Eat more bananas...

Fontys Logistics Alumni event, Kempen, Germany, February 2019

It all starts on a cold February night in Kempen, Germany. Sophia teaches logistics at Fontys, and she’s moderating an Alumni Event for Logistics graduates from Fontys University of Applied Sciences.

Fresh off the stage from her 2018 TEDx Talk, she’s invited her TEDx speaker coach, me from the start-up training agency Noblahblah, to give a talk on presentation techniques.

In the audience is Hessel Meijer, a Fontys Logistics grad and former student of Sophia’s. It’s a nice event. Sophia and Hessel reconnect. Hessel meets Howard and Noblahblah.

Midnight work in Wachtendonk, Germany, Winter 2021

Fast forward more than two years. In the meantime, Sophia is a partner at Noblahblah. Hessel works as SAP Consultant at SOA People in the Netherlands, who run a successful Academy training their own SAP consultants. They are looking to upgrade their soft skills training.

At 18:00 hours, Sophia and Hessel have a catch-up call. In Logistics they say “just in time”: Can she send him an offer for a full-day presentation skills training? By 9:00 the next morning? The iron is hot!

Sophia is up at 4:00 writing the offer. She sends it to me at 7:00. I give my input. It’s in Hessel’s mailbox by 9:00!

The Journey to Nieuwegein

Voilà. A few weeks later, Sophia and I meet Hessel and Alex Bovenschen at SOA People Nieuwegein. Alex is SOA People Board Member and Chief Competence Officer (CCO).

He’s a busy guy, but I will never forget our reception at the SOA People office. He’s standing outside the front door on a cold winter day. He greets us at the door with a smile, a warm and welcoming reception to this company. The people make the brand!

It was the start of a constructive talk. A revised project offer. Some tough price negotiations. And…

OMG! Noblahblah got the assignment to do a pilot training at the upcoming Academy!

Whoooo hooooo!

The alarm goes off and the rebuild works

After a very short night, the classroom fills with future Finance consultants at 9:00. There are no interim presentations that evening, so we have the full attention of the room. A good start.

Oh Happy Noblahblah Day! Our revised training is working. The academicians are engaged. They are listening. Learning. Enjoying. We end the day with the high-energy Noblahblah Pitch Battle. Hessel is there to help celebrate. Nachenthaly sees the progress. Alex is happy. Applause. Smiles. Relief. The rebuild worked!

Since then, Noblahblah has supported 15 SOA People Academies. For each, we continue to refine and tweak our Present to Persuade training, customizing to the needs of the Academy. It’s now a well-oiled machine, that scores high and ends with happy, more persuasive academicians.

Twice a year, we return to the biannual Academy to give the training. Each time we reconnect with alumni who say: “Hey, you lit something that I still use.” Handshakes. Hugs. For Sophia and me, it’s like a coming home.

“When your goal is to have an academy that truly prepares young talents for consultancy life, you cannot NOT offer a presentation skills training – thank you for adding such relevant and essential value to our program… and most importantly, thank you for making our groups smile! Joy is part of the journey too!” says Nachenthaly.

We for sure love that joy- our favorite days each year!

Lessons from the Bootcamp

So we would like to share these Lessons from the Bootcamp that we believe contribute to quality of people development.

Real trust is built in the moment

Clients, and talented students, notice if you freeze or stall. When you adapt visibly you can become stronger, earn credibility and build something valuable for all.

Be relentless on alignment

You may have a library of great techniques, but when they don’t match the client’s culture or goals, they fall flat. Ask, listen, iterate and keep your feet moving.

The long-term commitment pays

When your effort becomes part of people’s core skill set (their first public pitch, their style, their confidence), you become a valued partner.

We’re profoundly grateful to Hessel for the invite and belief in us, to Alex for the trust and to Nachenthaly for the gracious welcome and excellent organization of each Academy. In the meantime, Noblahblah provides a range of training programs to SOA People for their (senior) consultants and group leadership. A wonderful customer and organization with first-class professionals.

When we asked Alex about his investment in strategic Learning and Development, he answered the following:

“Anything of true value never comes easy”. This is a quote he uses in all his presentations and Academy speeches, “because all the SOA People learning programs of which Noblahblah is and has been a solid partner and contributor are not easy to do but when pushing through the value comes in skills and knowledge for all involved,” elaborates Alex.

For Alex, investing in an own developed and executed soft skills development is fundamental for long term customer satisfaction and people personal growth, because: “SOA People customers are simply entitled to the best trained and skilled consultants. Only then we can truly inspire performance of our customers (the SOA People mission) and be a long term trusted advisor.”

 “Noblahblah is a great partner to work with,” says Alex “ because they continuously grow and learn themselves applying it directly while developing and running the training programs with us. Long term partnerships based on a mutual passion for developing people and inspiring their performance are the key. It once started small and has grown and is still growing. Think big, start small and carefully improve based on experience and new knowledge.”

And it all ends happily ever after.

Oh, and Eat More Bananas:  the sample pitch that changed us

So where do the bananas come in. In each Present to Persuade training, the academicians write and give a sample pitch, based on the tooling and theory we provide. The assignment is to pick a topic close to their heart. Something they care deeply about.

So we get many pitches about community service, professional skills, mental health and other serious topics. But one academician rocked us with a surprise.

In the high-pressure moment when he gave his pitch to the group, he paused, scanned the audience, and with a deadpan face said: “Eat more bananas.” Everyone leaned in. Then he launched a logical, emotional, well-structured pitch, anchored by our funnel technique and classical rhetoric.

Eat more bananas is silly but it sticks. Great openings that surprise lead to lasting recall

It was such as persuasive and legendary pitch that we adopted it as our core Noblahblah sample pitch. We’ve since pitched it at dozens of events to hundreds of people as an example of how to open big, land strong and persuade. Eat more bananas!