I had a chance to spend some time with the Army CIO this week. As you can imagine, one gets a little bit of internal management visibility regarding message, value prop, and key asks. Let me tell you a story about how I prepared.
We have an extraordinary marketing and education department, and as you might imagine of a large Fortune 500 Tech company, we have ample internal resources to draw upon. Presentations, white papers, podcasts, online training, key messaging, mandatory quarterly training of both technical and soft skill. One of those most effective tools is the "white board" value prop conveyance.
What this entails is the study of key messaging, and the ability to diagram a scenario, and then effectively communicate the story line to a propective customer in a variety of roles; managerial, technical, financial. Each individual is then evaluated by both managers and peers on their ability to effectively communicate said value prop.
While the many resources I described above are indeed valuable, the white board exercises are great, and they paid a huge dividend this week.
Just how many vendors do you think the Army CIO personally sees? And of those, how many go in directly with a Powerpoint product pitch created from Central Marketing? But nonetheless, we had a specific message we wanted to convey, a thorough understanding of the requirements, challenges, and problem sets, and an approach we thought was viable and distinct from the other, lessor players.
And being the good former Army Officer I once was, I painstakingly crafted my presentation. Short, concise, and to the point, this presentation had undergone a number of revisions and pre-briefs to my management team at both the O6 and General Officer level. I felt extremely confident that we could successfully deliver this presentation, and were standing tall in the office at the appointed time, shiny suits, spit shined low quarters, with crisp knots in our ties.
Of course, once we're in the office, there is a slight groan as I pass out the printed material.
"Powerpoint. Ugh. Could you do this on a whiteboard without supporting material", I'm asked?
But of course!
We sat around in very comfortable chairs and held a delightful discussion for almost an hour, with promises of follow-on appointments and deeper dives of the relevant material. We got everything we asked for and more. But most importantly, developed a much greater relationship and mutual understanding of the capabilities we could bring to the table. One not necessarily created from Central Marketing.
And that's the value of the "white-board" story telling.