90secs Per Tale

From a real world Sales Kick-Off this very week.

It may not surprise you to learn that the running items for this event were only confirmed a working week ahead of time.

I can't say I approve of that level of foresight.

Even less so, given the nationwide downed tools over twixmas.

Still, there were a couple of themes for this salesteam. Chief among them; Erosion.

Which might be a view of how, in England for engineering tech at least, market protection could be an indicator of economic conditions.

I've neither current nor likely to any future connection with this outfit.

Yet I can express my surprise that this issue was couched very much from an internal perspective.

Maybe salespeople respond more to the 'problem'. But surely you can frame the challenge just as well as one that potential and existing clients would like to do better, and only we can uniquely best allow.

Erosion refers here to both protecting the proportion of client spend share, as well as stemming any reduction in sector market share.

If we've an element of our offering that no-one can match, solves a hot industry puzzle, and is well worth the price tag, then I feel that'd be a better label to get behind.

After all, you'd then be consistent with your language. Even more so when you consider the general business use of 'erosion' implies a steady long-term decline. You wouldn't want anyone to blurt out the word as your driver during a prospect conversation, would you?

After a recap of '23, '24 Goals followed.

Then we had the not entirely convincing run of a number of separate speakers detailing a particular client success each.

They had ninety seconds. With a single slide.

This is a tough rubric.

Even beforehand, I thought I'd put up a single item. If photo, then wordless. If chart, then minus data ink.

Pretty much everyone resorted to bullets, logos and me-me-me headlines.

A real opportunity wasted.

Sadly one I've seen aplenty at scores of these Wrap/SKO events down the years.

As a further prompt, it would've helped if each presenter had been guided to home in on which aspect(s) of the success could be built on by all in the year ahead.

And there's your takeaway.

Which would've been better than most. Who simply left the stage, point hanging.