Jeremy Doran:
Welcome back to NeuroConversant Leadership, where we talk about having conversations with a diverse audience, with people who are not just like you. I'm Jeremy Doran and I help great producers. Often engineers become great managers and hopefully great leaders. Ever wonder what it takes for a software developer to explain a solution to non-technical people in a way that makes sense to everyone. That doesn't sound easy, but it can be done. Today we have a very special guest, Greg Williams. He's got over 15 years of experience at Western Computer. He is the VP of strategy and a lot of what he does is translate between sales, engineering, operations, basically everything that this podcast is about. Greg, welcome.
Greg Williams:
Thank you. I'm happy to be here today.
Jeremy Doran:
I gave a very high-level view of what it is that you do, but if you can actually explain it for the audience, that'd be great.
Greg Williams:
Sure. Thanks, Jeremy. My role as vice president of strategy at Western has been to maintain a lot of our relationships with the different software applications that we sell and those companies, and also to provide a link between the sales teams and the operations teams at our company. I will often get involved in technical demonstrations and help translate those to the business decision makers and take away some of the jargon, take away some of the technical talk and just explain it in plainer terms. And then the flip side will also take something that a technical person, let's say a software developer, is trying to explain and explain that to our sales team in a way that then they can position it to the point where they're showing the business benefits and just not talking about technical jargon.
Jeremy Doran:
And is that something you've always been able to do, make that translation, or is that a learned skill?
Greg Williams:
It's a learned skill. I think the longer you are in business and the higher you climb and the corporate ladder and deal more with executives, you realize people speak a lot more plainly and in simple terms. So I've definitely learned that, but it takes many years of experience in technology to take a complex subject and explain it in a simple manner.
Jeremy Doran:
I'm interested in what phrase you like, hear people say, "Dumb it down," and most people don't like that phrase. I normally say, "Boil it down." Is there a phrase that you use for how you make something understandable to everyone?
Greg Williams:
Yeah. I don't like to say, "Dumb it down," although some people will ask that specifically. They will say, "Explain it to me like I'm five years old." But often what I will do is say, "Summarize it in a simple manner," is one of the phrases I like to use.
Jeremy Doran:
That's a good one. For people who you are helping do this translation for, are there things that you teach them so that you can obsolete yourself and they can communicate with everybody on their own?
Greg Williams:
Yes. That's been my focus. Instead of being the person in the room that has to do it is training the other folks on our team so they're able to do this. So I will sometimes listen to their calls and their demos that they've done and then review it with them and say, "Hey, here's how you could have explained this easy." One quick story I have is in our world we do ERP and business system software. The term WMS is broadly known as warehouse management systems in that world. But I was doing a demonstration eight or 10 years ago and I must have spent an hour talking about our WMS and what it can do, and the owner of the company finally stopped me and said, "Excuse me, but can you tell me what a WMS is?" So since then, I haven't used acronyms hardly ever, and that's something I try really hard not to do is never use an acronym.
Jeremy Doran:
If you are able to communicate without using them. Why do you think they are so prevalent?
Greg Williams:
I think some people are trying to just get a word out and speak quickly. And I think when you're talking peer-to-peer between developers, for example, it's easier for them to acronym something than write it all out and their time is money for them. So I understand that. But when you're talking to business decision makers, especially a broad cross-section, for example, we can be on the phone with a CFO, a CIO, and a COO, and they all care about different things. They have different acronyms in their day-to-day job. So if the CFO is talking about FP&A, I know that's financial planning and analysis, but the CIO might know that, and the COO probably doesn't. So I find that I'm often subtly repeating, but spelling it out. 'Cause I don't want to correct people, right?
Jeremy Doran:
Yep.
Greg Williams:
So I'll say, "Oh, I heard you just say that you wanted a financial planning and analysis application. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?" And that opens up the room for everybody without making someone feel dumb.
Jeremy Doran:
So you're the grease that makes everything run smoothly.
Greg Williams:
I try to be, yeah. Yeah, I try to be.
Jeremy Doran:
Going back to what you said about how you must have used the acronym. I don't remember how many times, let's say it was 15 and then someone finally asked the question. It's shocking to me how long it takes for people to ask questions when they don't understand something.
Greg Williams:
Yes. 'Cause People don't want to feel like they're uneducated or ignorant and the one in the room, they're afraid they're the only one in the room that doesn't understand it. And sometimes that may be true, but there's no problem with asking those questions. And a lot of times it's the executives that make confidence to ask those questions.
Jeremy Doran:
The episode that just dropped today while I'm interviewing you, which is going to be a few weeks ago, by the time people hear this, was all about that very topic of, "You have to be confident to ask questions. And when you're willing to ask questions, it shows your confidence, and it actually raises you up in other people's eyes because you're strong enough to ask that question."
Greg Williams:
Yeah. So I think there's probably still some in our world. I probably still use the acronym ERP, 'cause it's so well-known. But sometimes there's even people that don't know that term. So I'm always aware of the audience and if they're understanding everything and following.
Jeremy Doran:
You said that you are helping the people on your team so that you don't need to do it and they can communicate. What are some early skills or techniques that you can teach them to help that our audience could benefit from?
Greg Williams:
I think the first one is not to use too many acronyms. The second one is to stop and give them time to ask questions. A lot of technical presenters, especially ones that are more junior in their career, will nonstop talk and not come up for air. And then people forget their questions 'cause they don't get a chance to get a word in edgewise.
Jeremy Doran:
Why do you think that is? Why do you think they just go nonstop?
Greg Williams:
They're nervous. So when I started doing that in my career, I was nervous too. I had to get to the point where I would type out all my bullet points and speaking points and word and put big pauses, and I would put breathe pause on the paper, and then I would stop there and do that.
Jeremy Doran:
And how often do you just check in and ask the question, does this make sense to everyone?
Greg Williams:
Well, that's the point. So you pause and if you don't hear anything, then you check in and say, "Hey, are you all following me? Is there any questions about what we've covered so far?" Or that type of thing.
Jeremy Doran:
Got it. I like that.
Greg Williams:
And I think that's especially important nowadays when we're doing everything over Teams or Zoom. And a lot of people aren't on camera. And we get a lot of presentations where it's just completely quiet 'cause people are muted and you don't know if they're multitasking, you don't know if they're paying attention. So stopping and checking in is even more important now than it used to be.
Jeremy Doran:
It's so hard to give a presentation when you're getting exactly no feedback.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. Those are the hardest presentations there are, in my opinion.
Jeremy Doran:
Yeah. Sometimes I've heard people jokingly tell stories that they will set up stuffed animals behind the screen so that there's at least someone looking at them while they talk.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. So if I have a technical presenter that's newer to giving presentations and they're presenting to a customer, I will coach the salesperson beforehand to make sure you interact with them. I will say, "Don't you dare just leave them to the wolves and let them talk for 30 minutes." And then I'll tell the technical presenter, "Hey, you got to stop and give the salesperson time to talk here and there." So I'll coach them through that because it's much easier when you have that interaction going on.
Jeremy Doran:
So can you explain that again? Is that when there's a technical person and a salesperson both presenting to a prospective client?
Greg Williams:
Yes, exactly.
Jeremy Doran:
Got it.
Greg Williams:
So in a lot of cases, if salespeople are used to having a very experienced technical presenter, they'll just check out and let them do their thing, and then they will wrap up the call at the end of the call. But you have someone junior with less experience, then you have to check in with them throughout the call and give them that interaction. Otherwise, they're going to get way too nervous and they're not going to stop or they're going to go off track. Some people are naturals and do it right, but 80% of us need some practice before we get good at that. I'm definitely one of those. So coaching them beforehand that they need to interact during the call, both of them is important.
Jeremy Doran:
How often do those people already know each other?
Greg Williams:
In most cases, they will know each other, but there's a fair amount of cases where they haven't worked together before.
Jeremy Doran:
Doing a joint presentation or a joint sales call can be really hard. I've done it before, and even just the speed with which people react to things can cause problems if you don't really get on the same page. So that's not easy.
Greg Williams:
That's true. You're right. That's probably another good thing for in terms of communication that people early in their career can learn is not to react to things too quickly. I'm glad you brought that up. You don't have to have an answer right away. It's okay to say, "I have to think about that and get back to you." You don't want to say that for everything, but it's important not to react too quickly to information. And it's also important you don't have to solve the problem and solution it right there on the phone when they ask a question, it's okay to say, "Hey, we have several different ways to handle that. I'm sure we can address it. Let me get back to you on the best way to do it."
Jeremy Doran:
One issue that I had in my past is someone would say what they needed, and we had a solution for it, but I wouldn't talk about the solution. I would just keep asking more questions to find out more information because maybe there are 10 solutions we have. That would be a good one. And I was on a sales call with someone and as soon as they set a need, he would jump in with solution. I'm like, "You're not coming to any meetings with me anymore because you are totally derailing my process."
Greg Williams:
Yeah. I understand that. Yeah. That's interesting. But you also have to be careful with not giving customers too many solutions. So when we get into our implementations, we've gotten feedback from our customer base that they don't like it when a consultant tells them, "There's five different ways to do this process. You tell me which one you like more?" What they want to hear is, "There's five different ways. Here's the one I would recommend. Let's start with that one first."
Jeremy Doran:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. A great example is giving someone directions in a car. If you are going to be dropping someone off and you say, "Which way do I go?" And they say, "Oh, you can go either way left or right." That is incredibly frustrating. I'm like, "You tell me, and then I'll go from there."
Greg Williams:
Yeah. You tell me which one you like.
Jeremy Doran:
So yeah, it's saying, "We've got five solutions. Here's the one I think is the best." And then if there's something they don't like about it, you can start exploring the others.