Unexpected Lessons from the World Series of Poker (WSOP)

Playing poker is a lot like giving a demo.  In both events, you need both technical knowledge and people skills.  You need to know the math and probabilities in poker, just as you need to know your product’s technical aspects.  And you need to know how to read your opponents and their tendencies, like you need to know your audience’s likes and read their reactions.   In both ‘games’ you need to have a plan of action, as well as the ability to adapt and adjust on the fly.  A few years back, I played at the WSOP and had the pleasure of sitting next to an all time poker great, Barry Greenstein.  Over several hours, I got to pick his brain about the game and here are a couple of unexpected lessons I learned and how you they can applied them to our profession as an SC.

1. It takes endurance to win.  Barry postulated that no one over the age of 50 will ever win the WSOP main event again due to the tremendous endurance required to outlast the giant player fields today.  The 2018 champion John Cynn defeated 7,873 other players over the course of 10 days that culminated in a grueling 10 hour heads up battle for the championship.  It can be quite taxing to have all eyes on you for an all day demo presentation.  You have to be on your game physically and mentally the whole time.  Not only do you, the presenter, have to have endurance, but you are asking your audience to sit through hours of screens as well.  Any little mini mental breaks can go a long way.  One way to break things up a bit is to turn let the prospect drive the demo for a bit.  It takes the focus off of you for a bit and keeps the audience engaged.
2. Focus where it matters.   In a big poker tournament like the ones at the WSOP, it’s physically impossible to stay completely focused the 100% of the time.  Greenstein’s told me that when he is in a hand, he is 100% switched on, but when he is not in a hand, he intentionally rested his mind.  The idea here is to focus your energy on the main ideas you want them to get across.  After all, they will only remember a fraction of what you say.  Jack Malcolm wrote a great post titled “How Much of Your Presentation Will they Remember?” where he said” Researchers once ran a test to measure how much of a presenter’s message sticks in the minds of their audience. They found that immediately after a 10-minute presentation, listeners only remembered 50% of what was said. By the next day that had dropped to 25%, and a week later it was 10%.”  Malcolm goes on to use the acronym SAVER (Stories, Analogies, Visuals, Examples, Repetition) to describe a great method to help you focus your presentation where it matters most.
3. The best hand doesn’t always win.  In poker a trash hand with a well crafted bluff can win just as big of a pot as a big hand that goes to showdown.  For bluffs to be successful though, they have to tell a compelling story.  Sometimes we are competing in a deal against a product that is functionally or technically superior on paper.  These opportunities are where good SC’s really make their cheddar because they can craft a solution that conveys a compelling vision to their prospect regardless of product.

To reword a famous quote from WSOP Champion Tom McEvoy, who said “…Poker is not a card game with people, it is a people game with cards,” I say that Sales Consulting is not software presentations with people, but people presentations with software.