Power of Motivation

The last 12 months are so, I have seen first with great interest. then with great appreciation and now with great awe, how a man who was given no chance what-so-ever has managed to move the entire nation. The thing that inspires me about Obama is his ability to feel the pain and address the need of the people listening to him. He is no wonder an extremely powerful speaker, because he moves people with his speech.

The power of the voice

He is a great example of selling ideas across. Several people are excited about hearing what he has to say.

Exciting people is very important in selling one’s ideas. If you want your ideas to be accepted, then go out and talk. Talk about how your ideas address the pain and how they solve the most important problems of your listeners. This is the fundamental secret of connecting with people no matter where you are giving the talk.

Presentation with the execs

Sorry for the huge break in writing!

I had recently been invited to present the software I had developed before all the VPs and directors. It was an awesome experience. There were around 5 VPs and over 10 directors and other managers attending the presentation. Everybody was excited about the possibilities this tool could bring to our company. There were a lot of questions, feedbacks and more importantly suggestions and ideas. I need to work on these. We have a big deadline coming in the next two weeks and after that I guess I will be again on the roll with the software development.

Remember, I wrote a manifesto on intrapreneurship a while ago. I am realizing that I have so many case studies for each point that everything is by itself is a detailed topic to discuss. I will start expanding the points I touched in the manifesto. Exciting times ahead, more hearts and minds to win, more things to innovate and more gratification!!

Being ready with TMP (Three minute punch)

My original time slot for demoing the prototype was 20 minutes. I was sure of nailing down the presentation and demo in that time. However, surprise surprise! I got 10 minutes at the end.

Elevator pitches are common in the entrepreneurship community. This is one thing every entrepreneur is advised to practice. The idea is to impress the listener in about 30 seconds.

While it is not required to be that strict here, I think every presentation (to decision makers) must start with an elevator pitch of 3 minutes. In this three minutes, you should awe them with your talk and then demonstrate your prototype or product idea or beta versions…This I call TMP (Three minute punch)

When you get to talk to the VPs or on their schedule, firstly it means that your work is big and sexy enough to warrant their time. Now this itself puts you in a dominant position. Your TMP can take advantage of this fact and start with the most bold opening statement you can make!

Consider the following statement:

“Thanks for your time. Today, I am going to show you how we have solved the _foo_bar_ problem everybody in our organization is talking about. Not only have we solved it, but we have reduced it to practice and created methodologies for everybody to adopt this in their projects”.

The above is one of the boldest statements you can make. The more everyone in your organization is scratching their heads over the _foo_bar_ problem, the more powerful the above statement is going to be for you. This will make your audience (in this case, upper management) open their ears, lean forward, stop checking email and pay attention to you.

Your TMP does not need to contain background of the problem. Everybody knows it and hence, you can skip it. If nobody knows about this problem, you are not even going to be there presenting before your VP. Instead, build it up…restate the biggest challenges and emphasize that you have solved them. This creates a curiosity or the “how factor”. Then give a demo. This nails down your point.

This is just one way..There might be several others. I would love to hear them from you.

Spread the word around…

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