Catecholamines and an easy $61k

“I did it - I achieved my goal” - you think you’ve won the game, but you haven’t, you have to get back down. - Dr. Emily Johnston, discussing summiting Everest

A few days ago, myself and millions of other online netizens could suddenly hitch a ride from the Base Camp of Everest at 5,300 metres to the Summit at 8,850 thanks to DJI’s Mavic 3 Pro (check it out yourself here).

This led me into a brief YouTube mountaineering adventure, and who can resist a catchy title such as ‘All The Ways Mt. Everest Can Kill you’ ?

It turns out the biggest killer on the mountain is the descent—the moment after the triumph—when the body is flooded with catecholamines, ‘the class of neurotransmitters including epinephrine and dopamine’ that make climbers forget they are in one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Now, your workplace is likely a far cry from the tumult of Everest, though regularly when CEOs, their Executives’ teams and I dive talk about getting to top of their mountain, wether thats securing investment, a major sale, launching a new product et al - their ‘main event’ - we discover so much in discussing ‘What happens next?’

I’m not talking about problems; everyone can fix those, I’m talking about the opportunity to innovate and deliver remarkable outcomes such as;

• Bringing the customer 'into the family' by setting up a process of personalised introductions to team members in various departments.
• Fostering a referral culture by setting up a repeating sequence of in-person and online events, with supporting material that invites clients to bring guests and introduce other prospective investors.
• Optimising the company's internal CRM and related software so the templates, automation and processes are in place, then training the team and supporting them to measure and improve the engagement and upsell.

As the adage goes, if you’re standing still, you’re going backwards, and in a commercial sense, that can genuinely be a killer.

Question: After your key people achieve something great, what happens next?

An easy $61,000

A family friend is the top-performing national (Australia) sales rep for Purezza ‘Sparkling & Child Water On-Tap’. He’s a wonderful people person, and visited yesterday afternoon because he has a 6-minute time slot for an important pitch coming up.

We had 3-4 hours, so I said, ‘Okay, Sam, I’ve been thinking about the hook, the repeatable positioning statement you can use in your referral network - ‘Hi, I’m Sam - the water guy’ - pretty straightforward as a start, after standing in front of each other repeating it between us at various levels of intensity and enthusiasm we went with ‘your water guy’.

He didn’t have a good headshot, so I stood him against the wall near a window, held a small LED light in my left hand and use my iPhone’s portrait mode to snap a photo.

Then I sat on the couch, grabbed a timer and said ‘okay, pitch me, no slides’ - it was clear he knew his stuff;

He hit key sales points, mentioned the customer spread, told me about the company mission to eliminate 30 million single-use bottles from the hospitality supply chain, gave me data and features of the product and came in at about 9 minutes.

It was a bit waffly, getting Sam to talk less rather than more would be the key, though what I noticed was his excitement when he said ‘it’s a profit-making machine’ and ‘it saves restaurants and hotels cost and reduces their waste’ ..

Tell me more, Sam. Tell me specifically who you’re talking about.

“Oh, loads, hundreds of customers. Take Centonove in Kew. They were buying 500 bottles a week of SanPellegrino for about $1,250. Now they pay $60 a week for our Purezza system and maintain the sale price.” Say what…?

That’s $65,000 pa vs $3,120.

“And the Pullman, they were giving every conference guest a $0.40c bottle of Mt Franklin, and they’ve got 31 event spaces, plus 500 rooms getting 2 bottles a day and a restaurant”

Boom. There it is. There’s the emotive, relatable story.

I put together the following slides, including time for some stagecraft so he can crush a plastic bottle, drop it on the floor as waste, and talk about it spending 1,000 years not biodegrading.

Then, he can walk over to the Purezza system in the presentation venue and pull a carafe of sparkling water on tap for the audience.

It goes 'Hook > Mission > Product > National client base > Personal introduction / let audience relate with Sam > Restaurant Client story > Stage craft moment > Hotel Client story > Reminder of mission > Cross section of buyers > Request for introductions to buyers > Hook.’

We built it up in segments, with Sam and I refining the core message behind each slide. On the first complete run-through, Sam delivered it in 7 and a bit minutes (6 being the limit).

For contrast and example, I did it in 4 minutes and 10 seconds, loosely following the PechaKucha approach.

Then we discussed how, with a few more runs, I’d use up the extra 90 seconds with pacing, breaks and audience engagement between segments.

Lastly, I let him know how Nicole Stewart and I would usually practice something like this 10-15 times before a presentation, twice the night before and once in the morning before walking into the venue, and that’s ‘normal’ for us.

Question 1: Could you go a layer deeper when talking about features, and contextualise them in a client story?

Question 2: Do you know a restaurant, large hospitality venue or building under construction that’s still handing over single-use plastic or glass bottles? I know a guy they need to speak with :)