What’s your hook?

When you land on someone’s website what are you looking for?

• Is it an impressive blue-sky statement?
• Is it ‘Welcome to our website’?
• Is it a series of slides with pictures?
• Is it a technical description?
• Is it any sentence starting with ‘We …’?
• Is it something that tells you that this website is going to solve your problem?

Now apply your answers to your own website.

On your home page an image is important as most of us engage quicker when there’s some visual images, rather than just text.  But the key to hooking in your website visitor is a powerful message that tells them they are in the right place.

This can be a challenge if you offer a range of services or products, but it’s not impossible.  So, for instance:

The answers to the questions you want to ask

Not

We have a comprehensive range of services

People are not interested in what you do – they are interested in what they get.

They don’t want to know what your future vision is, they want to know if you’ve got what they’re looking for.

Your website visitor is looking for information and they don’t want to work through a complicated process to get it.  Your job is to make the journey as streamlined as possible.

Remember that the visitor may not be the end user – it may be that an assistant or purchasing department has been tasked with resourcing what’s required.  That means that technical language may fall short of getting your message across.

The problem for most of us is that we are proud of what we do – rightly so – but that doesn’t help your website visitor decide if it’s worth spending time on your website.  The fact that you’ve been in business for 42 years or that you are a family business should be saved for the About page – not the first message people see on your home page.  

Images should underpin the core message – not be ‘eye candy’.  People who see your image should think ‘yes, I can see what that’s about’, not ‘what is that picture for?’

A good recipe for a home page is:

Brand banner – with contact info top right (so people don’t have to search)

Image that tells the visitor something about your business

A powerful headline – embedded over the image, so it’s ‘above the fold’ – that addresses either pain or gain for the visitor.

A short (2-3 short paragraphs) introduction, with more reader-focused information.

Clickable boxes to your key services or product sections with a clear call to action on each one.

Then any/all of these components:

• The opening to your About page with a link to the page
• Links to your latest blogs
• Links to any featured products/offers
• Testimonials (but if these scroll automatically, ensure that they stay in place long enough for people to read each one).

Make life easy for your visitor and you’ll keep them long enough to make that key decision to buy, ask for more information or pick up the phone and talk to you.

“Resistance is created through a lack of clarity”

Chip & Dan Heath

That’s entertainment!

Do you think that business presentations should be entertaining?

Or do you prefer to sit through a boring presentation?

Nobody wants to be bored and it benefits both sides if the presentation is entertaining, the presenter gets better responses and the audience remembers more.

These are my tips for more entertaining presentations:

1: Remember that the presenter is YOU, not the slide deck.  Use the slide deck to help you share information that needs visual aids to clarify, but when you’re talking about anything else turn your slides off.  The easiest way to do this is to hit the B key on your laptop (or good remotes have a blank option).  The B key turns the screen black (and the W key turns it white, but then you’re backlit and look like a shadow puppet!).

Also remember that people don’t want to see your back.  In some situations it’s tempting to turn towards the screen and talk about what’s on the slide.  To avoid this try and have a monitor with the presentation somewhere in front of you where you can see it.

2: Tell stories.  People remember stories, much longer than a bunch of facts.

Even in serious business presentations there are opportunities to tell stories – they’re called case studies.  Alternatively, you might share an experience that gave you enlightenment.  There is always a story or two related to your subject.  

It’s OK to tell amusing stories, if they’re relevant, but don’t tell jokes – and definitely not smutty jokes.  The only exception to this is some after dinner speeches – but this is a specialist type of presentation and, if it’s not your strength, politely decline!

3: Avoid death by PowerPoint. Endless slides stuffed with charts and text are not the way to entertain.  Of course, there are times when it’s important to share data, but keep the information on slides top level and provide a link to the detailed version (or offer handouts, but let’s try and save the planet).

4: Practice in real time.  The more comfortable you are with your material, the better you’ll come across and you’ll relax and be more natural.  Good presenters aren’t made by accident, they work at it.

5: Be yourself.  Smile, make eye contact, and engage your audience.  This is easy in a boardroom set up, where you can see everyone, but harder on a stage where the auditorium is dark so you probably can’t see your audience very well.  

Try using a W/M scan of the audience area to make people feel you’re connecting with them.  Start at the front left and take your eyes towards the back, then back to centre front, up to the rear and back to front right in an M shape, then reverse this and use a W, so you are scanning as much of the audience as possible.  

This technique needs practice, and should be done slowly or you’ll confuse your audience and make yourself dizzy!

Unconscious incompetence

The subject of ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ has come up in several conversations lately.  In conversations with people who have transitioned from corporate employee to business owner and people who are in a new role in a business and don’t have experience (like anyone promoted to manage other people).  There was also one case study where personal finances were involved and while the individual had money, they had no clue that money sitting in a bank account wasn’t serving them best.  These are all examples of unconscious incompetence.

It's not a bad thing – it’s just something that happens when your current level of knowledge has not yet reached into a certain area.  Everyone doesn’t know everything, but when you’re running a business, it’s important to find out what you need to know.

There is a model, originally created by Noel Burch in the 1970s that examines four stages:

1. Unconscious incompetence – you have no skill in an area, but are happily ignorant of the fact.
2. Conscious incompetence – you know you’re rubbish at a particular skill.
3. Conscious competence – you have acquired skill, but have to concentrate to get it right.
4. Unconscious competence – the skill has become automatic and you ‘just’ do it.

This applies to everything from learning to walk and talk to a wide range of business skills.  If you’d never seen a bicycle before, you wouldn’t know that riding a bicycle was a possibility.  That’s unconscious incompetence.

People who have achieved unconscious competence – at the other end of the spectrum – are often surprised that their skills and knowledge isn’t universal.  Think of something you do easily, have you ever said “But everyone knows that”?  Things we think are commonplace, often aren’t.  Imagine what it’s like on the other end of that, where you are clueless!

So how do you find out what you don’t know?

Ask an expert

When you start a new venture or project there will be issues that you have no knowledge of, but that you need to get to grips with to successfully launch your venture or complete the project.  The problem is that if you don’t know about these issues, where do you get the necessary enlightenment?  

The best way to find out what you need to know is to ask someone who has already been through the process you are about to start.  This is one of the reasons why people read books, go on courses and attend webinars.

If you attend networking meetings or network online, there are often people who have relevant experience.  Mostly they’re willing to share their knowledge.

Learn and practise

Once you are aware of what you need to know, the next step is to learn - and then practise.  A golfer I know once described this as the point where you want to throw the golf clubs in the river!

Just because you know what you need to learn, doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy.  It depends what you need to learn, your natural aptitude and how committed you are.  You’re in the conscious incompetence phase – and it’s probably going to last for a while.

‘Give me a moment’

Conscious competence comes when you feel you can carry out a task or know how something works, but you still have to concentrate.  It’s that point when faced with the task you have to gather your thoughts and focus, then you can get through it with a reasonable level of success.

Don’t stop practising!  As the saying goes ‘practice makes perfect’ – or as a friend of mine says ‘perfect practice makes perfect!  Practising doing something the wrong way doesn’t make it perfect, you’re just getting good at doing it wrong!

Just coastin’

When you’ve learned something so well that it just happens effortlessly, you’re at the unconscious competence level.  This is when someone asks you something and it just comes without thought.  You know it instinctively.

You don’t have to know or be able to do everything.  There is another option – get someone with the required skills or knowledge on your team and let them shine.  However, you do need to know what skills/knowledge you need to succeed, so asking an expert for advice is always a good start.