Overcome Flipchart Phobia Like Future Football Coaches

Posting yesterday’s ‘sport & selling’ blog reminded me of hearing rugby union and all-round coaching guru Sir Clive Woodward.

Sir Clive mused that only the true winners can bound up to the flipchart and explain a skill to you.

It coincided with shared findings from a UEFA Pro Licence course. All future football managers must take one form or another.

Here’s one comment on the course from managerial hopeful, Ryan Giggs;

“It’s totally different from being a player.

This is about coaching and leadership skills, putting presentations together, speaking in front of a crowd; things that even if you had played at the top level you wouldn’t be used to, so it’s starting again.

The thing that I found is that it is getting you out of that comfort zone.

There is not a lot of people who like getting up with the flip chart – you are forced to do a lot of that here.

Some people are good at it, some people aren’t, but one thing is for sure, by the end of the course you’ll have improved a lot.

And once you’re out of that comfort zone, you turn around and think: ‘Actually, it’s not that bad.'”

…and it never is, right?

I always try and deliver workshops where each person must pitch with a flipchart. My instructions are specific. I have quite a thing for ‘sales scribbles’. Those that win, do so all the time, whilst those that don’t, well, you can guess…

Anyway, at one point a while back in a warmer clime, a talented Aussie chap confided in me that he had never got up and scribbled on such a facility in a sales meeting. Ever. And he’d enjoyed a lengthy selling stint at that juncture.

I fell off my chair.

I was delighted to help show the willing fella the light.

You don’t need a flipchart handy. Nor even the typical whiteboard. A piece of spare paper will do. But you absolutely do need to be able to articulate your solution sell ideas in drawn form.

The whys and wherefores are another matter. For now, how do your sales scribbles emerge and what impact are they making? If a wannabe football manager can learn the ropes, then I’m sure we all can too.