Entrepreneurial Success Requires a Debrief

checklist2 Entrepreneurial Success Requires a Debrief

Debrief - Check Your List

How many hours did you spend preparing for that presentation?  Entrepreneurial success requires preparation, presentation and review.  If it was a major client, it was probably several hours.  You wrote, rehearsed, tweaked and worried.  You probably picked out just the right outfit to make a favorable impression.  The time arrived and you gave your presentation.  How did it go?

Preparation is absolutely important.  Delivery is also very important.  What happens next?  “It has been 2 days since we met, Mr. Buyer.  What do you think?”  Regardless of the words chosen, you probably made at least one follow up call.

What did you do about your presentation?  Did you review your own performance?  Reality indicates that less then 1% of the salesmen ever review their own presentation.  Entrepreneurial success is epitomized by the Toastmasters speaking and leadership tracks.  Toastmasters encourages every member to record a video and an audio of every speech.  Just recording the speech is not enough.  It is important to actually watch and listen to the recording.

How many salesmen, male and female, ever record their presentations?  Out of thousands of sales professionals, you could count the number on one foot with toes left over.  No wonder so many salesmen put their foot in their mouth during presentations.

A wise friend of mine, Ed Tate, recommends using debriefing questions after every presentation.  (Ed Tate was the 2000 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters.)

What happened?  List the good points and the “lets do that differently next time” points.

Why did that part work or why didn’t that part work?  Break the entire presentation down into small parts and review each one.  Don’t beat yourself up, but do be honest.  The growth is in the struggle to improve.  I recently had a speech which did not go nearly as well as I would have liked.  I don’t know if you ever talk to yourself, but I had a serious heart to heart with myself over that performance.  “Elaine, you stayed up all night working on the last minute changes.  You were not rested and refreshed.”  “Elaine, you spent the time running off new handouts instead of eating breakfast.  Your energy was low.”  “Elaine, you drank black coffee in an attempt to boost energy all night and early in the morning rather than drinking water to stay hydrated.”  “Elaine, you self sabotaged your own performance.”  Even though staying up all night working, running off copies and coffee seemed like good ideas at the time, in retrospect, they were self defeating.

How many college students have crammed all night for a test and almost fell asleep during the test?  Common practice but not a good idea.

What worked?  What parts did not work?  In any speech or presentation some parts work better than others.  Unless you take the time to dissect the entire presentation, you do not know what parts to keep in for the next presentation and which parts to tweak.  In order to maximize entrepreneurial success, a debrief of the presentation is essential.

What did you learn?  Debrief all parts of the presentation and make concentrated efforts to strengthen the most effective parts and revise the weaker segments.  Examine carefully what you learned.  The growth is in the struggle.

For more tips, techniques and solid business practices, join me at www.Elaine4Success.com.

Related posts:

  1. Entrepreneurial Thinking
  2. Entrepreneurial Mindset – Never Give Up
  3. Entrepreneurial Success
  4. Entrepreneurial Success Is In your Head
  5. Entrepreneurial Mindset – Gold Dust Attitude

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