Chapter 10

Whiteboard Structure, Flow, Content, and Interaction Points

The fact that the message was built and flowed throughout, and built in a relevant way, made the content easier to internalize, easier to get a grasp on, and then easier for me to personalize going forward.

—Executive Strategist, systems management software company

When you read a book there are certain elements you rely on. There is the content of the book, the words, and the pictures. There is a table of contents that shows you the outline. The author has ordered the ideas, or the narrative, of the story so it makes sense. There is a visual design and layout that help you better understand the content.

A whiteboard for sales has similar elements. Each whiteboard you use during the sales process needs a predetermined structure you can use and then improvise on as needed, depending on how the sales meeting progresses. Each whiteboard dialogue has elements you can count on to help you communicate.

What are the elements of a whiteboard dialogue? One element is content—the words and visuals that communicate the unique value of whatever is being sold. Another element of the content is a script associated with each step of the whiteboard, which supports the visuals by providing a talk track. The script is designed to be an example of talking points only, not to be used verbatim by the presenter. The best practice is for the seller to customize the script according to the needs of each customer or prospect, leveraging the concept of situational fluency.

As with any story or narrative, a whiteboard for sales has a number of logical steps or break points in the content that act like sections and chapters in a book. These steps and break points make up the flow of the visual story.

Finally, every whiteboard designed for selling must include a number of key interaction points when, in addition to drawing and talking, the presenter pauses to engage with the customer or prospect.

Types of Interaction Points

There are three key types of interaction points:

1. Confirmations—Confirmation interaction points demonstrate your knowledge of your prospect's unique business situation. A confirmation allows you to recap what you already know (or think you know!) about their existing needs, challenges, and near-term initiatives.
2. Open-Ended Questions—Open-ended questions engage the customer. You use questions to get feedback on what is being discussed, to learn more, and to keep the discussion interactive. Remember, a whiteboard for sales is designed to encourage a two-way information exchange. Depending on which sales methodology or process you are using, you can leverage different questioning models. Questions should be open-ended to keep the dialogue moving. Yes/no questions can result in awkward pauses following a “no” answer from a prospect. You will want to align the questions with the topics being discussed at each whiteboard step.
3. Objection Reframes—As with any sales presentation, customers will challenge the whiteboard presenter with objections and questions, either to dig deeper into certain topics, to test the presenter, or to regurgitate competitive landmines planted by other vendors. When you build Objection Reframe interaction points into each step of a sales whiteboard, you are arming sellers to answer or deflect objections.

In Part 4 we will look in depth at whiteboard content elements, but generally speaking various whiteboards for sales might include (in no particular order) the following 12 specific actions:

1. Write the whiteboard title.
2. Establish meeting objectives.
3. Confirm the customer's current situation, business objectives, opportunities, and near-term initiatives.
4. Share relevant market trends and typical customer challenges, and capture customer feedback.
5. Share company facts, figures, and other relevant data.
6. Mention third-party validation of your company or solutions (from analysts, publications, media, and other neutral commentators).
7. Render drawings, text, and other visual elements that describe solutions, services, products, and other offerings in a way that demonstrates unique business value.
8. Notate competitive differentiators and silver bullets.
9. Establish “proof points”—case studies and references—where your solutions and services have been successfully delivered with measurable benefits.
10. Summarize the discussion—why should your customer select you?
11. Document next step action items.
12. Capture “parking lot” unanswered questions and follow-up items.

There are no hard and fast rules about the placement or ordering of the above elements on the whiteboard. Not every whiteboard for sales must include all, or even most, of the above ingredients. It all depends on the objective of the whiteboard.

In the following chapters you will see a variety of whiteboard template examples and learn details on how the above ingredients work in different whiteboard types.

Whiteboard Architecture Examples

Let's look at some examples of how to lay out some of the elements on a whiteboard or other drawing surface. You will see the positions of these elements change according to each whiteboard's type, purpose, and sales situation.

c10f001

Look at the middle section of the whiteboard on the previous page. The number of ways you can lay out the center of the whiteboard, using visuals, text, and/or schematics, is limitless. You can choose the solution elements, third-party validation, proven success, and competitive weaknesses in whichever ways that will be most effective for a particular sales situation.

Let's look at another potential layout of a whiteboard:

c10f002

The center part of this whiteboard is different from the last example.

You may have noticed that neither of these example layouts map to the specific whiteboard types we addressed in Chapter 9. The purpose of these whiteboards is simply to demonstrate how various whiteboard ingredients, or content, can be represented in different ways.

In later chapters we'll discuss best practices for how much content a whiteboard for sales should contain, and how to break it into separate steps.

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