Three Lessons from My Student Presentations
Hello, I’m Andy Temte and welcome to the Saturday Morning Muse! Start to your weekend with me by exploring topics that span leadership, business management, education, and other musings designed to support your journey of personal and professional continuous improvement.
I’m having loads of fun teaching this semester at my alma mater, The University of Wisconsin—La Crosse. It’s a senior-level “special topics in management” class that’s centered around the concepts in my second book, The Balanced Business.
The majority of graded assignments are presentations that are tightly time-bound between 90—105 seconds and are designed to build the skill of the “elevator pitch.” The goal is to enhance the student’s confidence and strengthen their courage to speak effectively in front of colleagues, customers, leadership, and other stakeholders.
There are many “top skills for the future,” but communication, influence, and professional presence routinely populate top ten lists that are prevalent in academic circles and the business press. I view it as my duty to prepare my students for the real world of work. If they enter the job market without being objectively terrified to use their voice, render an opinion, and act as a positive force for change and growth, I will have done my job. This is today’s first lesson. Throughout my career, I’ve seen many promising business professionals crash and burn after hitting the reputation-damaging wall of insecurity and fear that can accompany public speaking. If there’s one phobia that doesn’t get the attention it deserves and has limited the career trajectory of millions, it’s glossophobia!
The latest class assignment was a brief presentation that asked each student to share their reflections on a product or service that they deem indispensable. Put differently, I asked them to discuss a product they consider themselves to be superfans of. It was fascinating to listen to 34 Gen Zers describe the products they have grown attached to. The biggest ah-ha for me was the diversity of products and services that they chose. Yes, there were four Starbucks fans, three Apple fans, and two that extoled Diet Coke, but the remainder of the presentations ranged from the choice of toothpaste to skincare products. There was even a plug for the pride of La Crosse—the regional convenience store chain, Kwik Trip. The other ah-ha was that many students struggled to determine products they were superfans of. It’s a small sample size, but I found my student’s willingness to brand-switch based on price and quality to be interesting. I was expecting a much higher level of brand loyalty in this segment of the population.
In chapters 8 and 9 of the The Balanced Business, I go deep into the importance of product differentiation and creating an aura—a feeling of product indispensability with consumers. I contend that while differentiation is important, truly outstanding brands and products rise to the level of becoming functionally indispensable to their customers and work to create an army of superfans. Superfans are your business’s unpaid cheerleaders and advocates. They spread positive word-of-mouth everywhere they go and are the kernel—the core—of your company’s word-of-mouth marketing engine. Commercials, flyers, and digital marketing campaigns pale in comparison to the power of direct, consumer-to-consumer marketing.
Today’s second lesson is that whether we like it or not, we’re all marketing and sales professionals. The sooner workforce participants recognize this in their careers the better. I resisted this notion for far too long in my own career and convinced myself that sales and marketing was someone else’s job—that I didn’t need to hone these skills within myself.
Why do we all need sales and marketing skills? We will spend our careers pitching ourselves for new jobs and promotions, pitching the projects and products that we’re developing to colleagues and customers, pitching our personal performance and the performance of our teams to leadership, and explaining what went wrong during a failure event and how we’ll learn and grow from it. Therefore, we must all develop a minimum-viable toolkit of sales skills. The ability to be clear, concise, professional, and deliver value to internal and external stakeholders is essential to career success.
The third lesson today is that engaged employees are advocates for and allies of the company’s purpose, vision, culture, products, and services. As a leader, you want your team members to spread the word about how awesome it is to work for the company, how their purpose aligns with that of the business, and how the company’s products are not only superior to the competition, but how and why they should be viewed as being indispensable to consumers. The same word-of-mouth engine that your superfans drive in consumer markets also works in employment markets. Your current employees are the best marketers of your company’s employment value proposition to prospective team members. Equipping your people with the information they need to tell the corporate story is half the battle. The other half is to equip your people with the skills to tell the story effectively—to be clear, engaging, and influential.
So to recap, the three lessons for today are:
Work to continuously improve your communication, influence, and public speaking skills.
At some level, we are all sales and marketing professionals—irrespective of career track. The sooner you realize this, the better.
Equip your people with the elevator pitches that efficiently describe the company, why people should want to work there, and why customers should become superfans. Simultaneously, invest in education and training to enhance their ability to tell the story.
Have a fantastic weekend. Relax and recharge, so you can take next week by storm.
