Episode #148: Differentiate Or Continue To Suffer

Education can be a barrier to intelligence sometimes. This is often the case with people educated in very hard skill disciplines. They are asked to absorb vast amounts of complex information and to follow strict procedural structures. The rote learning aspect becomes paramount. This is fine and will get you graduated out of varsity and into the real world. With so much invested in technical knowledge, initially, other skill sets are not fully appreciated enough.

Soft skills, such as communication, are not highly valued. The thinking is that this is rather fluffy stuff. Serious people are knowledgeable about deep technical subjects and how they transmit that knowledge isn’t all that important. “Engineers understand engineers, so you don’t need good presenting skills”, is the type of logic you will hear from these failed communicators. The quality of the data or the advice is considered to the key thing, not the delivery. Anyway the delivery bit to them smacks of conmen, carnival barkers and dodgy sales types who talked you into buying that timeshare you never use, while you were relaxing on holiday.

I was reminded of this recently when talking with a very highly technically skilled executive. I have actually seen this person present and he has vast amounts of data at his ready command. He is steady, reliable and a bit dull. Normally being a bit dull mightn’t be a problem, except in his profession the competition for advice is fierce. He isn’t the only one running around with tons of great data. Gathering potential clients together and giving them a snapshot into how brainy you are is a great prospecting tool in his profession. You would think that intelligent people would be able to work out that the delivery of all that brainpower was a competitive edge. An edge that needs to be really finely honed, maintained and if possible extended.

In the course of our conversation, I was suggesting that he could do some presentation training and this would help him stand tall amongst the weeds. There was a need, but only a low recognition of the advantage that this would give him relative to others, who also run similar events and claim they have big brains too. This is a common blindspot for technical professionals. They conflate having the knowledge and big brains with being automatically awarded the business by clients.

Today, across all industries, buyers are much better educated and informed. They have access to global information, at a speed unimagined in decades part. “We will gather our big brains together and the clients will come” did work for the longest time but not anymore. Today, all professionals have to be highly knowledgeable and persuasive. The persuasive part requirement hasn’t been universally grasped by the technical expert punters as yet.

Our reluctant hero asked me what the presentation training would cost and then proceeded to tell me it was too expensive. This was shocking to me. His profession has no hesitation in charging vast sums to clients, because they see the cost through the prism of the value they provide. The actual amount of money was a peanut, in fact, yet he was reluctant to invest in himself to become a dominant player. I am sure if there had been a global conference on his key technical subject matter, he would have headed off without hesitation and spent a considerably larger sum to attend the event.

I was shocked, not because of the peanut money involved, but because of his inability to grab the chance to become well recognized as THE expert in his field. Participants continue to leave his current presentations lukewarm. There is no major differentiation between him and his equally technically capable rivals. Potential clients are not salivating at the prospect of working with him. They are not highly motivated to sign him up as their advisor. They are still guarded and unsure. He could switch that whole thing around easily by investing in himself to extend his abilities.

Are you like this too? Are you in denial about the reality, that in this better informed world, stocked with your competitors, you need all aspects of your skill set working for you? Brains, experience and the ability to communicate to potential clients are fundamental to the new order of business.

You have built it, but we won’t come because we are going to the other guy who invested in himself and became a fully rounded professional. That “expensive” peanut is costing my friend and others like him a lot of money, but they haven’t worked it out yet. Don’t be like them. Invest in yourself and learn how to work every audience into the passionate belief that they need you and your services and they need them right now.