The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own
The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own

It’s not all that uncommon for salespeople to be armed with a presentation or demo slide deck that was put together by the marketing department. The purpose of a “single source of truth” like the corporate-approved slide deck is to ensure that all salespeople have the same talking points and are communicating a consistent narrative in the marketplace. This is a noble goal, but one of the unintended consequences of a company-wide narrative in the form of a slide deck is that it can become stale and devoid of any kind of personal, authentic touch.

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ArticleKara Davidsonsales, slide deck, make it your own, presentations, storytelling, stories, authenticityComment
Learning Design Best Practices for a Global Workforce
Learning Design Best Practices for a Global Workforce

With an increasingly distributed and global workforce, organizations need to become more sophisticated about how to support their employees' growth and development. There are many variables to consider from time zone, to language barriers, cultural differences, remote vs in-person vs hybrid, folks who are co-located but virtual, etc. Meanwhile, L&D teams are still being asked to deliver high-quality training and great experiences that engage employees and inspire them to do the hard work required to develop new skills. Here are a few tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way as we develop impactful learning experiences to a variety of global teams and organizations.

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ArticleStephanie Juddhybrid, L&DComment
Best Practices for Leading in a Hybrid Work Environment
Best Practices for Leading in a Hybrid Work Environment

We recently hosted a roundtable discussion on Building Authentic Sales Relationships in a Hybrid Virtual/In-Person Tech Industry. Additionally, we continue to do a great deal of executive coaching for leaders in public health, tech and other fields. There are several unique challenges leaders are facing in supporting their people right now due to the hybrid nature of work and offer these best practices for consideration.

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ArticleKara Davidsoncoaching, leadership, leading, hybrid, hybrid workComment
5 Common Questions About Telling Influential Stories
5 Common Questions About Telling Influential Stories

In the 5+ years that we’ve been operating as Wolf & Heron, we’ve had the privilege of delivering our Influential Storytelling program to 1000s of folks and provided one-on-one story coaching to hundreds of professionals. In our experience, there are several questions that have been posed to us with regularity about storytelling and influence, so we thought we’d take some time to share our perspective publicly.

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ArticleStephanie Juddstorytelling, influenceComment
The Case for Leading with Powerful Questions
The Case for Leading with Powerful Questions

Questions have a powerful role in conversation and they’re underutilized at work. As experience designers and facilitators, we rely on questions to carry our participants through a process of discovery and learning. As leadership coaches, we rely on questions as the driving force for our conversations. Meanwhile, we see how often questions are underused by leaders, meeting facilitators and organizations in general.

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ArticleKara Davidsonleadership, coaching, powerful questionsComment
Case Study: Google Product Managers
Case Study: Google Product Managers

CASE STUDY

After a year of piloting a variety of formats for our Influential Storytelling content, we’re excited to establish an enterprise program for Product Managers across Google. The goal is to help Google PMs be better at Product Evangelism, a core skill PM Learning & Development has identified as characteristic of high-performing PMs.

Download our case study to explore more about the work we are doing with Google.

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ResourcesStephanie JuddstorytellingComment
Case Study: Sanger Leadership Center, University of Michigan
Case Study: Sanger Leadership Center, University of Michigan

CASE STUDY

Five years into our partnership with the Sanger Leadership Center at the Ross School of Business within the University of Michigan, we’re proud of the impact we’ve had, the students we’ve reached, and the way that storytelling has really become a integral part of the Ross community and the university in general.

Check out a summary of the program’s impact so far.

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ResourcesStephanie JuddstorytellingComment
Common Coaching Questions that Leaders Should Use More Often
Common Coaching Questions that Leaders Should Use More Often

When we coach leaders as part of an enterprise leadership development program, we often also provide mini training sessions to these same leaders on the basic skills of coaching. What always surprises us is how difficult it is for leaders to see the parallels between coaching and leading, and even understand why learning coaching skills is relevant to their growth as leaders.

In Stephanie’s personal experience, the process of getting certified as a coach was one of the most transformative things she did in her leadership journey. She discovered through her coaching practice a set of questions that are so simple and powerful that we use them in all sorts of contexts beyond coaching conversations. Here are a few.

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ArticleStephanie Juddcoaching, leadershipComment
Storytelling Strategies for Sales Success
Storytelling Strategies for Sales Success

If your job is to sell your company’s products or services, you need to know how to communicate their value in a compelling way. When we work with salespeople, they already understand that storytelling can be a powerful tool for them, but they struggle with how to leverage stories appropriately. Sometimes they can come up with a story, but it’s too literal and leads them down a rabbit hole of demo-ing their product rather than actually telling a story. Other times they drone on and on, losing their audience along the way. Sometimes they just can’t come up with a story idea, even if they know they should be telling stories! Here are some tips and tricks to get you started if you’re having the same challenges.

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ArticleStephanie JuddStorytelling, salesComment
Navigating Last-Minute Changes in Planning Your Meeting
Navigating Last-Minute Changes in Planning Your Meeting

We’re making plans in an era of uncertainty. These things are going to keep happening. It’s not clear if we’ll ever again get to a point where we can guarantee that an in-person event will definitely be in person, or that the keynote speaker we were planning on doesn’t suddenly develop the sniffles and will now give her speech from a virtual podium instead of the stage. Because of our new reality, here are a few recommendations on how to be proactive in your leadership and team meeting planning.

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ArticleKara DavidsonMeetingsComment