Ah, the annual Sales Kick-Off (SKO)—a high-energy, high-stakes event where the entire sales team gathers to be motivated, inspired, and equipped for the year ahead. Or, at least, that’s the intention. Too often, SKOs devolve into an endless parade of slide decks, a blur of talking heads, and a slow descent into what we at Wolf & Heron like to call Death By Presentation.
Read on to understand why this keeps happening, the consequences, and what to do instead.
Read MoreTOOL
Align your presenters, and you’ll land your strategy.
This free toolkit gives you everything you need to help your speakers show up aligned, clear, and confident.
The worksheet includes questions to help you consider the context, audience and messages that will help you design your presentation for success.
Read MoreCASE STUDY
Download the case study to learn how Wolf & Heron worked hand-in-hand with the revenue enablement team at TierPoint to build buy-in, upskill the team, and accelerate execution.
Read MoreA SKO investment should be justified by how well it achieves strategic organizational goals. Unfortunately, SKO goals are often so vague that it’s impossible to integrate them into the feedback mechanism. If that’s the case for an event you’re planning, you certainly won’t know if you’ve achieved those goals… which begs the question, why have a SKO at all?
If you want your event to achieve its objectives, it’s critical that you identify, clearly, what those outcomes should be, and then weave them through your event like a red thread. That is how you’ll produce a Sales Kick Off where the investment earns you a return.
Read MorePeople don’t make decisions based on logic alone. They need to connect emotionally with your message —and use logic to justify it later. That’s where storytelling comes in. A good story doesn’t just inform; it makes people feel. And when they feel, they remember. More importantly, they act.
Read on to understand why stories work, what makes a story unique, and how to ensure your points land by wrapping them in stories.
Read MoreBreakouts are where your attendees explore, discuss, and internalize the message you most want them to remember. They’re where concepts are made real and tangible. But too often, they turn into just another slide-driven presentation.
We’ve designed breakouts for sales kickoffs, leadership off-sites, and enterprise-wide strategy rollouts—and we’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t). This guide shares the exact principles we use to make sessions that are engaging, purpose-driven, and actually move people.
Read MoreNavigating change is at the heart of many conversations that we have—be it with a friend who’s struggling, a client we’re coaching, or a team we’re supporting. There are tons of thought leaders already offering tips and advice on how to navigate or lead change; where we like to focus is on designing meaningful conversations that drive clarity and create forward momentum for teams and individuals moving through change.
Read MoreAs speakers and speaker coaches, we spend a lot of time crafting talks—both for ourselves and with our clients. It’s an obvious exploration, therefore, for us to look into how we can leverage AI to craft these talks more quickly (and ideally, effectively). Recently, Stephanie started giving a talk entitled Stories That Sell. In the past several weeks, Stephanie has delivered this talk three times and here are the things she learned while leaning into AI as a tool to help her.
Read MoreBROCHURE
Our personalized approach to enhancing presentation skills and stage readiness, designed for both individual presenters and organizations.
Read MoreExecutive coaching is a soft skill. Yes, there are some technical frameworks you can be trained on, but at the end of the day, a good executive coach is proficient in what are generally considered soft skills: conversations, intuition, active listening, appreciative inquiry, etc. Soft skills are those less tangible skills that are more dependent on our ability to be human and interact with other humans than hard skills like accounting or even project management.
As AI takes more and more center stage in our collective awareness, and our ability to leverage and access AI-powered tools becomes commonplace, we have begun to wonder, Could AI be an effective executive coach?
Read MoreNine times out of ten, feedback conversations turn into difficult conversations because we build them up in our heads to be way bigger and more complicated than they really have to be. Here’s some of the advice that Stephanie gave Sara. What else would you offer?
Read MoreMaybe it’s cutesy to say that time management is an evergreen challenge… but it’s true. It ebbs and flows as our work lives and personal lives change. The busier we are, or the more important the task in front of us is, the harder it is to successfully and gracefully manage our time. And the crazy thing is, it’s in these moments of high stress and overwhelm where we most need to be able to trust and rely on our time management skills.
Depending on your situation, there are several ways you can better manage your time. Time management is an ongoing and continuous process of assessing, organizing, and executing.
Read MoreQuestions don’t have to be either leading or random. You can ask questions thoughtfully, in a way that encourages open discussion, collaboration AND you can ask questions that move people to action.
Here are some suggestions for questions anyone can use at several key moments within a consultative conversation, from kicking off the conversation to forwarding the action.
Read MoreAround this time of year, people are planning large-scale and high-stakes gatherings, and they want to make sure the time and money invested in these events are well spent. Nine times out of ten, that means folks are putting pen to paper and coming up with an agenda. If you’re in the early stages of doing just that, here are some tips to make sure your agenda (and the resulting gathering) are designed with outcomes, engagement and a thoughtful flow in mind.
Read MoreThe definition of the term “coaching” matters because it’s the substance of the engagement. Inherent in the definition is an understanding of the desired outcome, and a notion of why an executive coach is the right partner to get you there.
At Wolf & Heron, we think of coaching the same way The International Coaching Federation (ICF) does. The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
Read MoreREFERENCE
A one-page reference basic story structure with some tips for how to work through mapping your story idea to the structure.
Read MorePresenters want to include stories in their presentation, but have no idea where the stories should go or what they should be about. Here are a few moments in your presentation where leveraging a story is particularly effective.
Read MoreBROCHURE
Read our detailed brochure about our flagship and longest-running program for business leaders.
Read MoreGiving constructive feedback is tough. Once a manager has mustered up the willingness to prepare for and deliver feedback, it requires attention, time and curiosity to work through. For many managers, these difficult conversations cause additional mental load because they are accompanied by fear and anxiety.
Read MoreTOOL
This Google Docs worksheet will help you prepare for a difficult feedback conversation with an employee.
This worksheet includes questions to help you process through the issue and behaviors and provides a template for a feedback conversation.
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