Entrepreneurial Success Requires a Debrief

How plenty of 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  certainly picked out 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 important. What happens next? "It has been two days since they met, Mr. Buyer. What do you think?" Irrespective of the words selected, you  certainly made at least follow up call.

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

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. recording the speech is not . It is important to actually watch and listen to the recording.

What happened? List the lovely points and the "lets do that differently next time" points.

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

How plenty of college students have crammed all night for a check and  fell asleep in the work of the check? Common practice but not a lovely suggestion.

Why did that part work or why didn't another part work? Break the whole presentation down in to tiny parts and review each. 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  as well as I would have liked. I don't know in case 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 eleventh hour changes. You were not rested and refreshed." "Elaine, you spent the time jogging off new handouts in lieu of eating breakfast. Your energy was low." "Elaine, you drank black coffee in an try to boost energy all night and early in the morning than drinking water to stay hydrated." "Elaine, you self sabotaged your own performance." Although staying up all night working, jogging off copies and coffee appeared like lovely ideas at the time, in retrospect, they were self defeating.

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 whole presentation, you have no idea 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.