When technical professionals step into sales or presentations, how often do they struggle to connect with their audience?

In this episode of SalesTV, we explore how to empower technical talent to communicate complex ideas in a way that captivates and engages audiences at all technical levels. Joining us is David Duffett, Chief EnthusIASM Officer at Let the Geek Speak, who has spent decades helping technical professionals excel in communication and presentation.

In this episode, we'll ask:

* How can technical professionals become more engaging presenters?

* What are the biggest communication challenges for engineers in sales?

* What techniques can transform a technical talk into a winning presentation?

* Why does confident communication lead to better sales outcomes?

David’s career blends engineering expertise with a passion for communication, making him a trusted advisor for technical sales teams worldwide. From crafting impactful presentations to delivering global keynote speeches, David draws on years of experience to help technical professionals shine in front of any audience.

Join us live to uncover how better communication skills can elevate your sales and customer relationships.

Facts, the latest thinking, chat, and banter about the world of sales.

This week's Guest was -

• David Duffett, Chief EnthusIASM Officer at Let the Geek Speak

This week's Host was -

• Rob Durant, Founder of Flywheel Results and CEO of US Operations at The Institute of Sales Professionals

Transcript of SalesTV.live Mid-Day Edition 2025-01-14

Rob Durant [00:00:01]:

Good morning. Good afternoon. And good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of sales TV live. Today, we're turning technical presentations into stories that sell. I'm joined by David DeFe, chief enthusiasm officer at Let the Geek Speak. From crafting impactful presentations to delivering global keynote speeches, David draws on years of experience to help technical professionals shine in front of any audience. David, welcome.

David Duffett [00:00:38]:

Well, thanks for having me along, Rob. It's great to be here.

Rob Durant [00:00:42]:

It's great having you for sure. David, let's start by having you tell us a little bit more about you, your background, and what led you to where you are today.

David Duffett [00:00:52]:

Yeah. Okay, Rob. Well, it's, great to be here. But it's a good evening for me here. It's 5 PM in the UK, but, it's lovely to be sharing with you here. I started off just loving communications as far back as I can remember. When I was a young lad, CB was very popular in the US of A, and it was kind of finding its way into the UK a little bit. Although it was illegal, at the time the government hadn't authorized it.

David Duffett [00:01:17]:

And so, I got involved in that. And also did a little bit of pirate radio as well, which was, fun. And, it was only later on when I spoke to, a a kind of an industry leader in the world of personal development, a guy called Daniel Priestley, he said to me I'll tell you what. He said, your tree is communications, and these things that you're telling me about like CB Radio, like helping people to speak better in public, like telephone systems, which is another thing that I got involved in. He said those are all apples on the tree. So I'm a kind of a communications person, and I found my way into a civil aviation authority. That's like the FAA over there in the USA. And I was teaching people how to repair equipment at airports and air traffic control centers, which was very exciting.

David Duffett [00:02:11]:

But I never quite felt as technical as some of the other people doing it. And years later, now that I'm a little bit more comfortable in my own skin, I realized that my pendulum didn't swing all the way up there as technical as some of the most technical people, because actually I'm a bit of a people person as well. I like communicating with people. And so where I've ended up is helping technical people to be better communicators.

Rob Durant [00:02:35]:

Oh, that's awesome. Thank you for that. So, David, I wanna jump right into it. While I know I'm asking you to generalize, in your expert opinion, what are the biggest communications challenges for sales engineers?

David Duffett [00:02:52]:

Well, here here's the problem. That often engineering type folk don't really cultivate a level of self awareness to understand the way that they do things very, consciously, and therefore, the best way to do things for other people and the difference between those two. When whenever you're approaching an audience of any kind at all, you really really need to walk in the audience's shoes. In fact, you might remember Jack Handy from Saturday night Saturday night live, Rob. He said great advice actually. He said, if you're gonna walk, sorry. If you're gonna criticize somebody, walk a mile in their shoes first. Because then when you do criticize them, you'll be a mile away and have their shoes.

David Duffett [00:03:35]:

Anyway, yeah. It it's really thinking about your audience. And so as a sales engineer, when you come out, you might think to yourself in fact, you might not even get to the thought process that I learned best by doing, so I'm gonna be very practical with my audience. But if you do have a level of self awareness and a level of consciousness about the audience, you'll think how would this audience like to receive my information best? How are they gonna take it in? How are they gonna digest it? And how are they gonna implement it? Now I I don't know whether this has ever happened to you, Rob, but sometimes we try and watch a video on YouTube or Vimeo or Rumble or whatever it is. And you see that little circle going around saying buffering, don't you? Is that ever

Rob Durant [00:04:21]:

happened? Oh, sure.

David Duffett [00:04:22]:

Yeah. And it and it's a poor connection. And so the point I want to make here is that sales engineers and many other types of engineers as well sometimes get out in front of an audience without ever making the right connection, having the right amount of bandwidth with their audience. And that bandwidth is rapport. And within that connectivity is how we understand the audience needs to receive our information. So that's where I would start.

Rob Durant [00:04:51]:

So how can technical professionals become more engaging presenters? How can they work on that connection piece?

David Duffett [00:05:00]:

Well, a great thing to do is for them to actually be in touch with their target audience before they ever meet them. To say, you know, I'm coming around next Thursday or whatever to demonstrate this software or to talk about this. And I was thinking of covering x, y, and zed. What do you think? And let the let the audience, respond back ahead of time and even better to say, listen, last time you saw a great presentation or you were really wowed by a demo. What made it so special? And so we begin to get an idea of the kind of thing that that audience would like. I mean, sometimes I use the example of, one of those high-tech coffee machines. Have you ever seen them with the the beams on the top and the LCD screen and all the gubbins? And I say, you know, if you were given a brand new coffee machine to to a bunch of engineers, this usually is, if you're given a brand new coffee machine, how would you get to grips with it? Are you gonna, a, pull it right out the box and start fiddling about with it and playing with it, b, carefully find the manual and then sit down in your most comfortable chair and read it cover to cover, or c, maybe lean back and just reflect on previous coffee machines you've had and your relationship with them, and what you wanna get from this new relationship with a coffee machine. And the point there is to have people just consider the way that they learn best and then to think about the audience and the way that they're gonna learn best and to make sure they do it in the way that the audience would like.

David Duffett [00:06:32]:

So whether they're action oriented, input oriented, they like to receive some information first or that, that last one, which is the reflective mode that that's usually don't wanna make too many sweeping generalizations, but that's usually HR professionals. We don't tend to see so many of them. And And if they want to involve a flip chart in that process, then they're definitely HR professionals.

Rob Durant [00:06:55]:

So in my experience, those of a more technical background often believe there is one most bestest way to do everything. And what you're saying is they should be presenting in the way that the audience receives it best. But what if that's different from what they believe is right?

David Duffett [00:07:25]:

Yeah. You're bang on the money, Rob, with that observation. Yeah. In the technical world, it's often our technical skills and experience that are the currency. You hear things like Rob really knows his stuff, or Alex, he's really switched on about that particular topic. But my key phrase here is that knowing your stuff is not enough. It's your ability to convey the relevant part of your stuff. Not not everything you know, just the relevant part that your audience needs in a way that's gonna be easy for them to receive using that channel of rapport that you need to open with them, in order to get that information across.

David Duffett [00:08:03]:

And so, really, you have to kind of, as an engineer, learn that there are more ways than one to do things, and that's part of the process that I give through go through with people.

Rob Durant [00:08:14]:

So in sales speak, how can engineers transition from explaining features and even benefits to demonstrating value?

David Duffett [00:08:27]:

Great question. Great question, Rob. Very, and very well asked, if I may say so. Yeah. It's all about the engineer coming out of that knowing your stuff part and just wanting to dump everything you know and going into consultative mode and finding out what's most important to the client or the audience, what they're wrestling with. And that might well be outside of the small, focus of a presentation. There might be some much bigger business objectives, what I might call the macro level objectives that people are trying to achieve. And so I encourage anybody who's making a presentation, whether they're an engineer or not, to actually delve into that wider context.

David Duffett [00:09:13]:

And in doing so, we find out what really is important to the audience, to the customers, and we wanna make them feel heard and understood before we deliver any information that we might get to want to get across to them in order to help them solve their problems.

Rob Durant [00:09:31]:

So as a a sales engineer, how do you balance technical accuracy and sufficient detail with audience engagement?

David Duffett [00:09:43]:

Yeah. And and another great question. And and my kind of stock answer, although there's never really a stock answer because I like to find out what people need, but it's to come up one level from wherever you are. So if you're in for instance, if you were talking about software and you were very tempted to show people lines of code, what we'd do is actually come up a level to block diagram. If you had got some hardware and you were gonna show people a circuit diagram, again, you might come up to some kind of flowchart or schematic or something like that because we wanna take as many people in the presentation as possible with us. We need to have consulted with them beforehand, but we can generally say that the higher level, we go, the more people we can take along with us. And, of course, there will be people in the audience that might want to ask those detailed questions, but the answers to those detailed questions are probably not of interest to everybody in the audience. And so we need to be very cognizant of that.

Rob Durant [00:10:40]:

And so along those lines, what are the best ways to handle technical questions during the sales pitch?

David Duffett [00:10:46]:

Well, a great thing is to actually ask the questions behind the questions. So if somebody says, you know, does your, widget re respond to 433 hertz? That's that's an interesting question. You know? Well, why is that relevant to you? Or or, you know, Bill's asked about this 433 hertz. Is is that important to everybody else to actually gain an understanding of how relevant it is and what what the question is behind that? And I remember a particular presentation many years ago in Germany. It it was a sales presentation. It was an overview. One of the audience members asked a question about, you know, can this product that you're telling us about do x? Truth of the matter is it couldn't. And one of my very wise colleagues jumped in, so that's an interesting question.

David Duffett [00:11:30]:

You know? Well, is that an important feature to you? And the guy said, no. I just wondered really, and we carried on. We never answered the question about whether it did x or not because it turned out it wasn't really an important question.

Rob Durant [00:11:43]:

Is that difficult for a technical presenter to not answer a question?

David Duffett [00:11:51]:

Yeah. You've hit on a very important kind of mindset thing there because one of the things that we have to do as solutions engineers, as sales engineers, is move from that mindset about we've got all this technical knowledge and we're gonna spill it to actually really working with what the customer really needs. And we need to ask some questions to find that. And so really establishing relevance is probably much more important than spilling technical knowledge.

Rob Durant [00:12:21]:

As a technical sales engineer is working with, a less technical sales executive, what are some things that, first, the sales engineer should, understand and talk about with the the account executive beforehand? And then I I want to, ask the converse of that after. So let's start with what should the sales engineer be asking of the account executive before going into that client meeting?

David Duffett [00:12:56]:

Yeah. That's another really important area. You see, generally speaking, I know we're talking about sweeping generalizations here, but the account executive, the salesperson is perhaps gonna be much more gregarious and out there. They're perhaps gonna be a little bit more at the fly, of a sort of fly by the seat of your pants end of the market. And, also, of course, when things go wrong, they're gonna be more possibly at the pointing fingers end of the market. Whereas whereas your sales engineer, if they've come from this engineering background, they're gonna be a perhaps a little bit more cautious. They're gonna wanna get into the details, and they're perhaps gonna take things on the chin and absorb criticism or finger pointing when it comes along. And so what I encourage, sales engineers to do is to actually have a little bit of discovery with the account executive they're gonna be working with to find out what makes them tick and what's important to them because I see them, the account executive, is actually the sales engineer's first level customer.

David Duffett [00:13:55]:

And so to get a little bit deep with them and find out the most important things to them, and then dive a little bit deeper into what they found out about the prospect that you're going to be talking to. And perhaps get in early enough to kind of drive that conversation or maybe even be involved. And so you are working together with the account executive in finding out what the end customer or or potential customer needs.

Rob Durant [00:14:22]:

And conversely, what can the, account executive ask of the sales engineer in advance and do to, help prepare both for that client communication.

David Duffett [00:14:37]:

Yeah. One of the things that an account executive can do very gently, especially if they've done their due diligence with the, potential client already, is to explain the wider context to the sales engineer and to gently get that message across to say, look. I know you know this software or this product inside out. As it happens, what we're trying to solve for this end customer is this particular problem. And so if we can keep the conversation within solving their problem and understanding that need more deeply, that's gonna be much more effective than just zooming right in and, giving information that might not be relevant. And, of course, one of the famous things that happens in this scenario, Rob, is often the sales engineer is not briefed properly or perhaps doesn't feel briefed properly. And so they come to a scenario where the where the account executive has said, oh, can you jump on a call tomorrow morning at 8:30, you know, without any real briefing? And the sales engineer says, well, you know, what we're gonna talk about? Oh, don't worry. You know, just do the same thing you did last time kind of deal.

David Duffett [00:15:44]:

And so one of the things we need to do is to educate account managers to actually give more context and more clarity. And so this really depends on whether the scenario is a Batman and Robin. So it's a, you know, 2 team of 2 that are always working together or whether there's a bunch of salespeople and a bunch of sales engineers, and they're, you know, kind of picking from a pool of resources. But I I encourage sales engineers, Rob, to be proactive and to kind of grow out their role in talking to the people and actually getting communication channel. Those rapport channels that we were talking about earlier with the, account executives they'll be working with to make everything more smooth.

Rob Durant [00:16:24]:

Do you have a a framework or some guidelines that you provide to, technical presenters?

David Duffett [00:16:31]:

Yes. Yes. I do. I have they're called 7 power presenting protocols, and they handily all begin with a p. And the very first one of them, Rob, is p for purpose, which is, as I was saying earlier, looking at the purpose of the presentation or the demo, not just inside what we're gonna do in the 15 or 20 minutes, but the wider business context. And it's agreeing it, not only with the audience that you're gonna see, but with the sponsor, the person that asked you to do that presentation in the first place. Maybe it was your boss. Maybe it's a conference organizer.

David Duffett [00:17:04]:

Maybe it's somebody from a customer company. But having all of these tied in to start with before you ever meet the people that you're gonna present to, if possible. I realize that's not always possible, but but it's a a good gold standard to aim for.

Rob Durant [00:17:19]:

And and what are the key steps to preparing a technical presentation that connects and sells?

David Duffett [00:17:25]:

Great. Okay. So one let's imagine that we've agreed that purpose ahead of time with the audience and the sponsor, and we've got not only the presentation, but the wider level objectives. Then the next p is plan. That's planning the structure of the presentation or demo so that it really maximally takes advantage of people's attention span, the way that things people land in people's memories. So we can architect a presentation that really makes use of all the prime time there is in any session. Then the next one is preferences. There's another p.

David Duffett [00:17:57]:

And that's when we are looking at what kind of audience we're working with. Are they more input driven, reflection driven, or action driven, and how can we help them receive the information? Then the next p, Rob, is practice. Yeah. Have you noticed that software engineers will put their software out for beta or beta trialing? Hardware engineers will have prototypes, and you hear about fast time to prototypes. And yet somehow, these same people very often don't practice their presentations. And my, key thought here is if a presentation is worth doing, and if it's not, why you're doing it in the 1st place? But if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly until you can do it well. So practice is is very important. So we've already done 4 of the 7 p's thereof.

Rob Durant [00:18:43]:

Well, bring us bring us home.

David Duffett [00:18:45]:

Okay. Okay. Let's do the the last three. The next one is participation. Nobody likes having things done to them, but everybody likes having things done with them or for them. And so all the best presentations that you've ever been part of, Rob, involved you. And there's a very simple, equation to remember that performance not not performance. Sorry.

David Duffett [00:19:09]:

That involvement equals commitment. So the more you can involve people in a presentation, the more committed they will be to the outcomes. And so one of the things we'll do when we're prepping for any kind of presentation or demo is actually step back and think, how can we involve people in this? Is it by a show of hands? Is it by asking questions? Is it by having people who are in the audience participate by sharing their experience? So, you know, people often have experience in various areas, and so why wouldn't we want to harness that and understand from their point of view what their views are? So that's participation. Now those first five, so we go, purpose, plan, preferences, practice, participation. All 5 of those happen before you ever get out in front of people and get on stage as it were or in front of the room. And there's a very good reason for that. And it's this. When you've talked to technical people, Rob, and they say, oh, I don't like speaking in public.

David Duffett [00:20:13]:

When you kind of peel back a few layers there, it's often not that they're frightened of speaking in public, but they're scared of being ill prepared in front of a bunch of people. And so those those first five protocols are everything you need to get properly prepared and to get the clarity you need. And so when you come to the next p, the 6th p, which is performance, the actual getting out there, you've got everything you need. You've got confidence from the clarity of having a structure of knowing what you're going to be talking about, and, of course, of agreed it with the people before you get there as well. So the 6th p is performance, and then the 7th p is post event. I'm sure you've heard on many occasions or even said it yourself that the fortune is in the follow-up. And so why wouldn't we apply this to presentations? Why wouldn't we have a process that's gonna be agreed, and useful to everybody concerned, not just you, the presenter, or the the demo person, or the sales engineer, but to your sponsor, to your audience, and to everybody concerned. So there you go.

David Duffett [00:21:20]:

You you managed to wangle the 7 p's out of me, Rob, in a fairly short order there.

Rob Durant [00:21:27]:

That's fantastic. And and what do you call those 7 p's again? What is

David Duffett [00:21:30]:

I call them my 7 power presenting protocols. But I I presenting protocol. Yeah. I went to say, this last year, I was, might even been the year before actually now. Time flies. I was out in New York with Bloomberg talking about these 7 power presenting protocols. And somebody came up to me afterwards and said, actually, they're not just 7 power presenting protocols, but they're 7 principles of communication. You could apply them to anything.

David Duffett [00:21:55]:

You could apply them to running a team meeting. You could apply them to giving feedback to one of your team in a kind of 1 on 1 scenario. And when I stood back and thought about it, I thought, yeah, that person was right. And so although I apply them principally for presentations, they work for communications in general too.

Rob Durant [00:22:14]:

It it's interesting that you got that feedback because that's exactly what I was going to follow-up with. And it's not just a technical presentation that can benefit from that. That is general communication principles at work there. That's fantastic.

David Duffett [00:22:30]:

Yeah. And and

Rob Durant [00:22:32]:

So so just

David Duffett [00:22:32]:

to carry on, what what that helped me say was, and and, you know, it's a conclusion I've been coming to for a number of years is I love to help technical people with their presentations. But actually, it turns out that that's just a symptom of a deeper thing, which is communications in general. And so helping technical people with communications in general helps them. That's a more foundational thing, but it helps them with their presentations too. And, of course, it helps them with their communication with their colleagues, their coworkers, their clients, and everybody at work.

Rob Durant [00:23:06]:

That's fantastic. So, David, if you were to summarize one thing you would want our audience to take away from today, what would that one thing be?

David Duffett [00:23:19]:

I think the one thing would to be would be to always be thinking about the other person or the other people that you're talking to and be analyzing what's in it for them, what's important to them, and how are they going to receive my message most easily. When I open up that communications channel, what is it I can do to really serve them best?

Rob Durant [00:23:42]:

That's fantastic. David, this has been great. How can people learn more, and where can they get in touch with you?

David Duffett [00:23:51]:

Well, I often hang around in LinkedIn land. So if you go to linkedin/in/davidduffitt, all one long word, d u, double f, e, double t, You'll find me there, quite active there. And the webs the website is called geekspeakhq.com. And if you go there, there's, different things, different resources for people, and, a little bit of information about the speaking that I do at things like sales, kickoffs, and community events, and the master classes I run as well.

Rob Durant [00:24:23]:

Oh, that's awesome. And we now have a newsletter. Don't miss an episode. Get show highlights beyond the show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes. You can scan the QR code on screen or visit us at SalesTV.live and click on newsletter. This has been another edition of SalesTV. On behalf of, our, team back at home. And on behalf of our guest, David, we want to thank everyone for being an active part of today's conversation, and we'll see you next time.

David Duffett [00:25:04]:

Well, thank you. All the best.

Rob Durant [00:25:06]:

Thank you.

#CommunicationSkills #SalesEngineer #TechSales #Sales #Pipeline #LinkedInLive #Podcast