Let's Talk Communication
"Building Your Consulting Skillset"
Yo! CJ here from the CJ & The Duke podcast, back for issue #4 of ServiceNow Success w/CJ and today we’re starting a series on building your Consulting skillset. Whether your official job title is consultant or not, we can all benefit from borrowing a few of the techniques that good consultants use to make their clients happy.
The first and maybe most important skill that a good consultant has is communication. Being able to express your value proposition to your stakeholders, champions, executives well is a game changing skill that separates the good from the great. As consultants, we often forget that often we’re not hired immediately for our technical skill. A lot of my projects don’t have an internal technical lead with the skills to judge my proficiency with the platform. Instead we are hired based on the way we engage with others, the way we convey information, and the way we articulate back the client’s problem and communicate our ability to solve it.
So how do we do that? Here are a few tips that have served me well.
Know your audience. Who is your audience? Is it technical or executive? If you’re in the Boardroom, drop the jargon and speak to the value proposition of ServiceNow and address the high-level problems they’ve identified with high-level solutions. These folks aren’t there to learn the difference between a business rule and a script include. They’re there answer one specific question: How will you make a difference to them?
However, if this is a technical screening, go heavy on the details. Talk in-depth about the project, the code, the inflection points, the novel solutions. Go deep and be specific. Seriously…BE SPECIFIC.
I’ve interviewed a number of folks and nothing annoys me more than trying to get more details and more specificity and the interviewee is staying at the surface level. If I ask for details and you give me surface, you’re convincing me that surface is the extent of your knowledge.Listen Actively / Converse Actively. People convey a lot of information during a conversation if you know where to look. Pay attention as you’re talking, specifically to the flow of the conversation. Is the other person making eye contact? Are they smiling or nodding when you make a point? Are they following on when you leave a pause? Are they mirroring your body language, voice intonation, major conversation points?
Now note how many of these things you’re doing in your next conversation. If you’re not signaling interest with a smile or nod, if you’re not able to fill a pause with something relevant, if you’re changing the subject rather than continuing the flow of the conversation, you’re signaling your lack of interest in what the person is saying and you’re losing your audience.
It’s a lot easier to keep the audience than to get them re-engaged once lost. Stay active in the conversation and you can keep the other party receptive to your ask.Body Language / Intonation / Demeanor - Excitement is infectious. Pleasantness is inviting. Engagement is returned.
When communicating in person avoid body language cues that signal disinterest, guardedness, or uncertainty. Don’t cross your arms across your chest. Sit up straight and/or lean slightly towards the speaker. Avoid fidgeting.
When it’s your turn to talk - let the excitement show. You love this product, right? Make them love it too. If you can’t do that, at least ensure they walk away knowing you are passionate and excited about the platform, their problem, and helping them succeed. One easy way to do that is to draw a comparison to their current problem with a past problem that you’ve solved. Talk about how it relates, how you enjoyed solving it, and how the skills you build during that project would translate to their own.
Speak with authority and vary the tone of your voice to keep the audience engaged. A monotone voice is the death of any conversation. In a world where there is so much to steal your attention, you have to convince people to stay focused on you. Use your voice as a tool in that fight.
Inject rhetorical questions to wake up anyone starting to tune out. I love rhetorical questions because they trick the brain. I’m talking to myself but your brain thinks I’m talking to you because I asked a question - so it perks up and pays more attention. That’s what you want, right?Bonus Point - BE CLEAR. - None of the above matters if you mumble. If you speak in circles. If you struggle to articulate a point. Thankfully, there’s an easy solution to this problem - Practice. Know your points. Rehearse your points. WRITE ABOUT YOUR POINTS.
I was listening to a podcast and the person being interviewed underscored this as his all-time favorite communications hack. He writes about what he talks about in interviews beforehand. A lot. So once he’s in the chair, he’s recounting instead of creating. The points just flow and get recombined on the fly to fit the situation.
If you’re giving a big presentation - blog incessantly about it. Or diary incessantly about it. Write about every angle, about every nuance. Then, when you’re in the room where it happens, talk from the perspective of expertise that you just established for yourself.
Now, you can be clear. Now, your points aren’t on the spot, they’re well rehearsed. Now, you’re recounting instead of creating because you’ve practiced it beforehand. Because you can speak clearly on the topic, you can now speak with authority. From here, the rest just falls into place.
I hope these tips helped you as much as they’ve helped me.
Till next time - May all your meetings be productive and your code be bug-free.
CJ
There’s so much good ServiceNow content in the ecosystem, it’s really hard to shout it all out. But here are 3 things that caught my attention since the last issue.
🔥 Status Reports! The Hotness that you didn’t know you needed but all of your stakeholders do! Read Stephanie Morillo’s take on how to make them bigger and deffer.
🔥 ServiceNow Developer Hero Ashley Snyder - 2021 DevMVP & current ServiceNow Product Manager Ashley Snyder talks about the hurdles that women face entering IT, the value of writing in the learning process, and what you can do to get involved in the ecosystem.
🔥 Update Set or Batch - which is best? Scott dives into this debate with numbers and scenario-based insight that adds a lot to the conversation.
In Episode 60, The Duke and I talk about Knowledge! I’m super excited to be returning to in-person Knowledge after two years of pandemic-infused life. And with the staggered time and location-based Knowledge format, watching folks experience Knowledge in real-time at The Hague and in NYC while I wait my turn in Vegas, is just increasing the FOMO!
There are so many things that I miss, the Keynote, the networking and fellowship, the excitement and electricity…those damn chimes to let you know you need to hurry! 😂 I can’t wait to sit in on a breakout session and listen to someone talk ServiceNow to a room full of people and think to myself…these are my people and this is where I belong. Gawd, I miss Knowledge.
If you’re going to be at Knowledge Vegas and want to meet up - hit me up on LinkedIn. There are so many people I’ve talked to virtually over the last two years and I can’t wait to meet you all in person. The only thing that’s missing is the Hackathon. But why wait for a Hackathon anyway?
#BuildSomethingNOW, right? I did!
One of the biggest pain points of Knowledge for me is contact sharing. Business cards are standard but they mostly end up in a stack with no follow up. So I sought to create something that was both simple but solved this problem - and so Connexxion was born!
It’s a simple custom app that’s built to take advantage of the ServiceNow mobile app. Enter first name, last name, email address.
Once you submit, a custom email gets sent to your new Connexxion, with all of your ‘enhanced’ contact details like podcasts, newsletters, LinkedIn, etc:
Once received, your Connexxion can either email you back with their details or click a link that allows them to create their own custom card and send it back (work in progress). I’ll share a video of this on my Twitter feed soon but I took my own advice to #BuildSomethingNOW and I think it turned out great.
Shout out to Mike Bahr for his MEGA app that helped create the beautiful email. (Click through for a demo of his app)
Did you already #BuildSomethingNOW? Share it! Hashtag it! Tag me! It doesn’t have to be a big project, it doesn’t have to be pretty, hell, it doesn’t even have to work - just Get Started, #BuildSomethingNOW, and let’s grow together.
I guarantee you’ll be happy that you did.
If you have a problem, want to talk shop, or need a ServiceNow Consultant - hit me up.
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