Draft Collab Key Points Check

"I love illegal immigrants. Sue me. Sometimes I just go down to Dover and I see a ______ dinghy with 60 of them on and I go, ‘Come on, welcome! Women and children first. Oh, there are no women — just you lads, is it?’ "
Armageddon, Ricky Gervais (2023)

Buried late within the day's main bulletins, the BBC news output decided to offer context on a day those illegally arriving on England's southern shores hit a landmark of 50,000 in a record timeframe. One of their slides purported to seek reasons for the growing deluge.

I instantly wondered on the number of Brits that would accept those. Let alone name them as their top three "pull factors".

I sense that unless you are on the extremes at the radical ends of the horseshoe, the lavish free welfare state perks bestowed, practically zero threat of being denied entry and preferential treatment even if straying outside what ought be acceptable behaviour loom larger.

Though this post is not about any merits or perils of luxury beliefs or media partiality.

It is that slide.

We always have one. A key framing of the issue our prospect seeks to address.

The best sales processes I feel tend to have a 'pre-Proposal meeting' built-in.

At the very least, you'd never give a pitch backed with some form of graphics that has not been run through prior with your chief proponent.

They'll have their versions of those 'pull factors'. Headwinds, disrupting trends, market pressures^[1].

We must nail them. Bring them out. Ensure they stoke urgency.

The temptation may increasingly be to send through a doc with your draft thoughts.

That has never been advisable.

If face-to-face, swivel your laptop 'round. Or your daybook as you mock up a list or diagram. If over video, hold up your phone or tablet or scrap paper scribble with a draft outline. Try not to show a screen that could be screenshot. If on the phone, state your bullets.

In each case, we seek verification.

Have we covered everything? What's the ranking? Where's our proof?

What does all this mean?

If your 'top three' is awry, then such misfiring could leave you in a similar state to the BBC, losing engagement by legions.

^[1]footnote: I asked AI bots to list general areas of company challenges. Here's one such answer for inspo, in this case happens to be from Grok:

When companies face challenges, their difficulties can be framed in various ways to describe the external or internal forces impacting their performance. Beyond terms like "headwinds" or "pull factors," here are alternative ways to frame corporate troubles, with brief explanations:

Tailwinds (Lacking): While tailwinds typically describe favorable conditions, a lack of tailwinds can frame a company’s struggles as missing out on supportive market trends, economic boosts, or industry momentum that competitors might be leveraging.
Market Pressures: This highlights external forces like competitive pricing, shifting consumer preferences, or oversupply in the market squeezing the company’s margins or market share.
Structural Challenges: Points to internal or industry-wide issues, such as outdated business models, inefficient operations, or sector-specific limitations, framing troubles as systemic rather than temporary.
Macroeconomic Currents: Links struggles to broader economic conditions like inflation, interest rate hikes, or currency fluctuations, emphasizing external, uncontrollable forces.
Demand Shocks: Describes sudden drops in customer demand due to economic downturns, changing tastes, or disruptive innovations, framing the issue as a sharp, often unpredictable shift.
Supply Chain Disruptions: Highlights bottlenecks, shortages, or logistical issues impacting production or delivery, often casting the problem as external and tied to global trade dynamics.
Regulatory Headaches: Frames challenges as stemming from new laws, compliance costs, or government policies that restrict operations or increase expenses.
Competitive Squeeze: Suggests the company is being outmaneuvered by rivals through innovation, pricing, or market positioning, emphasizing the need for strategic adaptation.
Consumer Sentiment Shifts: Points to changes in public perception, trust, or brand loyalty, often due to PR crises, product failures, or cultural missteps.
Operational Drag: Focuses on internal inefficiencies, such as high costs, poor management decisions, or legacy systems, framing the issue as self-inflicted but fixable.
Disruptive Forces: Attributes struggles to technological advancements or new entrants reshaping the industry, positioning the company as needing to innovate or pivot.
Liquidity Crunch: Emphasizes cash flow problems or difficulty accessing capital, framing the issue as financial rather than operational or strategic.These framings can shift how stakeholders perceive the company’s situation, either softening the perception of failure or highlighting specific areas for intervention. Each term carries a nuanced implication, useful for executives, analysts, or media when communicating challenges. If you want examples of companies currently facing these or a deeper dive into any specific framing, let me know.