How To Make A Sales Pitch Like David Ogilvy

Have you read Confessions of an Advertising Man? 


Written back in 1962 by the late David Ogilvy, the little red book distilled all his thoughts and beliefs in good advertising and management. It's impressive how these principles are still very relevant today despite being written decades before the Internet.


One of my favourite chapters contained Ogilvy's thoughts about getting clients, e.g.:


"I always tell prospective clients about the chinks in our armor. I have noticed that when an antique dealer draws my attention to flaws in a piece of furniture, he wins my confidence."


My marketing hero Drayton Bird recently posted a video of Ogilvy on his website.  It was a pitch to Xerox and guess what? Ogilvy pointed out his shortcomings and it made for a very powerful message. 


Watch the video here. Oh and subscribe to Drayton's Helpful Ideas emails. Anyone who can write "If you act like a sheep, you'll get slaughtered" in the subject header will always send emails you'll want to open. 

The Man Who's Seen It All

This post was originally published on my ex-company Synovate's website in September 2009. 

Written by renowned foreign correspondent, writer and editor Anthony Spaeth, it was a tribute to visionary CEO and my boss for 12 years Adrian Chedore, who retired after 30 years in market research.

I'm republishing this piece as it was not only beautifully written, but because it carries so many lessons they don't teach you in business school. More than anyone, Adrian taught me what it meant to be a leader. 

Adrian Chedore, newly arrived in Hong Kong in 1979

Adrian Chedore, a 27-year old slave in the London advertising biz, was downing some beer in a pub when his flat-mate mentioned that his employer, AGB McNair, had a short-term job available in Hong Kong.

“I said, `Sure. How long is it for?’” Chedore recalls. “And he said, `Six months.’

“I think we were on our sixth pint.

         

“Now I happen to have thought that Hong Kong was in the Caribbean – I really did – and six months in the Caribbean sounded like a pretty good idea.

        

“And there were only two applicants for the job anyway.”

         

So on July 11, 1979, with preparation that can only be called minimal – “Actually, I didn’t realise that everyone didn’t speak English in Hong Kong” – Chedore touched down at Kai Tak airport. Three days later, he met a bloke working for one of AGB McNair’s competitors at the Press Club in Wanchai.

“He said, `Adrian, you have no chance of succeeding here. We’re too big. Why don’t you join us?’

         

Chedore chuckles: “If ever there was a better motivator. To be fair, the guy paid for the beers.”

         

A little more than 30 years later, Chedore is retiring as one of the true giants in the market research industry. He and six colleagues created Asia Market Intelligence in 1991, riding the rise of Asia and coming through the Asian financial crisis in glory. After AMI was acquired by Aegis in 2000, Chedore became the global CEO of the company’s research business and insisted the company could be led from Asia rather than Europe or North America. He rebranded the company in 2003 and Synovate was born.

Synovate had US$968 million in revenues in 2008, up from $231 million in 2000. It has offices in 61 countries and over 6,000 employees, but Chedore says the key to its strength is that it’s grown big without growing staid or stuffy.

“When we started AMI we said we’d never employ more than 25 people,” he recalls. “When we sold, it was something like 600 employees. We wanted to keep the feeling of a team. It’s quite soft, this idea, and it’s hard work. But if you can keep that feeling, you can do anything. If you have people who buy it, who don’t have an in-built cynicism. And that kind of cynicism is much less in Asia, particularly Hong Kong, which is such a positive place.”

Chedore, 57, has not only lived through the amazing rise of China and the rest of Asia. As one of its pioneer market researchers, he was the man with his finger on Asia’s pulse. This is the story of the man who saw, and measured, it all.

Chedore likes to tell stories, loves to tell stories – it must be the Welsh blood – and none so fondly as those about his leaving Britain for Asia and his arrival in Hong Kong. “That date is the date my life changed,” he says.

Here are his stories, in his own boisterous, self-deprecating and compelling voice.

“In London, life was so regulated,” he recalls. “You had to get the train to work at a certain time. You had to leave the pub at a certain time because it was going to close. You had to get to the fish and chips shop because it was going to close.

“I get to Hong Kong and there was all this freedom. You ate whenever you wanted, you drank whenever you wanted. It never stopped!

“After six months, I said there were two things I’d never do again. I will never commute to work and I’ll never iron a shirt. (I had discovered Chinese laundries.) And I haven’t ironed a shirt since.”

But Asia in 1979 was far different from the continent we know today. Japan was the only democracy; all the rest of the countries were dictatorships, authoritarian states or, in the case of Hong Kong, a colony. The electronic media was rigidly controlled and the only regional print publications were the Far Eastern Economic Review and the three-year old Asian Wall Street Journal (with a measly circulation of 20,000). China had yet to recover from the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four, and was almost as weird as North Korea is now. Chedore recalls his first trip to Sham Chun (which we now call Shenzhen) in Feb. 1980.

“I went with a good friend who came out to visit. It was classic, wasn’t it? I’d been to Manila and Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. They all had these fascinations: you had your camera out every few seconds. But in Sham Chun, you barely took your camera out. There wasn’t anything.

“It was certainly a very foreign land, really quite alien: basic, backward. It was the strangeness – having everyone look at you like you landed from another planet – and yet it was boring.

“I came back to the reality of Hong Kong and thought, `I don’t have to go back there again.’”

Three months later, Deng Xiaoping declared Shenzhen a special economic zone, changing China, Asia’s and Chedore’s destinies.

“The lack of information in Asia back then was so great we were collecting relatively basic information that other countries would take for granted,” he says. “How many people smoke cigarettes, how many people drink beer? Is this brand considered old or young? It made research easy: it was all new information. Now, if you find something really interesting, it’s probably wrong!

“I was interested in the simple things. In 1979 it was relatively rare to see a boy and girl walking down the street holding hands, let alone kissing. Or a girl not wearing a bra. The emphasis that housewives put in cleanliness in the home. Or family feelings being so intense in Asia. As a marketer, you couldn’t think of a family of 2.3 kids and a dog. Everything was spread over several generations, and that’s how purchasing decisions were made in Asia.”

After a few years getting acquainted with Hong Kong, China and Southeast Asia, Chedore discovered Japan – and an entirely different Asian universe.

“I didn’t start doing research in Japan until the late ‘80s,” he says. “That was when I realized I knew nothing yet about Asia. My confidence zone with Asia was blown apart there.

“I was overwhelmed by how different it was. I was doing work for IBM. IBM would give a guarantee on their products, and that was a negative for the Japanese. For them, you selling me your product is the guarantee. That’s just one example of the Western approach going right up against a brick wall. I seriously considered moving to Japan. ”

But China’s rise kept him in Hong Kong.

“Our first job in China was for Heinz baby food,” he recalls. “The question was: Would government crèches or ordinary mothers pay for a very cheap baby cereal instead of feeding babies congee, or whatever they fed them. We did the research with governments and mothers, and the amazing thing was the answer was predominantly no. Because they couldn’t afford it. That tiny difference in price was too much for the consumer.

“But there was a second amazing result. The tiny percentage of consumers who could afford the difference in price was so large. It was a market. In most places, you say there is a good market if 20% of the people can be reached. In China, a niche market is actually a huge market.

“The rise in prosperity in China is simply mind-boggling,” he says. “When you see people buying a microwave or a washing machine or a car, or even a motorbike – those were elite products in the 1980s. Think of the number of families that are crossing that threshold each year: you’re creating a new country. In fact, the number of consumers crossing that threshold every year is the size of many countries. It’s been an explosion of buying power!”

The threshold for Chedore’s career came with the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, which humbled competitors and made his company only stronger.

“We started AMI in 1991 and by 1996 we probably had six offices, opening around one a year,” he says. “And then this crisis hit, and we were in the middle of the storm. I decided all our competitors were cutting costs, laying off expats – expats were flooding out of Asia – and I decided we’d do the opposite. We would not only carry on as usual but we’d expand, open new offices, maintain all our employees. You see, we had never borrowed any money, never acquired anything, and we did everything out of cash flow.

“And to make a really big statement, we held our yearly conference at the Oriental in Bangkok, which, by the way, we got very cheaply.

“It was a defining moment for AMI. We were lucky, of course: we could make it through. But we came through as the leading agency in Asia. We had loyalty from our staff and customers, and it was an interesting case study in how to weather adversity.

“And I think you can only do that kind of thing in Asia. We need the passion, courage, the fact that people are less cynical or skeptical. We had a team that had worked together a long time, were friends together, and we were determined to get through this thing. It allowed us to leapfrog. To me it was a wonderful moment, the one my coming to Hong Kong was leading to. I came for only six months and now I was staying and committed to Asia.”

Chedore’s next commitment was to Aegis when it purchased AMI in 2001. Under the terms of that deal, Chedore agreed to stay on for three years.

“The CEO of Aegis at the time was Doug Flynn,” he recalls, “and soon after we were acquired, we were sitting by a pool at a conference in Miami. Doug asked me what I was going to do after my three-year contract with the company expired. I said, `I’ll either sit on the beach or run the whole company.’

“He called me a few days later and said, `I can’t wait three years.’”

Chedore was made CEO.

“Then Doug said to me, `When are you going to move to London?’ I said, `I’m not going to.’ He said, `You have to,’ and I said, `No I don’t. Believe me, companies don’t have to be run in that way.’

“I’m very strange in what I believe in management. There’s no headquarters for Synovate. I’m here, the head of human resources is in New York, the CFO is in London, the COO is in Chicago. I believe quite passionately in this. We’re international. We don’t have a nationality. The problem with the hub-and-spoke management system is when Brazil wants to deal with Malaysia, they have to go through London. It’s crazy. Why not let people connect directly without going through the hub?

“Synovate is one brand, one vision, but not a vision dominated by one centre. It all came from my learning in Asia. If you ask a person if he wants to work for a small company or a big one, they usually say they’d prefer a small company. But they also want the benefits of a large company: the resources, the economies of scale. Everybody wants a small company’s culture with the infrastructure of a large company – without the bad bureaucracy, and you have to guard against that.

“That’s what we have at Synovate: We’re the biggest small company in the world. We’ve been by far the fastest growing research company in the world both organically and by acquisition. Which to me means the slightly zany style of management works.”

Chedore will continue to work out of Synovate’s Causeway Bay office through the end of 2009, taking a ten-day break in October for a honeymoon with Bonnie Kwok. (They’ve chosen Tahiti, Chedore says, because it was one of the most difficult destinations to get to.) Then he’s going to enjoy not working for a while, at home in Stanley and at the diving resort he owns in Puerto Galera, the Philippines.

“I’ve been working 36 years,” he says, “and as everyone knows, in Asia you pack in two years of work for every calendar year. With 30 of those 36 years in Asia, I reckon I’ve been working 66 years!

“I came to Hong Kong for six months in 1979 and stayed for 30 years. I’m still waiting for my ticket back. I said I’d run Synovate for three years, just to get it started. That was eight years ago.

“I’m not very good at keeping to my timetables.”

Ladies, get a grip: What your handshake says about you

Recently, my firm was looking to hire a new associate, and several candidates came in to interview.

Although I vaguely remembered the applicants, one man in particular stood out in my mind.

He was friendly, made eye contact, smiled and gave me a nice, firm handshake when we met.

He also bid me goodbye and thanked me when he left even though I clearly had no decision-making capability in the hiring process.

After several weeks, it was announced that a choice had been made and the new associate would be starting on Monday. 

I wasn't surprised to see the man who had made such a good impression on me walk through the door that Monday. Once again, he introduced himself with a friendly smile, eye contact, and that same firm handshake.

I rarely meet a man who doesn't have a firm grip when shaking hands, but there have been a few. And, in my experience, it is more common to receive a limp hand from a woman.

Ladies, grab a hold! You are strong, independent and successful! Don't undermine yourself with a dainty grip.

The handshake is meant to be a gesture of trust and camaraderie. It's used as a means to put two people on equal ground. A wimpy handshake lacks confidence and gives the impression that the last thing you want to do is shake hands with this person.

However, the strength of the grip isn't the only thing that makes the handshake memorable. Timing and additional body language also contribute to the overall message.

Timing: Some people pull away almost immediately like they don't have time for pleasantries. Other people strong-arm you as if they are trying to make a point and assert themselves.

To me, the perfect handshake is firm, but not a death-grip. It lasts about 1.5 seconds, or the amount of time it takes to get through the "Hi, nice to meet you" introduction. It lets the recipient know that their time is valued and respected.

Body language: Studies have shown that 93% of communication is non-verbal. In other words, more is being communicated through your body language than through the actual words coming out of your mouth.

So smile! You may have some very serious business to discuss, but a smile isn't going to make the task at hand any less serious, and it might even help things run smoother.

Make eye contact. Not making eye contact makes you look dodgy, like you're trying to hide something -- never a good vibe to send to a potential business contact. 

And, lastly, take a cue from the person with whom you are trying to communicate. Different people have different comfort zones when it comes to physical contact and proximity, so try to be aware of their reactions and body language also.

These few extra things combined with a solid, firm handshake show the other person that you are genuinely interested in what they have to say and can leave a positive and lasting first impression.

Jennifer Stuart is a smart 26 year old professional in Chicago. She has a BA in Musical Theater and an MA in PR and Advertising. You can follow her thoughts on musical theater, health and fitness at www.twitter.com/jenstuart27.

Learn To Sip A Scotch And Other Lessons I Learned From A Great Woman

I was 21 years old, mixing and mingling with professionals for the first time.

Power suits and poppycock in rich oak-lined drawing rooms. And cocktails. I’m sure I ordered something silly and frilly and delicious.

My boss Andrea ordered a scotch. 

I can picture nothing about the place, or the other people, or the music, or the conversation but I can see with pitch-perfect clarity Andrea sitting back with a scotch. She owned the place as she owns that memory. 

I asked something typical like, “Wow, you drink that by itself????”

Andrea just smiled patiently and said, “Learn to sip a scotch.” At that moment, she made a lasting impression.

How dare I suggest that one drink defines you? 

You’re right, of course you are. One drink doesn’t define you but let’s put it into context. 

In business, every moment, every second, you are making a first impression.

Our choices define us: What we say and what we don’t, how we act and how we react, even down to what we choose to drink. 

One poor choice can negate a hundred outstanding ones.

Andrea was my first boss and I thank the business gods for her. She gently taught me lessons, which was a lesson in itself. 

We worked for a small online information provider in Texas and I was dealing with the public for the first time. I made mistakes and had much to learn. 

Andrea never humiliated me when I was wrong. She always reminded me that she had my back even while letting me know that I had, in fact, made a wrong decision. 

She taught me to troubleshoot patiently; identify solutions; soothe ruffled feathers; close a deal. And she taught me other invaluable things too. 

 

Impressions are burned on the brain. If you are dancing on the bar, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve done for your company, you’re still the chick that danced on the bar.

And if you order a piña colada served in a pineapple, you will never be considered savvy and sophisticated. Never.

Those fruity, sassy, suggestively monikered discount cocktails for a discount crowd like the White Chocolate Martini, the Lemon Meringue, or the Sweet Release originated during Prohibition to mask the flavor of low-quality bootleg alcohol. Low quality being the operative phrase here.

It’s not about alcohol. It’s about awareness. Drink what you want: Wine, beer, the pineapple foo-foo concoction or nothing at all. 

But be aware of what it says about you. Distinguish yourself. Educate yourself. 

Scotch is an informed choice. An apple martini is not. 

Speak to your choices and let them speak for you.


Felicia Yonter is a business development professional, butterfly, news junkie, and planner of open-invention food outings. You can follow her mental meanderings at www.twitter.com/feliciacago 

When A Colleague Has Cancer: What To Say, Do And Give

Today is World Cancer Day. As a survivor (cervical cancer in 2004) I'm always asked for advice by panicked people when their work colleagues are stricken by the disease. What do you say and do? What presents are appropriate? What if you're afraid to visit them in the hospital because you can't handle it?


Cancer is the 300-pound gorilla in the room that nobody wants to talk about, least of all in the office. And that's perfectly understandable. Suffering and death aren't the most uplifting topics for water cooler chat. Being reminded of your own mortality isn't inspiring either. 


As a survivor, the reactions of colleagues to your condition are worthy of a psychological study. I had a full range of them: Disbelief, genuine concern and a strong desire to help; disbelief mixed with relief that they weren't the ones who had it; curiosity to the point of rubbernecking about how cancer looks like; sheer avoidance masking fear that they'd be next; commiseration that was a box to be briskly ticked on a laundry list of guilt. 


You gain a privileged view of the human psyche when you have cancer. Although it wasn't the best way to learn, I now know people on a deeper level because of what I went through.


But I digress. What would a cancer-stricken colleague truly appreciate from you? Here's a list of suggestions based on my experience:


Practical gestures that help with the daily business of life. A cancer patient will inevitably be worrying about the work sitting on the desk, invoices that need signing, emails that need to go out. Put together a list and assign people to take over each task. Tell the patient it's all being dealt with. It's one less worry for the battle ahead.


If you're close to the patient, personal gestures are also hugely appreciated. Cook up a batch of meals for the family and freeze them -- I can assure you there's no time or desire to cook. Pitch in every now and then to walk the dog or pick up the children. Anything that helps with the daily routine is a tremendous gift.


Flowers are fine unless there's a deluge of them. I received so many bouquets and floral arrangements the nurses at the Adventist Hospital thought I was the wife of a triad boss (Hong Kong's mafia). Although lovely, their scent -- especially after a few days, when the flowers ripened - made me queasy and all of them were donated to the chapel. 


Cancer patients have a heightened sense of smell when they're ill. A faint trace of perfume can bring about nausea. So choose your bouquets with care: No lilies or roses or anything that can overpower with scent. And if you're visiting, go easy on the Prada perfume. Better yet, wear no fragrance at all.


Choose reading material that is not too frivolous or too gloomy. I got a boatload of books and magazines in the hospital nearly daily. The chirpy people who were secretly afraid of getting cancer gave me Bergdorf Blondes and celebrity magazines. The people who were relieved they didn't get cancer gave me books that talked about accepting death calmly. I can tell you with completely authority that these publications were left unread.


When you've got cancer, you're really not interested in Jessica Simpson's fluctuating weight. You're worried about the next invasive procedure. And as you're fighting something that could potentially kill you, the last thing you want is a suggestion, no matter how well meant, that you may not make it. You'll deal with that with your doctors. You don't need to read it in a book.


So what strikes a good balance? Short books you can zip through with plots than can be picked up quickly after a nap are best. I recommend something like e by Matt Beaumont. The story of a UK ad agency told entirely through emails, it's short and wickedly funny without being frivolous.


For myself at least, I found books tedious. Especially long biographies because I dropped off to sleep every now and then from medication. I preferred movies. 


One of the best gifts I received was a portable DVD player with headphones. I watched M*A*S*H, Ab Fab, Fawlty Towers (a patient favourite, it was constantly borrowed) and any series I could get my hands on. When I was released from the hospital to recuperate at home, I watched all the James Bond movies ever made. 


If your colleague is sharing a hospital room with another patient and there's only one television, do realise that fights for TV channels and remote controls do happen. So a personal DVD player with headphones will make your colleague the envy of the entire cancer floor.


Schedule visits for the patient, not for you. Cancer is not pretty. Your colleague is not used to being seen in a hospital gown, at his or her worst. There are tubes, soiled linens and other unspeakable things to conceal. 


Ask when it's convenient for you to visit and have a chat. I was absolutely stunned to have people telling me when it fit their diary to visit instead of asking me when I'd like to have them over.


Be respectful of the patient and ask. Keep the visit short and sweet. If you sense  the patient's getting tired, it's time to go.


Express sympathy, support and hope without lecturing. Back then, I couldn't count how many well-meaning people would shriek at me in bed: "Think positive! You must think positive!" 


All I thought about was extracting the IV needles in my hand and plunging them into their eyeballs like in a John Woo movie. Think positive? You think positive when you're lying in bed with five tubes coming out of you and a prognosis that has you thinking of caskets.


Equally, the morose statement that got my goat was "Now, now, everything happens for a reason." Any noble reason behind my current sorry state of affairs isn't comforting given that I'm suffering. If I'm being groomed for sainthood, I'd really rather do it in a less painful way.


I was grateful whenever a colleague would come in and kick off the conversation with humour. "Now see what happens when you're out of the office? A complete, utter shambles, that's what." 


I also liked people who gracefully expressed hope in a tomorrow where my recovery was not an option, but a certainty. One of the best was a conspiratorial "When you're done with this, there's a fab new restaurant we should try. But why even wait? I've brought the menu, you choose what you want and I'll smuggle it in. Don't tell your doctor. It'll be our secret." 


Let me tell you, looking at Alain Ducasse's menu for Spoon even when you have no appetite sure beats dreading hospital food. It reminded me that I was once a normal girl who dressed up and went out to dinner. And that one day I would do it again.


Give a blanket. Hands down, it's the best gift you can give. Hospital linen is sterilised, bleached and starched to within an inch of its life. It's scratchy and depressing.


I started tolerating hospital linens the minute Daphne's quilt arrived from Inda. My friend Daphne Ghesquiere moved to Delhi with her husband a year or two before, and when she heard about my illness she immediately sent through Proust (which I didn't read as I fell asleep so much) and a blue quilt. 


In her note she said "Pardon the smell if it's a bit strong." I didn't at all. In fact it's what I loved most about the quilt. It smelled like soil and rain and cumin and the inside of the wooden Indian cabinets I had at home. It smelled like life captured in rough cotton. The life I badly wanted to hold on to, and that I swore I would live better if I ever got out of that hospital.


The quilt kept me warm during those moments of intolerable, teeth-chattering cold. The quilt enveloped me, shut out my fears. And whenever I drew it up I felt, from across the oceans, Daphne's firm embrace.

Five Solid Ways Not To Get Promoted

A promotion is more than just a reward for exemplary work. It's also a gamble the company's placing on you. 


Management is betting that you're going to be in the leadership ranks one day. A promotion is therefore recognition of your potential, and the eventual returns the company gains to reap from your increased value and contribution.


What makes a person promotable? I'll answer it the other way by enumerating five not-so-obvious actions and behaviours that have cost otherwise talented and promising individuals their promotions:


Kicking up problems instead of solving them. Nothing is more painful than direct reports who add to a boss' problems instead of decreasing them. No matter how good you are functionally at your job, it marks you as a bystander, not a firefighter when things go wrong.


How to avoid this: With every problem you present to your boss, think of three solutions he or she can choose from. It doesn't matter how lame you think they are. You're actively being part of the solution instead of the problem.


Whenever I was hiring, I'd determine if the candidate was a problem-solver by asking the sheep question. The practice started when I was in sheep-less Hong Kong because it really happened. 


A client called up one day and was directed to Marketing with his urgent query: "I've got a shoot tomorrow and need a sheep. Can you get me one?" 


The ones who say "Sorry, we don't have any" are shown the door.


The ones I've hired have come up with answers like "I'll call the Agriculture & Fisheries Department to find out if they've got one. Let me get back to you." Funnily enough they're the ones who've also progressed in their careers because nothing fazes them.


Being universally disliked. There's a reason team playing is emphasised so much in job descriptions. Leaders rely on their teams to implement and execute, and if the team dislikes the leader, work doesn't get done. Brutally put, people will do things for you if they like you.


So get feedback and listen to it, no matter how difficult. Ask colleagues what you can do for them before demanding that they do something for you. And network. 


The most powerful leaders are plugged into their organisations and loved by all. It takes them one friendly phone call, instead of 200 emails, to get something done. The day you can pick up a phone and defuse a major conflict is the day you know you're a leader.


Not treating the company's money as your own. A company exists to make a profit. It's amazing how many career-minded gals are oblivious to this. It's not good enough to be technically proficient at your job. How much money do you add or subtract everyday?


If you don't make money for the company, like being in sales, then save the company money. I'm not talking about using less Post-it notes. Rather, do you have bright ideas to lower electricity consumption, supply expenses and other overheads? If you have to communicate with colleagues abroad, can you use Skype instead of regular IDD to lower telephone bills? What other departmental expenses can be trimmed without affecting productivity?


Promotable people look at tough times as opportunities for them to shine. And one way they do it is by making sure the bottom line is as much their responsibility as the company's.


Being a play-it-safer. Do you chafe and mutter when change occurs, because it will disrupt your comfortable routine? Do you always do things the way they're done, because that's the way they've always been done? Do you avoid putting your hand up for new responsibilities because they're not part of your job and besides, you're not getting paid for it? 


If you're afraid of risk, you're simply not cut out for leadership. Promotable people always look at ways they can expand their impact and influence on an organisation even though at times there's no rhyme, reason or obvious financial benefit. 


What it does however is strategically place their names on the managerial list of can-do people, the list that is usually looked at when the topic of succession management is raised.


Not asking. That's right. Not asking. In all the years I've managed people, I've noticed one interesting gender difference.


Men always ask for a promotion even if they're outrageously unqualified. In fact the more outrageously unqualified they are, the more imaginative they are in reasons why they should be promoted, what titles they want and what salaries they should be paid. And if they get laughed at in their faces? They shrug it off, go for a drink and try again in six months. 


Women, on the other hand, never ask. They wait. They toil in obscurity, expect their good deeds to be noticed and hope that the boss sees. The problem is the boss doesn't always see. Working for a promotion is not like completing your homework so you get a gold star pinned to your blouse. You need to ask. 


After all, what's the worst that can happen? The boss says no. It's not the first time you've heard 'no' in your life, have you? The world won't explode and your life won't end.


Instead, ask what goals you two can set so you are within reach of the promotion. Then waltz off, buy a pair of killer shoes and have a glass of champagne. Work your ass off, hit those goals, then ask again in six months. 


If the boys can ask, so can you.

How To Make An Impromptu Speech, Taylor Swift Style

At some point or another in life, you're going to have to make an impromptu speech. Weddings, company awards ceremonies, heck, even business dinners: the request to say 'a few words' can be traumatic unless you're off-the-cuff eloquent which most of us aren't. 


Contrast these two videos of acceptance speeches. The first is of Taylor Swift at last Sunday's Grammys. She won Best Country Album and Album of the Year.



Now here's Gwyneth Paltrow's famous acceptance speech at the 1999 Oscars, when she won Best Actress for Shakespeare in Love. (Interestingly the video is not available for embedding, but at least the link exists.)


Spotted the difference? We thought so. Some do's and don'ts that might help the next time you're put in the spotlight and urged to 'say a few words':


Make sure they're really few. A good acceptance speech is short, witty and memorable. Three minutes are plenty good. Rambling on and on for 10 minutes to thank your parents, lawyer and dog will make the audience want to slit their wrists. Get on with it and get off the stage.


Prepare if you've got even the faintest chance of speaking. Experienced speakers always have a few paragraphs or two of old material that they can churn up and customise for the occasion. If you're nominated for an Oscar like good old Gwynnie, the least you can do is rehearse a short, tasteful acceptance speech. It's so not a good look to be making it up on stage.


Don't be emotional. Blubbering doesn't only make you incoherent, it makes people in the audience cringe. I'd offer Judi Dench some serious money to know what was going through her mind as she was listening to Gwyneth's monologue -- judging by the horrified look on her face it would be worth it.


Add a personal detail or two to make your speech memorable. Kick off your speech with a personal detail and it perks up everyone's ear. People like a good story. Taylor was clever in recounting second grade singing contests and being in the Grammys one day. Experienced speakers can take a detail from the occasion and elaborate on it. The real pros can give that detail a humorous twist and elicit laughter from the audience. Take notes on a napkin if you have to.


Wit works wonders. The best impromptu speakers I've heard were not afraid to gently mock themselves, especially if they were recipients of significant honours. There's something refreshing about a person who doesn't take himself too seriously. I think of it as a formula: 95% business + 5% winking back at yourself. It's almost always irresistible. And makes your audience want you to come back and 'say a few words' next time.


Absolutely lost for words? Then make it really brief, cut to the chase and exit while the welcome mat's still rolled out. "No vocabulary can adequately express my gratitude to you all tonight. Luckily I'm a woman of few words and these two, I hope, will suffice for now: Thank you."