Presentations are the essential for every business to thrive because they portray the realities of an overall performance. Today, Ken Courtright proves to us why presentations count in companies. He says that through it, you will be able to establish a plan and eventually find “X.” Ken shares examples of how his accomplishment model using presentations has helped him increase sales and made his name matter in the business world.
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Presentations Count
If I’m going to sit down with someone and they want to increase sales, whether it’s the CEO of a company, the sales manager and individual sales rep. Within 2 to 5 minutes, the person in front of me, all they want to talk about is sales. Numerically, they want to talk about how many they’ve done, the dollars per sale, and I usually spend a good amount of time trying to steer the ship away from sales to find out what’s causing the sales. They get uncomfortable, they don’t want to take the time because they know this may be a one-hour phone call or a four-hour phone call or a whole day, and they want to get right to it. The biggest mistake I see for unequivocally in twenty-plus years are people count sales. We don’t count sales here, in twenty-some years nobody’s ever had a meeting in my company where we’ve counted sales. Since 1996, we count the number of presentations.
It is our belief and we have the physical evidence that if you count the presentations, the sales happen. If you count the presentations and you don’t count the sales, the pressure gets relieved from the salespeople. When you count sales, all of the pressure is on the sale. When you count the presentations, the pressure’s on the presentations. For those of you reading this, maybe you have an Amazon website that sells shoes and you don’t make presentations. Here’s what I’d like you to do, I want you to go back six months and I want you to find a way to track how many presentations you or your company have done. When you get this eerie, icky feeling, and you’re like, “How in the world am I going to do that?” It can be done, it will be done. You have to do it, you have to go back step by step and let’s deal with salespeople. If your salespeople don’t have a date timer or a calendar that shows them how many presentations and how many meetings they have, I would ask you to, number one, remove the salesperson if they don’t track that and I’m not being facetious.
Number two, remove yourself from the equation because you cannot expect what you don’t inspect. In a salesperson model, it’s a little bit easier because you’re going to open up a calendar and see how many presentations. Let’s take the person that sells shoes on Amazon. How many presentations were made? Number one, you can get the data that shows how many times that product or page was viewed and that is a presentation. Let’s say you have a base website, no Amazon, and you’re a life coach and you want to know, “I had only presented that I know of four people in the last six months and one of them hired me.” Its four presentations, I don’t know about that. How many people came to your website? How many people did you present to in monthly meetups? How many people heard your message? Do you do pay-per-click? How many clicks did you have? That’s a presentation.
If you count the presentations and you don't count the sales, the pressure gets relieved from the salespeople. Click To TweetAre you on the radio? When they sell you radio, you always get a rate sheet that shows you the reach. That’s the average, according to Nielsen, of how many people heard your message. I hinted in the last episode 120, two things were done when I bought a company years ago for $1. If you didn’t read the last episode, I recommend you go back and read it. I had an opportunity ten-plus years ago. I was consulting a company that was bleeding, it was hemorrhaging money. The owner had an opportunity to go back and work with his family, he took it because I bought the company for $1 with all its debt. Turned out nineteen months later, I sold it back to them making $20,000 a week and it went from 8 sales reps to 207 sales reps in nineteen months.
I did two things and only two things. Number one, I instilled an activity model that switched to an accomplishment model. Number two, I created an eight-book list that eventually became mandatory reading. It didn’t become mandatory but the bottom line is I used that technique, where if you didn’t read the books you embarrassed yourself out of the company. The last episode was specifically to the eight books, I read the titles, some of the authors. I’m going to move into the first thing I did which was switched that company from activity to accomplishment. In the ‘90s, I flew my team to Las Vegas.
One of the companies we owned back then was a sign company. We did electric signs, window signs, big electric signs on poles, and we were doing good. We were a seven-figure company. I was not complaining, but I was reading a monthly newsletter and I heard that the President of the United States sign council was speaking and it showed the chemical makeup of his company. I noticed he had half the sales reps we had, but he was doing three times the volume. He was getting 600% more production per salesperson and that’s when I bought my tickets to go.
I was in the front row and I heard the senior gentlemen, he was pushing 80, vibrant, and we got to do a little Q&A at the end and of course, I’m like, “I’m curious what your sales model is.” He goes, “It’s simple. We don’t have a sales model. However, all of our sales reps are commission only. If they do not take photographs of the storefront and superimpose what a new sign would look like and make ten official presentations per month, in any one given month, they’re automatically fired.” I was bolted to my chair I’m like, “I’ve got family that worked for me. I’ve got people who’ve been with me for years. That’s rough.”
What went through my mind is we seldom do ten presentations, that’s a lot and qualified, legit, good presentation. I came home and after some thinking and communicating with that gentleman, I applied ten presentations or you’re fired. I did it with complete buy-in from our salespeople. I explained it, I covered how we could do it, I covered how I’d help get the digital superimposing of the pictures done faster, and I got total buy-in. Prior to my doing that, we were doing okay. Once I applied ten or you’re let go, we doubled three years in a row. We doubled, but then we doubled the next year again, and then we doubled the next year again. It was amazing, it was awesome, it was incredible. We switched from me rewarding activity, meaning these sales reps show up for work, I then only rewarded accomplishment.
What was the accomplishment? The accomplishment was we had to find our X. How many presentations per month was each sales rep doing? We had to find that number and move it to ten. We had to find our X. Here’s a simple fact in business, business is math. Growing business equals growing your math. X amount of people heard your message. That is a statistical fact. Whether you know the number or not, X amount of people heard your message. The simple fact of businesses, find your X, how many people heard your message and double it, this month, next 30 days. Double X again and then double X again. It is that simple.
Business is math and every time we've helped a company find X, it is incredibly easy to double X in a month. Click To TweetMost brains at this point go, “Come on, that’s nearly impossible. We do radio, we do this, we do meetups. I don’t know how many people are hearing me in the meetup.” Here’s the thing, trust me when I tell you this one, and I’ve done this for years. What’s difficult is defining X. What is not difficult is doubling X. When your brain tunes out and goes, “It’s impossible. How am I going to find X?” It is difficult to find X, it’s like unraveling yarn, but when you become resolute and you are going to find X, you’re going to track every time someone hears your message moving forward. Once you start doing that moving forward you go, “That’s right.”
I did a presentation, there were 35 people in the audience. We did have a banner for a week on Jefferson Street. Go to the County courthouse, how many people drive by? 50,000? 1.8 people per car? There are 92,000 people and a banner with an inch letter, height is readable from 35 feet away, your attendance letter is 350 feet away, you can do the math. You have about 800 people to see that banner. If you set your mind to it, you can find X. Here’s what I know to be a fact, business is math and every time we’ve helped a company find X, it was incredibly easy for them to double X in a month, double it again and double it again, and their numbers skyrocketed. The reason it’s going to be easy if you apply this technique to launch your business to an area it’s never seen before is this, your X is probably tiny. You think you’re doing a lot of presentations, you think a lot of people are hitting your website. You think you do a lot of conferences and meetups where the people hear your elevator pitch or your snapper.
The bottom line is, according to Miller Heiman, which is about $2,800 per person to come in and fix your sales, and they only come in for one day. According to Miller Heiman, most companies get appalled and need a garbage can next to them when they find out what their X is. When Miller Heiman goes in to do high level consulting, they have one goal upfront. This was back in the ‘90s. How many presentations are legitimately being heard per month? Miller Heiman knows or knew back then, business is math. You find X and you double X, it’s not hard. Here’s the deal, make a plan, you are going to find the X for your company. What is X? You’re going to find a way. Are you going to add pay-per-click? I don’t know. Are you going to add radio?
I don’t know. Are you going to add Valpak? Are you going to go to more conferences? Are you going to write a book and reach more people? Are you going to speak from stages? How are you going to get your X doubled? If you want to see some fast ways to do it, I did a six-part episode in the 60s, it was episodes 65 to 71. It even came with an infographic or a chart with rocket ships on it, you can find it on one of the websites. I dropped 10 to 20 ways to grow X. I didn’t mention it that way, but 10 to 20 creative ways to get your message out fast. Your X counts, find it. I’m Ken Courtright, see you on the trail. Take care.
Important Links:
- episode 120 – Previous episode
- episodes 65 – Previous episode
- 66 – Previous episode
- 67 – Previous episode
- 68 – Previous episode
- 69 – Previous episode
- 70 – Previous episode
- 71 – Previous episode
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