When It’s Showtime, Will You Be Ready?

“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” – Shakespeare, As You Like It.

Last week, I was coaching a salesperson who was getting ready to give a talk in front of 20 VPs of Marketing, his target audience. I asked the question, “What are you going to present to them?” His answer was, “I’m just going to give them a little thumbnail of our company.”

As he told me more about his presentation, I could see this was a recipe for failure. I was afraid that he was going to discount the company value by merely giving a “thumbnail” of it. His was in danger of diluting his company’s value.

And I was afraid it was going to sound like every other presentation that audience will hear over their lifetime.

What Is Your Showtime?

Recently I had a chance to attend The Story Warrior Workshop in San Diego presented by Bo Eason.

If you’re not familiar with Bo, he is a former NFL player and producer of a one-man stage play in New York called Runt of the Litter. His philosophy on speaking and presenting is really quite simple: when it’s showtime you had better be ready.

For my client, showtime was coming and he just wasn’t ready. He had not rehearsed. He had not broken apart the talk. He had not created any kind of emotional bonding mechanism for his customers. His PowerPoint slides were all way too wordy. He had not worked on the physical presentation of his talk. He was ill prepared.

What about you? What is “showtime” for you?

Is it when you meet somebody at a networking event and they say, “So, what you do?” Is it a speech that you give in front of 1,000 people who will be hanging on your every word? Or is it somewhere in between?

I find in sales, we have a lot of “showtimes”. And if you have any hope of being ready when the curtain goes up, you’d better figure out what those events are and rehearse them appropriately.