? Look, we get it that you have something to sell, and that's how you make your living. Actually it's your in market experience that makes you so valuable to us potentially as a speaker. But an opp to speak to an audience is an opp to differentiate your company and self through thought leadership. It is not a chance to broadcast your sales deck. If you have something to sell that adds meaningfully to the discussion, great. Thing is, so many of you are really rather brilliant and have great thoughts on the topics. But we'll never know because as soon as you start selling, we start emailing.
3. Don't poop on your competitors. Nothing looks lamer and we don't believe one word you say after that.
4. When you are pitching yourself as a speaker, explain what is in it for the audience and the programmer. I listened to a seller earlier today, when asked what they would talk about, they said their very cool product of course. Thing is, the industry has far far far too many cool products, and not enough big thoughts and ideas. Helping you spread the word about you is not something that helps the audience or programmer.
5. Tell us what you think. Not what you have to sell. Because what you think will help us, and then we know you have answers and ideas and solutions. We don't need a new fully transparent real time inventory acquisition platform in the cloud. We need your thoughts first. Then, if your thoughts are valuable, we'll want to know more about what a smartypants like you has decided they want to help build.
Again, I really love sellers. I hope those sellers I know feel that. You solve our problems and make us look good. But you are doing yourselves a disservice when you come across as putzes onstage that we need to endure for the next ten minutes until a real speaker is teed up.
Connect what you are saying to the ideas of others that you share the limelight with. As conference goers we struggle to solidify all the thoughts and ideas ideas into a reasonable number of takeaways. Help us, and you will win.
I have the privilege of having a great deal of contact with event content planners and programmers, as well as sales people in digital marketing. And I hope that sellers know that I luvs them dearly because they make it all possible. But I am also a snarky sumbitch so I gotta say this.
Sellers always complain that they can't get speaking gigs at conferences. And mostly they don't get on stage.
I am going to tell you why. Because so darn many of the sellers that DO make it on stage spend their moments in the sun shilling for their product. I am flying back from adtech right now as I type, and am happy to report that several sellers provided tremendous content and differentiated themselves superbly there. But a few others -- I won't name names -- did nothing but pitch.
It's like you can't help yourselves, and the pitch oozes out like toothpaste. Hence the title of the post.
So I thought I'd lay out five suggestions on how to get on stage, and get asked back.
1. Do not claim you aren't making a pitch and then show us 6 slides from the pitch deck. Regardless of how it makes us feel about you and btw we hate you for it, you will have ticked off the content people. And they have the memories of elephants and you will NEVER appear on stage again.
2. Stay on topic. You were asked to be there for a reason. How can you substantively add to the discussion? Look, we get it that you have something to sell, and that's how you make your living. Actually it's your in market experience that makes you so valuable to us potentially as a speaker. But an opp to speak to an audience is an opp to differentiate your company and self through thought leadership. It is not a chance to broadcast your sales deck. If you have something to sell that adds meaningfully to the discussion, great. Thing is, so many of you are really rather brilliant and have great thoughts on the topics. But we'll never know because as soon as you start selling, we start emailing.
3. Don't poop on your competitors. Nothing looks lamer and we don't believe one word you say after that.
4. When you are pitching yourself as a speaker, explain what is in it for the audience and the programmer. I listened to a seller earlier today, when asked what they would talk about, they said their very cool product of course. Thing is, the industry has far far far too many cool products, and not enough big thoughts and ideas. Helping you spread the word about you is not something that helps the audience or programmer.
5. Tell us what you think. Not what you have to sell. Because what you think will help us, and then we know you have answers and ideas and solutions. We don't need a new fully transparent real time inventory acquisition platform in the cloud. We need your thoughts first. Then, if your thoughts are valuable, we'll want to know more about what a smartypants like you has decided they want to help build.
Again, I really love sellers. I hope those sellers I know feel that. You solve our problems and make us look good. But you are doing yourselves a disservice when you come across as putzes onstage that we need to endure for the next ten minutes until a real speaker is teed up.
Connect what you are saying to the ideas of others that you share the limelight with. As conference goers we struggle to solidify all the thoughts and ideas ideas into a reasonable number of takeaways. Help us, and you will win.
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