Dogpiling Can Kill a Team Presentation

Imagine that your team has just delivered an important presentation to a potential client. Everyone involved thinks it went well. Well…almost everyone; the potential client had a different opinion. Later you find out from the potential client that your presentation was the best of those delivered. However, you lost the deal because of how you handled questions.

It’s been almost 20 years since I started working as an independent consultant/trainer/coach. My first client was a team that lost the previously mentioned multi-million dollar deal. The regrettable part is that the poor Q&A session was easily avoidable if they had only:

• Had one person serve as the “clearinghouse” for questions. This person would have taken the question from the audience and then gotten it to the appropriate team member. Unfortunately, this team stepped on each other’s toes trying to answer the questions simultaneously or they all looked expectantly at each other in silence waiting for someone else to answer.
• They had only one answer per question. The earlier mentioned team kept adding to previous answers, thereby eroding everyone’s credibility.

The next time you’re part of a team presentation, learn from my first client’s tough lesson and settle on a Q&A process. You never know, it might make you millions!