Professional presence is an elusive, “you’ll know it when you see it” quality. It’s a blend of personal and interpersonal skills that send all the right signals: the impression you make, how you make others feel, and how effectively you communicate both verbally and non-verbally. It enables respected professionals to connect with others in a meaningful and authentic way by projecting confidence, integrity, and perseverance.

In The Power of Professional Presence Executive Program at UNC Chapel Hill led by professor Heidi Schultz, we gained the self-awareness to make sure others see those qualities. Using proven psychological and physical confidence-building methods,we developed a deeper understanding of how presence can reveal your leadership abilities and discovered how effective leaders use presence to communicate, influence, and inspire. Here is some wisdom points shared from Day 1 per ability to make a real difference by presenting yourself confidently to others.

• When you're delivering your message in any speech or public talk strive to keep your head up, shoulders back, stand up straight, control your movement, own your space, and keep good eye contact. Keep your weight equally distributed and be mindful of your vocal inflections. No filler words that create poor vocal clutter.
• Remember what Mark Twain said, "It takes 3 weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech". So prepare! Preparation equals confidence. Confidence equals good communication.
• In all communication it comes down to likability and believe-ability. Remember, likability is the shortest path to believe-ability. And 55% of this all comes from your body language, 38% from your vocal quality, and only 7% from your content.
• You can cultivate confidence. Studies show that only 30% of our confidence is genetic in nature, but 70% of confidence comes from our choices. This is empowering as your confidence level is in your control. Prepare, be positive, know power poses, focus on the here and now and shut down any negative talk or thoughts.
• Remember the importance of Primacy & Recency. People remember what you start with and end with so have your intro and closing strong!
• When you speak be open and face your audience. Remove any barriers. Get outside the podium. Face your audience and invite them in with a smile. Keep sternum open, wide stance, and hands in front with vertical palms.
• Don't let people in the audience bring you down if you see "airplane faces". Don't assume they are thinking anything negative as most people have airplane faces in a relaxed state. Focus on the smiling heads in the audience and present to them to build up your presenting of the message with even more confidence.
• Remember, you always look better then you feel. Assume the best and keep positive outlook. Visualize things going well and then deliver on your visualization. You can't please everyone so go for majority buy-in not universal.
• Be comfortable with silences and use strategic pauses to illustrate a point. If you need to speak for 1 hour do the .9 factor. Multiply your speaking time by .9 and prepare for that less amount so you save time for pauses, silence, and any pivots in your talk. For 1 hour talk, prepare 54 minutes worth!
• Things to avoid saying, "Am I making sense?" "I Just..." "I'm no expert, but" and avoid all the filler words "m, so, you know....
• Consider the presentation framework: PIRC. Purpose, Importance, Route, and Communication. As a result of this presentation I want my audience to "X". This is your purpose. Why should the audience care is the importance. Route is the flow and points you will take to accomplish delivering your purpose and importance message. Finally, communication is how you will deliver your message with right words, body language, vocal variety, and supportive visual/audio.
• An effective conclusion propels your audience to act in a way that propels your goals forward and makes people want to participate because of (WIIFM) "Whats in it for me".
• For presentations use fonts with no feet like Ariel!

Thank you to Professor Heidi Schultz and UNC Executive Program for great education. I hope this helps support your aims to communicate better!
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Katy Jones, CMO, FoodLogiq shared her story of Foodlogiq's growth from the early stages through it's recent $20M financing. She provided informaton about sales and marketing alignment lessons learned and she’ll highlight how her role as CMO has evolved along the way.
Here is some wisdom on 5 Tips To Growing Through Marketing!

• #1: Automation can do amazing things, but it will not solve for bad alignment. Sales and marketing need to be aligned. Inbound demo requests from marketing and sales follow-up have to align together to execute as a team.  Both groups have to be on the same page.
  • Add sales development into the lead gen and review process. Have a sales development rep report into marketing to qualify and be responsible for vetting sales leads that should be passed with meeting and call setup for sales leaders to close.
  • Marketing needs to be on calls as well to hear pain points, questions, and objections from buyers so they can create the right marketing & content that addresses the real sales need to help win business.
• #2: Add in PR and media as soon as you can.
  • Schedule "Briefings" versus direct pitches. Attend tradeshows, apply for awards, create your own research through "Google Surveys". Leverage your network for influencer PR.
• #3: Your customers are on the same journey as you are. Center on the "Why". For example, not selling a module or software system, selling solution to help people not get sick from food.
  • Do ALL the work for your customers. Make it about them; not you. Make your customers the hero and they will love you for it!
• #4: Alignment with sales is critical, but also focus on product and customer success.
  • Have a commitment to customer slide so you share you values and promise as partner and ensure you live by them!
• #5: Don't sacrifice your brand for the latest buzz in the industry
  • Don't chase technologies for the sake of buzz snatching rather align with customers to test and review new innovations to ensure all is needed by customer

​Thank you Katy for great presentation and T-REX for super conference!

​Hall of Fame Coach Sylvia Hatchell has just completed her 33rd season as the Women’s Basketball Coach at the University of North Carolina. December 19, 2017, Coach Hatchell reached the 1,000 win mark in the history of the game.

The University of North Carolina has nine ACC Championships, been to three Final Fours and of course the 1994 National Championship. Coach Hatchell is the only coach in history to have won National Championships on three different levels.

In 2013, Coach Hatchell was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, making the University of North Carolina the only school in the country to have both the women’s and men’s basketball coaches in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Coach Hatchell also has a best-selling book called Fight! Fight! Discovering YOUR Inner Strength When Blindsided By Life-My Personal Battle and Fight with Cancer.

Here is some wisdom from her speech at the T-REX conference in Durham in which she shared her fight with cancer and leading as coach of UNC Basketball:

• Success in life is about the mentality you have. It's not your situation that determines everything. It's the positive attitude you take about your situation that can get you through anything and upward onward. Make that decision to be positive. You control your decision to choose wisely. Stay away from stinkin' thinkin'!
• Give yourself a pep talk! Lift yourself up and be your best cheerleader!
• Exercise! Get out of the bed! Walk the halls. In life keep going even when you don't feel like it. Don't use it you lose it. Keep training and exercising.
• Be a fountain, not a drain. Use a clicker to click through anyone who is causing negative activity. Don't be around negative nay sayer people.
• You can't control some things that happen to you, but you can control your reaction and how you handle it. Focus on what you can control!
  
• Remember the paper story. If you take piece of paper and crush it up, you can't open it up again and see it perfectly flat again. Our words are like that. Once you say something negative that hurt you or someone else, you can't take them back without leaving some damage. So be really smart and careful about what you say.
• When hard things come in and crap hits the fan, get on with it! Deal with it! Put on your big pants and push through it!
• You never understand fully why some things happen to you, but there is always a reason for things that cross our paths and good things can come from it! 
• Be a support to people and be open to being supported in return. Stay away from people who pull you down. Be around people who are up-lifters and not people who are down pushers.
• Life is about Team Work! Not about what we gather, its about what we scatter. Need to reap a good harvest, but you can't have a great harvest unless you plant seeds. We are blessed so we can bless others.
• There is strength in unity and team. Don't be out by yourself. You can be broken on your own, but success is about relationships. Be in a community, a team, a family. Keep your friends and family close and build up your community. This will make you strong. Remember, a single string can easily break, but a three string woven cord is strong.
• When life and God puts opportunity in front of you, take advantage of it! Seize the moment and do, be, give, and live! Bloom right where you are planted. You always have opportunity to make a choice and freedom to make a decision. Choose positive!
• Remember, "A Godly person in the center of Gods will is immortal until God is done"
• Be the kind of person that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, the devil says oh crap she or he is up!

Favorite Sport Quotes:

• "Winners Train Losers Complain"
• "Lead Follow Or Get Out Of My Way"
• "Playing is an honor but winning is a tradition"
• "If it is to be, it is up to me!"
• "Its amazing how much can be accomplished when you don't care about who gets the credit"
• "Team work makes the dream work!"

Thank you Sylvia Hatchell for super inspiring and motivational speech! A special thanks to Vince Beese and Eric Boggs from T-REX for the great event and sponsors like Pendo and Barfield Revenue Consulting for supporting!

Today the T-REX conference kicked off in downtown Durham! A great day of fantastic speakers, actionable content, and amazing networking at the beautiful Carolina Theater in Downtown Durham. This conference provided an opportunity to learn from sales, marketing, and executive leaders at some of the best tech and B2B organizations in the world.


The show kicked off with keynote speaker, Andy Paul, Founder, The Sales House. Can Sales Be Fixed? Can B2B Sales Be Saved? This is the question proposed per two trends converging with the steady influx of innovative tools and technologies in B2B sales and the continuing decline of overall B2B sales performance (as reported by sales research reports.) In his talk, Andy Paul challenges conventional wisdom exploring whether we're tracking the wrong metrics, training the wrong skills, stunting the development of our sellers and disproportionately allocating our sales resources to activities that don’t materially impact the buyers’ decisions. Andy also provided possible alternatives that could halt and reverse the downward trend in sales productivity. Here is a recap of top wisdom points shared:

• Add value: Sales interactions must add strong value or the client will only by on price. Being to add value is the core to all selling. Buyers have more information and access to data then ever before so sales resource must bring above and beyond value to the sales interactions. Help them ask the right questions and guide them to best decisions for their business.
• Always look for ways to add value to people. For example, instead of raising quotas by 10% to grow your business consider are you investing in your team by 10% to help them sharpen their skills to be able to perform better by 10%.
• Be mindful of "confident incompetence"! People generally overestimate their abilities, skill, and talent. People generally are emotionally not super strong as evaluating and fixing areas of themselves that need to be improved. This can lead to confident incompetence. Always be open to improvement, change, and access your skills and performance honestly!
• Productivity: Focus on productivity targets. Know amount of time spent on winning and losing deals. Measure on rate of improvement and productivity like time to proposal and closing business versus just measuring based on quota. How many hours did we spend from initial contact to close. How many sales hours, customer visit hours, emails, and calls went into closing deals. The time metric is your currency in sales.
• Pipeline coverage: Remember quality vs. quantity. You want quality opportunities inside the pipeline and funnel, not opportunities that will suck your time and lead to no sales. Focus. Less is more. Quality and right fit leads with right focused time wins!
• Increase Win Rates: Focus on efforts that help result in more wins. Ask yourself will this tool, process, or technology help us win more? Sell to people who are open and want to buy exactly what you are selling. Not sell to a big ocean of potential buyers who may be interested in something like what you are selling. Engineer your process so you focus on right client profile that lead to highest win rates.
• Focus on the middle: Execute strongly on the middle of the funnel not just throwing leads into the top of funnel or closing. Prospecting is not where sale is won as the main value of winning sales happens in the quality work executed in MOFU (Middle of Funnel)
• Give Sales A Tri: You never win a triathlon in the opening swim part. You win it in run and bike part that follows. In sales you never win in the prospecting side, but we seem to spend to much time focused on lead gen. We need to give our sellers and our own time focused effort on selling to the right people.
• Train pets; educate people. Spend at least 20-30 minutes a day of dedicating education of your sales team members to show you care and help them increase their skills. Show you care. Invest time in their development. Book club, podcast, webinar, or talk. Don't think you are to busy selling to take time to "sharpen the saw". Read 1 book a month in your discipline and within 12 months it can result in being top 2% of earners in your field.

Thank you Andy Paul for great speech! A special thanks to Vince Beese and Eric Boggs from T-REX for the great event and sponsors like Pendo and Barfield Revenue Consulting for supporting!

Sharing wisdom on why smile from an award winning speech by Keith Daniel Washo from  ToastMasters International competition in Durham, NC! Enjoy!
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​Today the Angel Capital Association (ACA), the largest angel professional development organization in the world, provided an insider perspective that helps you make smart investment decisions and coach startups. They introduced angel investors Bart Dillashaw and Roberta Garven, who shared experiences as investors helping startups through common pitfalls. Most importantly, they shared top 10 list of common pitfalls entrepreneurs and startups need to avoid when raising capital and you need to be aware of as investor. Here is executive recap to help with your understanding and aims:

• Make sure company is setup correctly with the right kind of entity and structure. Most companies invested in through angel and VC track are Delaware C-Corp. Ensure proper company documents are filed and solid company structure in place.
• Ensure stability throughout the founders and executive team. Does the team get along well and enjoy working together? A great team and realistic ownership split with equity among them shared fairly is important. For example, the founders and executive team to share similar class of stock and vesting schedule so all is fair, equitable, and stable.
• Have a clear cap table so all investors and equity split can be seen transparently. Have documents aligned and clean to support documenting all investments made. Keep to accredited investors and all investments properly filed. Keep cap table simple. Common stock. No fancy structures and tiers.
• As a startup raising capital have a diligence folder setup that clearly tracks all your investments. Have all docs in and signed. Make it easy for investors to see your progress and status. Avoid questions and suspicion due to required documents missing.
• Always be prepared to pitch and pitch well. Get advice from angel investors and VCs who have seen hundreds of pitches to get best practices and your most compelling story told well, quickly.
• Understand the fund raising timing. It takes longer then you think. The first round vs. second round have different timing. Smaller amount of money can be raised a little sooner, but this money needs to be directly applied to actions that result in growing the valuation of company so you can be ready for next round. The second round can take 6 months or longer to raise so ensure first round of funding gives you enough runway to avoid an emergency bridge round. Have clear metrics to achieve that are shared with investors so you're all on the same plan to growing the company and next step for investment aims.
• Ensure founders believe in idea and are all in with sweat equity versus big salary so investors can clearly see the founding team is all in to grow the business and go toward successful exit vs. lifestyle business.
• As founders of your company be ready to have valuation set fairly based on your actual stage and not based on what you think you need per your aspirations. Also, be ready to negotiate. Early investors in startups will want to negotiate terms so be flexible.
• Understand raising money is like dating in that it takes time and a lot of relationship building. Be open and learn from everyone you can. Show that you are sincere, open, and can be coach-able. Angels are looking for long term relationship so like to see progress and updates along the journey with good character traits in the people leading the company and the communications.
• Lastly, be open, honest, and never hide anything. Show everything even if some things are bad. Share the good news and the not so good news. For the bad news share with clear plan to overcome it. This will build trust.
• Here is recap on top pitfalls to avoid in image below. ​A special thanks to the Angel Capital Association (ACA) and angel investors Bart Dillashaw and Roberta Garven!