Bhaskar Chopra of Siemens Digital Factory, on Sharper Presentations

We’ve all had to sit through long, dragging speeches and powerpoints. Bhaskar Chopra of Siemens shares key tips to sharpen your presentation skills.

Danny:

All right, let’s go ahead and just jump into this episode. Bhaskar, thanks so much for joining us. And before we get going, could you just introduce yourself to our audience. Who you are, who you’re with.

Bhaskar:

Sure.

Danny:

What you’re doing?

Bhaskar:

Sure, so my name is Bhaskar Chopra. I am the Industry Manager for Material Handling with Siemens Digital Factory.

Danny:

Excellent, so today’s topic, we’re going to be talking about presentations. And that’s kind of a big deal. So if you’re in business and you’re B2B sales presentations are kind of really, really important. But there’s been maybe some evolutions, there’s some changes. We’ve all been through those really great presentations and we’ve all been through those really, really boring. You’re questioning my life’s purpose presentations and things like that, right? So maybe in your experience, what are some of those do’s and don’ts that you’ve seen that you’ve worked through that have helped you?

Bhaskar:

We can talk about that.

Danny:

Yeah.

Bhaskar:

So presentations I guess are a very critical part of anybody’s job, whether you’re doing sales, doing business planning, doing financial statements. Anything you’re doing as part of your function for your job. You’re presenting this information to somebody.

Danny:

Right, yes.

Bhaskar:

More often than not I imagine you’d want to present it to people of either your client standpoint or your management. And in both cases, their time is very valuable, right?

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

You want to be very cognizant of how much time they have and stressing the importance of whatever you’re trying to say to them in the most efficient manner. You’ve given presentations, I imagine in the past. Who are the types of people that you’ve given presentations to?

Danny:

So I’ve given presentations to a couple, one or two people. No, different companies are so many different audiences like you mentioned, that internal, external audience. For a lot of times, most of it’s external for us. So you’re maybe presenting in front of one person, having that one-on-one, doing it via Webex or you’re having it in person or you’re presenting in front of a whole tribunal. You know, the whole board room full of people. And so, yes, each of those situations completely varied. It’s been interesting just the feedback you get from people. Some people like the slide deck. some people hate hate the slide deck.

Bhaskar:

Yes.

Danny:

Some people, I don’t know.

Bhaskar:

So we did a trade show back in March and there was a variety of different types of presentations that we were watching, we had to deliver and we had to get accommodated to. The one point that you make a very good statement on, if you’re talking about VFDs and automation and you come to a slide deck and you know it’s going to be an hour long presentation. The speaker’s up there, you know he’s the smartest guy in the room, but it’s the most technical, full of jargon presentation where it’s just words upon word upon words for 28 slides in a 15 minute session, and then he’s like, “I have a video and then I have 58 more slides.” We all know that that’s the worst, right?

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

Not necessarily because of the content, because all that content can always be put in an appendix.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

If I’m the audience and I really want to know that, perfect, I’ll get to know that eventually.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

But when you’re having a dialogue in front of 25 people it really should be a dialogue, right? It shouldn’t be you preaching to them.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

In my opinion it should be just a bit of an exchange. So what I like to do whenever I’m making my presentations, I think this is, for whatever reason, we’ve been trained as people in this industry, to put as much stuff up there on that presentation PowerPoint as we can partly because, for whatever reason, we’re not comfortable with note cards, or we’re not comfortable with the content or we haven’t memorized the content. And that’s probably step one, preparation, right?

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

You want to make sure that you know what you’re talking about and you know what you’re talking about more than the second and third person in that room, whatever question, you know what you’re talking about. The only way to get around that is with preparation, honestly.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

So I do a lot of presentations on the state of material handling as an industry.

Danny:

Yeah.

Bhaskar:

And while I’ve been working in material handling for less than five years, I feel like I’ve gained quite a bit of knowledge about that industry, and I can speak intelligently about the market trends, the general feedback about where this industry’s evolving to, some of the technologies in it. That didn’t happen over night by any means, but I do have a good sense of that industry. I don’t think I would feel comfortable making a presentation on the benefits of TET stands for the electric car industry. Not an expert at that.

Danny:

Right, yeah.

Bhaskar:

So I think step one, make sure you’re confident in what you’re presenting on.

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

Sounds underrated, or it sounds like common sense, but that’s why it’s common sense. You should know it.

Danny:

Right, actually another question on that. So you talk about preparation, right? What are some of those things that you would do to kind of prepare? And you mentioned industry standards and trends and things like that, but do you have a particular process on that?

Bhaskar:

Yes, first one, know your audience, all right?

Danny:

Yes, yes.

Bhaskar:

Because, I’ve done this before too. It’s not like I’m perfect at presentations. I’ve definitely given the wrong type of presentation for the wrong kind of audience. If I’m meeting with a C-suite executive and I’m talking about the nuts and bolts of my product they don’t care very quickly.

Danny:

No, yeah.

Bhaskar:

And I’ve made that mistake several times, but you learn about these things. So the first tip is know the audience that you’re presenting to. That’s sometimes tough in trade show environments because your audience could be a little but of everyone. But in seminars that we do inside trade shows, I try to really get a feeling for who these people are, what their titles are and what they’re interested in. I’ll even send a survey out ahead of time, if possible. It may sound like a little bit of overkill on that aspect, but you’re asking for an hour of these peoples’ valuable time. And that hour means a lot more than the cost of a VFD or the cost of a PLC does. That’s an hour of their personal time.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

And so if you throw something out there that says, “Hey, this is my normal thing that I want to talk about, but is there anything special that you would like us to get into?” That preparation and that audience participation, I think is really appreciated.

Danny:

And I think there’s a really key point in here that obviously, yes, one would say this is very much a very sales-driven activity, however, you still have the exact same framework that you would in marketing activities. The exact same process. And I think that’s where a lot of people get hung up on, in terms of knowing your audience, knowing that persona. You mentioned a really great thing. C-suite versus end user versus who are you talking to and who they are going to care about. C-suite, bottom line, if you’re talking about publicly traded companies, let’s talk about EPS. How is this going to impact these things over here? Not how are we going to do it, the nuts and bolts, like OK, we’re going to do this and then we’re going to do this, then we’re going to connect this over here. No, no, no, no. We want high level, like we implement this solution and this investment and return on this is going to do this, and here’s X and what have you, right?

Bhaskar:

I think to a certain extent it’s kind of like when we were in middle school, high school, we had a very general format about how to write essays. You say what you’re going to say, you talk about how you’re going to do it, and then you say what you were going to say again. And to a certain extent, that’s kind of how presentations should be too. You open, especially to a C-suite executive, you open with this is what I’m going to deliver you. And then depending on the level of how engaged they want to be, you can get into some of the nuts and bolts, but you always start with this is what I want to deliver you. This is what the purpose of my meeting here is, this is what we’re going to go deliver. And then you’ve grabbed their attention. If they have very specific questions about that then that gives them an opportunity to expand upon that. A lot of times in presentations in this industry we really like to work up to a final point. And that’s fun, because talking about how we’re going to build up to this point makes that crescendo happen at the end. But depending on your audience you may not have time for that. Or they might not have time for that, that’s the key. It’s not about your personal enjoyment of your topic, it’s about what they want, what the people want. And I’ve tried to adopt that as much as I can into all my presentations. That also leads into my second thing that I like to really have. And this also goes along with preparation, but before you put any words, any content, any pictures on a PowerPoint, you need to have some sort of a storyboard. So that goes with a marketing plan or animations or whatever you want to do. There’s got to be a plan in place and that’s very hard because to think about what you’re going to put on this PowerPoint before touching the PowerPoint, it’s not an intuitive process.

Danny:

Right, yeah.

Bhaskar:

But I swear this makes the actual creation of the PowerPoint 20 times easier, because now that you have a storyboard created about what you want to talk about and the steps that you want to talk about these things in, and how different PowerPoint slides might be able to build into these other steps, you get a strategy for your slide set. And then when you present it, you’re all the more prepared because you’ve got three layers of understanding for how you want to exhibit this content to people.

Danny:

Absolutely, it totally makes sense, I love that. Creating that storyboard out and it’s really it’s the purpose. OK, here’s we want to get X result so let’s work backwards. Not OK, let’s add this and that looks cool and done, right?

Bhaskar:

I’ve done a lot of presentations where I’ve tried to. So my background was in VFD sales. My previous job before this, and I had to go about exhibiting the benefits and features and all the value adds of a general purpose VFD, which to me is very exciting. To a lot of people, even in your audience, they may be like, I don’t know what a VFD is. Or they may be like, it’s just a VFD. At the end of the day though, there’s a lot of sales that need to happen with VFD so it can be a very profitable presentation to make.

Danny:

For those who don’t know.

Bhaskar:

Variable frequency drive.

Danny:

Such as myself.

Bhaskar:

I apologize, see, point taken, I didn’t know my audience right there. Variable frequency drive, it basically runs the motor in a certain speed, in a certain ramp up, ramp down time and these motors can be involved in pumps, fans, compressors, conveyors.

Danny:

OK, so like my pool pump that just went out, my capacitor just went pop on me?

Bhaskar:

There’s actually, yes, I mean, more often. If you lived in Florida there would be a rule that says you have to have a VFD on it. More and more states are starting to incorporate that.

Danny:

OK, all right, yes.

Bhaskar:

So I would have to give a presentation on these VFDs and I would try to make it so my presentation isn’t a very static, “Here’s what a VFD is,” presentation. That’s if we’re going in order this might be the third thing, to try to engage your audience.

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

I always like to ask questions. Once I have my preparation and my storyboard created and I know what I’m going to talk about I always try to build a little bit of time in there during my presentation, to engage an audience member. It can be as very simple as asking questions. So, how many of you guys know what a VFD is? One hand shows up, no hand shows up. No hands show up, you just pivot off of that. OK, if you don’t know what a VFD is, here’s an example of a VFD. This is the applications that VFDs are involved in. How many of you guys have these applications? And it’s very simple things like that, in my opinion, that at least get some of that hindrance of audiences wanting to actually listen to you. If you start asking questions, then in reality the people in the audience are going to be like, well, maybe I should pay attention to some of this and really be ready for whatever questions are going to happen.

Danny:

Exactly.

Bhaskar:

It’s not malicious, it’s meant to get audience interaction and get people to come back to you.

Danny:

It just reminds you of when you were in school, and you were like I don’t want to be asked, I better pay attention.

Bhaskar:

Exactly.

Danny:

What’s going on here?

Bhaskar:

Subconsciously that’s probably where it comes from, in reality, because I was always caught off guard. But it really does spur audience involvement and it makes people really care more about your topic.

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

And then often what I would try to do is always incorporate a hands-on demonstration in my presentations, too, But I would never want to do that by myself. My biggest thing that I talked about with VFDs for Siemens was the ease of use of them. You can talk as much as you want to about the ease of use but if you have an audience member come up during your presentation and showcase what you’re trying to present, successfully, that speaks a lot more volumes than what I could.

Danny:

Oh, yes, absolutely.

Bhaskar:

Right.

Danny:

Of course the sale guy, oh yes, this is super-easy to do, anybody can do this, it’s amazing and like yeah, right, no.

Bhaskar:

It doesn’t work with everything, but the more that you can incorporate audience involvement in my opinion, in whatever you’re doing, the more engaged, not just that person will be, but the rest of that group will be as well too.

Danny:

Yes, no, absolutely, one key thing, several key things you mentioned in there, but one that I latched onto was that you mentioned, obviously you want to engage your audience with, you mentioned doing with a question, right? It’s the very same tactic that you would do on social media.

Bhaskar:

Yes.

Danny:

You know, It’s really interesting. If you really want to drive engagement there it’s hey, let’s ask you for participation inside this conversation. And there’s a reason why they call that engagement. Right? Yes, so.

Bhaskar:

There’s a psychology involved in all presentations. I don’t want to make this sound like it’s a brilliant, new science, but I think there is.

Danny:

I think it’s brilliant.

Bhaskar:

You’re talking to people, right? And all people have certain emotions and certain characteristics that they want to convey to people whether they have the best way of conveying this or not, that’s for people to decide. But if you can tap into something that that person is very concerned about, but maybe too shy to talk about it in a crowded environment of 100 people, if you can make that interaction easier for him or her, that’s really the key of getting that audience member engaged in whatever you’re selling.

Danny:

OK, so let me ask you this question then. You build out that storyboard and you mentioned earlier on in the conversation, OK, sometimes you have just layers and layers of text. I’m saying not you, but people, and then there’s just all kinds of technical information. How do you, what’s best practice in terms of handling that? Or how have you handled that in the past, where you have a very highly technical product and you’ve got to slide deck, or maybe you don’t, I don’t know. Do you have a slide deck and if you do, well you mentioned you had the storyboard. So what do you put on that?

Bhaskar:

I personally like to limit it to a very Apple, Steve Jobs-like presentation format. I’m not sure if that’s the best practice by any means or if that’s the best way of doing it, but that makes me feel a little bit more comfortable whenever I’m in front of an audience. I read a study just before I came here, just to refresh my mind about that stat but I think I’ve forgotten the exact stat, but something like the first two lines of most presentation slides is what people read, if that. And then if you have more than two lines of slides then people are either 100% focused on reading everything that’s in that slide or have tuned out what you’re saying and kind of half-way participating in that slide content. You’ve lost 100% focus, one way or the other. You want people to listen to you rather than read off of a slide. Appendix slides are there for that.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

So if you do have a technical topic like how a VFD is meant to operate, I always like to have images up there. And images that have as little word content as possible. And I let myself do the speaking, because at the end of the day, they want to hear and understand what you’re selling, what you’re trying to convey or educate to them. That’s where that preparedness goes into play. That’s where having that knowledge of whatever you’re presenting goes into play. You can wind up being a much more effective liaison of that information than words on a slide ever will. Think about it like this too. When you have a multidisciplinary audience where you have people from all sorts of different cultures you’re presenting something in one fashion and one written statement. That written statement may not be the easiest way for people to be able to comprehend whatever is supposed to be written. Whether they come from different cultures or they just aren’t the best at reading comprehension on any kind of level. I mean that in a very succinct way. Reading comprehension is a very highly sought after skill, especially with technical jargon. You can read something all you want to, but if you don’t take it into account and comprehend it, that’s average, most people don’t. So you have to be that liaison in my opinion. Have good representative background images to convey what you’re talking about. I like to keep text to a minimum. There’s definitely different ways and methodologies of having some sort of picture and overlaying some sort of text onto it that’s representative instead of words about that picture. But you can’t have paragraphs on a slide statement, in my opinion.

Danny:

No, it’s not going to happen. And we’ve all been there and done that. I can’t tell you how many times you go on there and you should have font size minimums or whatever because people can’t read it. Like hang on, they’re up there, let me get my binoculars.

Bhaskar:

Never want to go back to say, hey, just scroll in right there.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

That’s tough. The other thing I would say too, this is even a bigger pet peeve to some people in PowerPoint and the people that I deal with tell me that this is best practice, too. Don’t embed pictures. If at all possible, try to recreate that picture on the slide. It conveys a sense of laziness almost, if you’re just taking a screenshot of a picture and putting it on the slide. It’s a subconscious viewing of laziness from your audience member. That’s how see it whenever in the audience too.

Danny:

Interesting, so you’re saying, all right, walk me through this.

Bhaskar:

So let’s say you’re trying to come up with the number of airports projects coming up in the next five years in the United States. The FAA may have a nice little screenshot that says here’s the United States, here’s all the different airport projects coming up. Some people may, and I have done this in the past too, no saint. You could take a screenshot of that map and put it on your slide, that’s it, done.

Danny:

Right.

Bhaskar:

Or you could take the extra 15 minutes, find a picture of the United States on a place that’s available and then create your own thing.

Danny:

Gotcha, OK.

Bhaskar:

It’s a subconscious thing, but I think the audience really appreciates the fact that, hey, this guy actually took time to actually make this. It also looks better nine times out of 10 because you don’t have to worry about pixel distortion and things like that. And it streams a little bit more professionally polished-looking presentation.

Danny:

Stream is a good word for that, yes, because it absolutely does. Because there is something, and you know it, whether you can pinpoint it or not, but I think the average person will look at that at say, well, this looks cohesive. The graphics and charts and whatever you might have on there.

Bhaskar:

It all matches a certain pattern, right?

Danny:

Exactly, versus you can easily tell when somebody cut and paste and threw something on there. There is something that’s subtle like mm, I don’t know, they didn’t spend a lot of time on this or they just you know.

Bhaskar:

The worst part is the graphs, right? Especially when you’re doing financial statements. I know there’s a lot of extensions out there within PowerPoint, to be able to embed Excel files and there’s tons of third-party extensions to be able to bring in things like that. Use those extensions. If your company has access to those extensions, use those things. Don’t just always screenshot an Excel graph and put it in there.

Danny:

Yes, that’s true. And I’d say this too. When you put your content on the slide, if you feel that you have to say, well, I know you can’t see this, but.

Bhaskar:

Exactly.

Danny:

That’s a couple red flags right there. No, you should probably scale that down.

Bhaskar:

Exactly.

Danny:

And make sure you could comprehend it, right?

Bhaskar:

Yes.

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

No, there’s a ton of individual small little best practices to get into like that and just being mindful that the audience is the one that cares about this, not you completing the PowerPoint, but the audience.

Danny:

I think a couple key things there too. And again, this all goes back to marketing. It’s messaging, your audience and you mentioned a key thing on there, education. You know, sales has definitely evolved, but it hasn’t completely, it’s not oh, we’re doing things radically different than we were. OK, maybe the way, the method of communication. Yes, that has radically changed. But sales, in caveman days, I’m sure, it’s education, providing value, developing your relationship. That has not changed.

Bhaskar:

Right.

Danny:

And that won’t.

Bhaskar:

Right.

Danny:

The technology on how it gets delivered, it will, but I think sometimes particularly in the manufacturing industrial space there has been this tendency. And correct me if I’m wrong, it is a perception that we’ve seen, it’s just that messaging and presentations we’re the biggest, we’re the best, we’re the greatest, that’s why you want to work with us. Have you, is that?

Bhaskar:

That happens a lot, right? And that’s got its place, it definitely does.

Danny:

Sure.

Bhaskar:

To the right person probably that does. That company that’s hearing all that though, probably doesn’t care if you’re not the best and most appropriate for them.

Danny:

Right, yes.

Bhaskar:

And that’s where all that homework comes in ahead of time. That’s where that preparedness comes in ahead of time to be able to say, I may be the biggest, best company out there in the world, but if I’m not the right company for you, why are we having this meeting?

Danny:

Sure, and I guess another variation on my question on that, how many of your presentations would you say would be more education-based versus very matter-of-fact?

Bhaskar:

Oh, they’re all education-based. I don’t know if that’s as a result of the type of job that I have, or just the way that I like to talk to people. My bigger background prior to Siemens, too, I used to be a tutor for a long time. My mom was a teacher. I just liked teaching people. I liked talking to people, as you can tell, I like talking to people.

Danny:

No .

Bhaskar:

But if people can gain something out of their time with me then I feel very happy on the inside. My dopamine levels just kick off when I’m teaching people stuff. And so as a result, I think all of my presentations always have some sort of set-up towards an educational type environment. I don’t want to speak about what Siemens is or what any of my company facets are. That’s nice, but that’s also researchable in 2018. You can find out what we do from a large perspective. Now how those things that we do impact you as a person and how you can benefit from those things, that’s education for the customer. That’s education for that individual right there. It’s hard to say 100% of my presentations are education but 90% of them are.

Danny:

Absolutely, and that’s the big feeling we’re seeing that shift in marketing as well. That’s the really big opportunity there is: people realizing, “Hey, you know what? Maybe these messages aren’t working before like they will. Maybe we need to educate.” The big thing is really providing value.

Bhaskar:

Right.

Danny:

That’s what you’re doing.

Bhaskar:

So we kind of strayed away from the way of doing presentations but this is a nice segue into that again. When you’ve given presentations in the past, what do you do when you first start your presentations? What do you start off with?

Danny:

That’s a great question. I do a couple different things. Sometimes I think the go-to is, hey, everybody, this is who we are, yada, yada, yada. We’re trying to move away from that a little bit more and just jumping right into it. And I think the big thing is focusing on your audience first versus. Because a lot of times we’ll come in and you hear, oh, we want a capabilities presentation. We want to know what you guys can do. And so there’s a big, big, big tendency to just jump right into it and it’s all about us and this is what we can do and we’re amazing versus coming in and saying, well let’s. To your point you were talking about industry trends. Well, let’s talk about here’s what’s going on in your industry. Here’s what you guys. These are some challenges I bet you guys are facing. And walking through all that. Does that answer your question.

Bhaskar:

That’s an interesting point because you said I bet you’re facing, right? You’re taking an assumption and not just you, just people.

Danny:

OK, all right.

Bhaskar:

Taking an assumption on what they always want to hear. You can sometimes get a very good idea for what that audience really cares about. More often than not though, a lot of people will come into a meeting, or you may have extra people coming to the meeting that have their own individual goals and challenges in mind. What I do like to do is before I start any type of presentation, especially for a smaller crowd, less than 10 people where I’m doing a lunch-and-learn or something. I’ll go around the room. I’ll take a legitimate five minutes and say, I’m Bhaskar, here’s what I do. Who are you? What do you do? Why do you care about Siemens? Why do you care about VFDs? Why do you care about material handling? Tell me your experience and what you care about and I’ll write those things down on a board too. Ideally there should be a whiteboard there, that would be fun. Or you can just write it anywhere, just to keep in mind what their goals out of this meeting are. The next statement is a very hot take, but this is why I think PowerPoint probably isn’t long for the world for the way that sales is evolving.

Danny:

Sure, sure.

Bhaskar:

I’ll explain that for a second. With PowerPoint, you have a very linear flow of content, right? You create the storyboard and it’s great for what you’re trying to do, but if four of the people in that room, when you’re asking these questions, have things they want to talk about that are outside the scope of what your storyboard is your medium is now shot. Now you have to come up with another presentation or try to salvage some stuff from elsewhere.

Danny:

On the spot and you’re like ah, yeah.

Bhaskar:

And that’s doable, and we do that all the time when we try to salvage these things, but PowerPoint as a medium really doesn’t allow for that non-linearity of conversations. I don’t know if there’s a solution out there that does but it makes you think about if our point is to answer every single one of these peoples’ questions and make sure that they all come out of this room with 100% acceptance that this hour of their life was well worth it, how do we do that in the most effective way? PowerPoint’s mostly what we have right now. I’d love to hear if the audience has other ideas.

Danny:

Yes.

Bhaskar:

But still, that first questionnaire portion, making sure that you ask everybody what their goals are, write them on a board so that they can clearly see that you’re doing it.

Danny:

I like that idea, yes, yes.

Bhaskar:

And I did this for a customer in Marietta a year ago. We were talking about pump drives and large 500 horsepower drives requiring ethernet IP communication. That’s just an industrial protocol that allows for data transfer between a programmable logic controller and the VFD. And they all had questions. They all had individual different questions. Some had questions about telegram set-up, some had questions about horsepower size, some had questions about IP ratings, and I made sure to write all those down in plain English so that they could see it too. So they knew I really did care about it. Everyone cares about it, but just to make sure that they understand that we are going to get to every single one of these things. I went through my presentation, answered probably half of them and then I said, the remaining people, you guys obviously still have these questions. Would you mind if I took 15 minutes and found a different presentation to kind of address these other topics? They didn’t care, they welcomed it, they wanted it. It bides you some extra time to do other stuff that as long as they know you’re going to answer questions that’s really all it comes down to. Just be there for them.

Danny:

I really like that, I mean it’s communicating, visually though, that I heard you and we’re going to get to this and I’m not just like ah. I’m not a one-trick pony over here. I’m like, here’s my thing. Which is funny, you mentioned the linear slide deck and this is it and we’re going to stick to the script. I have never run into that ever. Never done that, yeah. Yeah, probably the biggest offender right here. But, no, that absolutely makes sense. Absolutely just really tailoring that message to what you want to hear. I mean, at the end of the day isn’t that kind of like Sales 101 a little bit? But it’s like, hey, what do you guys need? What do you guys want? I mean we’ll get to crafting that solution to the best solution there, but let’s just start with what you guys want or what you guys think you want. And then kind of go from there.

Bhaskar:

Do you remember The O’Jays?

Danny:

The O’Jays.

Bhaskar:

Yes, the Motown band, The O’Jays?

Danny:

I do not, I’m sorry.

Bhaskar:

That’s OK, I don’t why I should, I’m not that old, but they had a song called Got To Give the People Want They Want. It’s a very fun tune, it’s a very catchy melody.

Danny:

Got to give the people what they want.

Bhaskar:

Got to give the people what they want. Got to give the people what they need. And that just, it rings in my mind every time I’m about to go up there and do a presentation. This is a personal thing that I like too. I like to get psyched up before I give a presentation. I like to get very.

Danny:

Like Matthew McConaughey, like I’m doing a bunch of push-ups.

Bhaskar:

I’m not very good at push-ups.

Danny:

OK, all right.

Bhaskar:

But I do like to listen to a good song just to get me in the right mind state. And that’s all, always subliminally puts me in the right mind state. I listen to the O’Jays.

Danny:

Driving to a meeting and you’re like, all right. And you’re just like I’m getting in my jam.

Bhaskar:

Yes, it’s weird but I guess the purpose of it is really because you’re trying to give the people what they want. You’ve got to give. They were talking about peace in the song.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Bhaskar:

We’re talking about selling drives. It’s two different things.

Danny:

Hey, you know, you’re selling something.

Bhaskar:

Whatever works for you, right?

Danny:

I love it, that’s like your walkout music, right?

Bhaskar:

Exactly .

Danny:

I’m doing this, this is cool, that’s awesome. Well, Bhaskar, this has been a really great episode. Again, we all give presentations and it’s nothing super-earth shattering, but we forget, right? We forget these things and I think the biggest thing, the biggest take away for me anyway is what you said, and I’m reflecting on how we could do a better job. As the very beginning, preparation, you mentioned. Preparation, it’s really spending that time to really something that’s meaningful, that is on-point, on-message for your target to give them what they want.

Bhaskar:

That’s right.

Danny:

Simple, but you know.

Bhaskar:

Just got to remember it.

Danny:

We need to do that. So now I’m going to steal that walk-out music. Awesome. So Bhaskar, thanks so much for your time.

Bhaskar:

Absolutely.

Danny:

If everybody would love to ask you more questions or reach out, what’s the best way of contacting you?

Bhaskar:

I don’t know, I’m not on social media really at all.

Danny:

OK, he’s non-contactable.

Bhaskar:

I have an email address, we could put it on the bottom of the screen if we want to.

Danny:

OK.

Bhaskar:

It’s my first name dot last name @siemens.com.

Danny:

First name dot last name @siemens.com.

Bhaskar:

Yes, I got away from social media recently.

Danny:

It’s all good. It’s OK, it’s all right, no shame. So anyways, all right, again, thanks so much,

Bhaskar:

Thank you.

Danny:

It was awesome. All right, so this was yet another really great episode talking about presentations. It’s something that I think everyone, we all take for granted. It’s one of those things that everybody does a presentation whether you’re in the marketing department, you’re in the sales department. Whether you’re talking to a customer or whether you’re talking to your upper management and presenting things internally. And so it’s really, really, really easy to forget the basics and just go to all right, here, slide deck, whatever, we’re going to crank this out and maybe even sometimes using it as a crutch. So some really great tips in here. For me, selfishly I’m taking away this preparation thing. I’m going to make sure I’m really going to hone in on this and figure out really who is that audience and really present that great information that they’re looking for. I’m going to give the people what they want, that’s it. Again, thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you liked it please make sure to share, comment. If you’re listening on iTunes, we’d love a review. If you have any questions for any future episodes or content please write in to us, industrialsage.com/questions. We’d love to answer them and thanks so much for watching this episode. We’ll see you next time.

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