Many PowerPoint users don’t like to use the prefabricated layout choices for slide headlines and text that come with the program. Rather than change their attributes (font, font size, style, position, borders, and so on), these users simply ignore them, adding a new text box every time they need a place to put their words.

I sympathize — I can’t stand most of the design defaults that come bundled with PP — yet I’ve seen too many decks turn into revision nightmares because the original authors went off the grid.

One of the most annoying consequences is that ghost boxes appear when trying to edit text. A ghost box is the empty frame of a text box that’s lost its content, yet lives on to hover over useful text or pictures. To make your edits, you have to first find and delete these empties sitting astride your target text. And since there’s no text in them to click on, they’re elusive to find. (Hint: use Control-A or Command-A [Macs] to select everything on the slide, and you’ll see the outlines of any ghost boxes.)

Another annoyance is the tediousness of changing attributes of headlines and text one slide at a time. If you get a deck that’s been prepared using Layouts, all you need to do is update the Layout specifications to change every slide with that layout in your deck.

So if you’re developing a new deck, be nice to those who will follow you. Avoid adding text boxes when you could use a Layout that’s already there for your headlines and text. Use the power of the computer to save work later on, not make more work. And if you delete text from a text box that isn’t part of the layout, make sure you delete the box, not just the text. I’ll be greatly appreciative… and so will everyone else who has to work with your deck.

How about, “physicians”? “Medical professionals”? Or even, “doctors”?

What’s wrong with “doc”?

To my ears, its lack of professional respect and specificity suggests laziness and imprecision rather than breezy, ‘just-folks-like-us’ informality. Maybe I’m a bit too PC, but the using the D-word seems off-handedly inappropriate when talking about significant decisions, whether about choices in medical care or accounts worth millions of dollars. Few of us would say to our clinicians, “Hey, Doc!”, just as few would say “Hey! Cop!” to a police officer.

There’s a place for relaxed informality… after the pitch is won. Until then, let’s stay professional.

Remember how you felt the last time someone yes-butted you? Didn’t really feel like a “yes” in any meaningful way, did it? Rather, it probably felt like your concerns or interests were being pushed aside so that someone else’s could get more airtime. And chances are, rather than helping put you in the mood to see things through a different point of view, you instead felt like doing some yes-butting back yourself.

All too often, I hear yes-butting during the run-up to new business pitches. Someone comes up with a positioning idea, for example, and someone else yes-buts it with his or her own positioning idea. Ideator #1 yes-buts back why Idea #1 is better/bigger/faster/stronger than Idea #2…. you get the idea. Ditto the creative review. Indeed, this kind of debate is considered the norm at many agencies.

Consider, instead, what happens when instead of “yes, but”, we genuinely think and say, “Yes! And…” as we introduce new and differing ideas into a discussion. With this phrase, we acknowledge and respect the legitimacy of the other person’s perspective, while we advocate for our own interests—and search together for solutions that address both. Instead of “either-or”, it’s “both-and”. If one executive thinks young mothers are the prime target audience, what if we said, “Yes! The young moms are very important. And older single women are important, too. What ways can we come up with that address both without weakening the focus of our campaign?”

Do you feel the difference between that and, “Yes, but older single women are important, too.”? The enthusiasm of the Yes! shows we’re committed to helping others address their important interests. The “And…” shows we’re committed to our own interests, too. It sets a much more positive and collaborative tone.

Of course not all situations lend themselves to collaborative, ‘win-win’ solutions, and sometimes we need to just say, “No.” I, for one, find a simple “No” far more conducive to an honest conversation than a “Yes, but.”

It’s surprising, however, how often taking a “Yes! And…” attitude can lead to a positive conclusion. Say you’re negotiating prices, and two opinions differ on the value of a service you offer. You could offer to take it or leave it….and you could, instead, suggest probing a bit deeper to understand your client’s needs better. Perhaps it’s not the dollar figure, but the payment terms. Or perhaps your vision of the service being provided is more complex than what they think they need—and, by simplifying your offer, you can make the profit you want and still meet their budget constraints. Taking a “Yes!, And…” approach often brings to the surface an even better deal than either party imagined before.

So next time you’re about to say, “yes, but”, pause a minute to replace it with a more facilitative alternative. You’re likely to find the results rewarding.

Once your prepared remarks are over, it’s your client’s turn. How your team answers tough questions and challenges – and how it behaves when answering – can make or quash the sale. Prospective clients often put more stock in things they hear during this part of the meeting than in any other. That’s because they’re controlling the agenda and flow. So it’s very useful to rehearse the post-pitch Q&A several times.

I first realized the importance of the Q&A when I was at Grey in 2001, during a Pfizer pitch coached by Mark Schnurman. Mark is the primary pitch consultant at Filament, Inc., and he has over a dozen years of experience working with agencies on pitches. Mark says, “It is virtually impossible to win a pitch with the Q&A session, but it is fairly easy to lose the pitch.” (For Mark’s current perspective on the post-pitch Q&A, check out this post http://pitchtherapy.blogspot.com/2010/03/simple-rules-for-q-and-mastery.html from his blog.) Mark’s sage advice about Q&A strategy helped the agency win that pitch, and several others that followed. I’ve put some of the advice he gave the team and me into my own words below, along with some insights of my own:

1. Questions are ‘gifts’. Tough as they may be, client questions help you. They telegraph to you what your client’s most salient interests are—what is most at issue and what is top-of-mind. They narrow down the scope, and focus you on what’s most likely to result in a sale.

2. You’re there to help. When clients ask questions heatedly, it’s a sign they’re passionate (or frustrated) about the underlying issue. Don’t take the heat as an attack on you; rather, take it as an invitation to be helpful. By keeping a confident, helpful attitude, you’ll avoid sounding defensive.

3. Prepare for the toughest questions your client might ask. Spend a moment to write them down, and then ask one another in a group setting as you rehearse.

4. Agree on a leader beforehand. A “master of ceremonies” – usually the last person standing when the pitch is over – helps direct client questions to the teammate who is best prepared to answer.

5. Make sure you understand the question. It’s doubly dangerous to guess, because doing so could not only leave the client’s issue unresolved, but also introduce new concerns he or she hadn’t thought of. If the client’s question is vague or puzzling, politely request a clarification: “I’m not sure I understand the question – could you please ask it again another way?”

6. Look for the underlying issue. Why is the question being asked? Address key interests to win sales.

7. Keep answers short. A long-winded answer can turn a minor curiosity into a major headache, by putting new issues into play. Stay on track.

8. Get feedback on your answer. Ask, “How well did that answer your question?” Find out whether they need more. If not, move on to the next question.

9. Don’t add on to another’s answer without an invitation. Respect your teammates. Even if their answers aren’t perfect – even if they’re outright wrong (to you) – it may not matter to the clients (who may not know). And “correcting” your colleague undermines his or her authority. That makes the whole team look bad.

10. If you’re not sure you can answer, invite rescuers. Clearly state your colleague’s name (in case he or she is not paying attention), then restate the question: “Jack, I think you may know better than me who the ranking Congressman in this district is…” That shows good team-work and collegiality.

If you’d like to print out a copy of this as a handout to share with your pitch teams, click here: http://www.neocortexconsult.com/Newsletters/Handling_Tough_Questions.pdf

Here’s surprising, even shocking news from neuroscience that may sadden many a new business presenter: Unless your pitch evokes strong emotion among your audience, it’s likely to be almost instantly forgotten.

“Emotionally competent stimulus”, or ECS, is just one of the gems I found while reading John Medina’s Brain Rules (Pear Press, 2008), a molecular biologist’s revolutionary manifesto about how neuroscience can help us become better at helping people learn. While the book is targeted to teachers, there are plenty of great insights and advice in it for presenters who want to be more persuasive. Writes Medina with typical enthusiasm, “Emotionally arousing events tend to be better remembered than neutral events….An emotionally charged event (usually called an ECS, short for emotionally competent stimulus) is the best-processed kind of external stimulus ever measured….

Regardless of who you are, the brain pays a great deal of attention to these questions: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I mate with it? Will it mate with me? Have I seen it before? Any of our ancestors who didn’t’ remember threatening experiences thoroughly or acquire food adequately would not live long enough to pass on his genes.”

It shouldn’t take neuroscience, of course, to realize millennia of evolution hard-wired humans to pay more attention to things that frighten, thrill, sadden, surprise, or elate them than to emotionless data. The bush behind which the tiger lurks… the berries that made us ill…the smile that led to progeny… these kinds of memories favored our forbears in the Darwinian struggle to survive. But brainiacs do tell us that robust and manifold pathways from the amygdala (the brain’s Grand Central Terminal of emotion) to the hippocampus (the Reference Room) ease the retention of emotionally charged data. To make a memory stick, they advise, you’ve got to stimulate it with a powerful ECS.

Great advertising campaigns do this all the time. Medina cites Apple’s famous “1984” commercial that introduced the Macintosh as an example. Remarkably, however, the same agencies who use emotion to pitch client products often overlook the opportunity to use it to pitch themselves… and subject their prospects to dullness and tedium. What kinds of emotional stimuli belong in pitches?

Emotionally significant visuals. Photographs that evoke strong emotion work far, far more powerfully to aid your memorability than diagrams, illustrations, or (God forbid) the heinous ‘clip art’ that comes bundled with PowerPoint. So does a direct link between a fact and a visual representation of its significance. What’s the emotional impact of a piece of data? Show it in a snapshot that accompanies your words. Real tears, real joy, humanity, daring, danger, comfort—by showing these, you both engage your audience in the moment and help the memory stick. Visual analogies work, too, so long as they’re evocative and not exercises in intellectualism.

Forceful words. Since the ages of Demosthenes and Cicero, the most effective speakers have labored long to find just the right words with which to strike a spark in their audiences. President Kennedy said at his inauguration, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”; his words are remembered half a century later. It’s rare that an agency’s words are remembered fifteen minutes after its people have left the room. If you think you can do this by “winging it” without preparing your key phrases and rehearsing them, you’re either mistaken or one of the greatest natural speakers ever born. Practice, and practice again. Pay particular attention, also, to words that outrage, sadden, thrill, or otherwise break out of the conventions of “business-speak”. Banish jargon such as “leverage” or “out-of-the-box” in favor of phrases that linger long after you’ve left. As Mark Twain famously wrote, the “difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Narratives are strong ways to evoke emotions. By recounting a person’s actions along with the feelings they experienced, presenters evoke mirroring emotions in audiences, and keep them engaged.

Audience participation. Sometimes the strongest emotions can be evoked by questioning. Ask your audience to remember a situation—relevant to your theme or key idea—in which their emotions were powerfully aroused. For example, you might ask them to think of friends who have struggled with cancer… then say, “let’s take a moment right now to honor their memories”… before proceeding to talk about the market and political challenges a new cancer medication will face.

What’s more, says Medina, is that we need to continually refresh the emotional stimulus, about once every ten minutes, with something that “triggers an orienting response toward the speaker” and engages the so-called executive functions of the brain. “Fear, laughter, happiness, nostalgia, incredulity—the entire emotional palette” is fair game, and they all work well, he writes. And relevance is key: if all you’re doing is entertaining your audience, all you’ll get is an audience that remembers your stories, not the points you were trying to make.

I have a modest proposal I’d like to make, in the interest of making your pitches more successful (and your celebrations more festive). As both a successful former creative director and an effective New Business director, I trust I have the credentials and experience to support the merits of this.

Here’s the idea:

Ban the paired words “don’t like” from being used in creative critiques during pitch preparations.

As in, “I don’t like that concept as much as the other one.”

Better yet, levy a stiff fine—say, $10 a hit—each time someone uses them. Put the money in a kitty for the pitch-win party Champagne.

Few words have as much power to derail a pitch process as these two. Few words contribute so little and cause so much harm. And few words are used as often.

It’s not about what you like—it’s about what it does or doesn’t do. When we say, “I don’t like it”, we’re asking the team that created it to yield to our (undisclosed) personal preferences and tastes rather than to reason. It’s a power trip. And it builds resentment, creating divisions within the team. If all we can say about the ad is that we dislike it (or parts of it), we’re leaving our teammates guessing about what issues or concerns the concept is raising, or failing to address. We’re not helping to find a better solution.

Far better is to talk about what we think the ad does and doesn’t do for the brand and its brand strategy. Now that’s making a contribution. For example, to say, “I’m worried that the visual may confuse some viewers,” is to make some progress. What elements do you find potentially confusing? What possible misinterpretations do you see? Clarifying these will create opportunities for the team to address these issues and make the concept stronger—or, potentially, agree to drop the idea altogether.

Address interests, needs, and concerns. Disclosing what you want the concept to do—along with why that makes strategic sense—helps the team to potentially dream up ways to both address your desires and retain key elements they believe make the idea stronger. Simply saying, “I don’t like it,” leaves everyone guessing about what it is you want.

Tell the team what’s working. Parts of a concept may disturb you, so naturally you’re going to want to talk about them. It’s a mistake, however, to let the undesirable parts dominate the dialogue about the concept. When you’re asked to comment, describe what works well and why you think so. That helps everyone feel a sense of progress and accomplishment. Then talk about what’s still lacking.

Close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and new business pitches. To win business, your pitch creative doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be clearly better than your competitor’s. To your clients, “better” usually means clearer, simpler, more strategic, more direct, and more newsworthy. Many a pitch has been compromised by drawn-out battles over nuances of concepts that will in all likelihood never see the light of day—and that are far too subtle to set your firm apart. Timelines have been squandered tweaking shades of teal, or arguing over whether “a” or “the” should be the article in the headline. Enough! Make a winning pitch, not a masterpiece.

Heresy? Only to the creative Caesars out there. To everyone else, this suggestion can result in a team that wins more often and feels better about doing so… and has a nice stash of cash for its frequent celebrations.

‘Twas the night before pitching and all through the firms,
Not a worker was idle, not even interns,
The slides were enduring their nineteenth revision,
The art boards reflected abject indecision,
The laptop computers were in IT hell,
While Xerox machines chose this night to rebel,
And during the time that the team should rehearse,
Instead they were putting the pitch in reverse.

Yesterday’s strategy, all had agreed,
Now needed revision, but no one paid heed
To the fact that creative now matched nothing else
And its heartfelt persuasion was lacking a pulse
Account types were screaming at copy and art,
Who yelled at production, who’d known from the start
That all of their plans and their deadlines were phony
And dinner tonight would be stale macaroni
Or pizza delivered from old Sal Monella’s
To all of the gals and the hard-working fellas

The candles were burning to stubs at each end
While the pitching team labored to quickly amend
Their insights to match the most recent respondent
Though the story he told left the planners despondent

And what of the expert flown in from afar?
He’s stuck fighting jet lag in a Lincoln Town Car
The wunderkind media strategy guy
Just lost all his numbers for the agency’s buy
The President’s opening speech says a lot
It will only take all the three hours we’ve got

Which version of slides has the changes we made?
I’m sure it’s the one the designer mislaid.
Who remembered to look at the client’s instructions?
Did we pack business cards? Who will make introductions?
At the dawn’s early light, will we ever be finished?
Can we find our way there, and arrive undiminished?

But somehow it always will all come together
In spite of the chaos, the fights, and the weather
The show will go on, and when it’s all the way through
Merry Pitching to All, may Success Come to You.

The agency team was smiling as it left the client’s wood-paneled conference room and headed to the parking lot. Once safely out of earshot, the team leader burst out with a “Yes!” and a fist-pump. “We nailed it!” said another, patting his team-mate on the back. “We were awesome!” shouted a third.

Meanwhile, back in the room, one client turned to another with a sour look. “What a bunch of arrogant &^%*$#s!”, said the client. Her colleague nodded. The pitch had been competent, the work intriguing… but there was no way that team would ever be invited back.

Whether your team comes across as confident or arrogant can make all the difference in winning a pitch. Sadly, it’s difficult for many teams to walk the fine line between the two. Afraid of coming across too weakly, they come across too strong, alienating the very clients they most want to woo.

There are many, many ways in which pitching new business is like dating, and one of them is the role that confidence plays in attraction. Clients, like would-be lovers, typically look more favorably on potential partners who exude confidence in their speech and manner. Confidence is infectious, even sexy. And particularly when there’s a lot at stake—a lifetime together and children for a couple, a major product launch for a client—the candidate’s self-assurance can make these risky decisions seem less fraught. Nobody wants wishy-washy from a lover or from an agency.

At the same time, however, nobody likes arrogance. It can instantly zero out any balance of likeability and authenticity that your team has accumulated. It evokes skepticism, even towards well-established facts. Arrogance engenders the opposite of confidence in an audience, creating doubt and uncertainty as well as annoyance.

So what does it take to present with confidence while avoiding arrogance?

1) Respect for the audience’s expertise. It may seem that we need to emphasize our own training in design and art, or experience copywriting, or years of working in the product category. In my observation, however, clients are likely to hear these well-intentioned credentials as self-serving braggadocio. It’s fine to say that the principles that were instilled in us in art school suggest a certain balance of sizes or colors, for example; it gets up people’s noses, however, when it sounds like we’re name-dropping rather than doing our best to help them get a great result.

2) Awareness of the limits of history. Say, for example, that we launched the product’s predecessor. That doesn’t make our word law, or create facts out of our opinions. Indeed, our experience with Product A’s launch probably has instructive value with Product B’s upcoming debut, no more: that was then, this is now. Sure, clients want relevant experience more than just about anything else. Still, over-valuing our own experience is a well-trodden path to arrogance. We can pretty much count on the fact that our prospective clients know (or believe) things we don’t. Especially if we’ve had three weeks to prep for the pitch and he or she has been working in the area for three years.

2) Sharing credit. When discussing case studies, agencies I’ve seen over the years sometimes have a tendency to attribute every client success to the agency’s efforts, and every failure (if acknowledged at all) to the client’s incompetence and poor judgment. Clients I’ve talked to uniformly see this as arrogance. When we, instead, tip our hats to prior clients that helped us look good and do great work, prospects sense we want to work with them as a team, not as a stepping-stone.

3) Providing evidence. If we can replace general statements such as “We know that consumers prefer feature A over feature B…” with statements anchored in fact (eg, “In the past three surveys, consumers consistently preferred feature A over feature B..,”), we’re likely to come across less as know-it-alls and more as hard-working allies. The fact that we know something doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as the evidence on which the deduction is based. Phrases such as, “Based on the materials we reviewed…” or “Our research so far has uncovered…” show not a lack of confidence, but a wise respect for the limits of our knowledge to date. If we had all the answers, why would we be the ones pitching, after all?

4) Avoiding condescension—or the appearance of it. It’s obvious, isn’t it, that statements that statements starting with “It’s obvious…” have a somewhat condescending tone? Well, no, actually, it may not be so obvious, especially if someone has a different opinion. We do better in avoiding arrogance if we eschew any phrases that have an inherent put-down in them. As any fool can plainly see.

5) Resisting the urge to feed the client his own brains. I’ve been told by some client-side folks that one of the most irritating things they experience in pitches is when the agency, having finally understood the research findings that were provided in the briefing materials, presents them as if they’re new-found insights. Particularly if it happens with all five agencies invited to the pitch. Similarly, we need to ask our more experienced colleagues to validate the originality of any insights we think we’ve ‘discovered’. As journalist and author Sydney J. Harris wrote, “Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.”

6) Restraining snarkasm. “Snarkasm,” a portmanteau word that’s one of my favorites, is a combination of snarkiness and sarcasm. A little of it can be witty and shows the user to be an adept and articulate speaker — often valuable in an advertising team — but it goes a long, long way. The internal bantering that goes on inside agencies contributes to their creative richness and irreverent tone (that’s a good thing). Outside the agency, though, it can seem very aggressive.

7) Paying attention. Today’s technology offers near-limitless ways to unthinkingly snub our potential clients. Just as texting while driving helps cars encounter trees and other immovable objects, it (along with emails and Web browsing) can kill our pitches, too. If we send the text or take the phone call during the pitch, the only message the client’s likely to get is that whoever was on the other end must be more important than they are. Even if it’s true, it tends to make us seem arrogant.

I’m not a huge fan of ex-GE chairman Jack Welch, but he got it right in this quote from his 2001 book, Straight From The Gut:
“Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on one’s sleeve can have the same effect. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open—to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren’t afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas.”