When your product is excellent - when quality, reliability, and support already rank high - the real difference between winning and losing increasingly lives in relationships, influence, and insight.

Last week, I had the honor of leading a workshop with the leadership team at John Deere in Moline. The mission was clear: help Deere leaders coach their distributors to shift from surface-level vendor relationships to deep, strategic partnerships inside their customers’ organizations.

A large and growing body of B2B insight backs this imperative. The authors of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer taught us that top-performing teams don’t just sell. They challenge thinking, activate hidden influencers, and build consensus in complex decision environments.

📌 Why This Matters Now

1. Complexity is rising Decisions aren’t made in isolation anymore. Finance, operations, safety, compliance, sustainability - all have a voice. If a distributor interacts only with the familiar...

Team presentations involve a lot of different personalities with varying levels of confidence and public speaking experience.

As individuals you may have a few seasoned presenters, but bring them together as a team, and all kinds of questions arise: How do we present as a team? Who starts and who ends a team presentation? How do we transition from one presenter to the next presenter so that it's seamless? And who fields questions from the audience?

Here are some tips to make your next team presentation smooth and effective:

1. Have your strongest speaker kick things off. The same goes for the last speaker. Place the experts in the middle. This is called "bookending" your experts.

2. Ensure you have a cohesive message. Too many messages crammed into a single presentation can confuse the audience. You can avoid this by setting clear goals up front and determining the key talking points.

3. Each presentation (and answer given in the Q&A) should have a clear beginning, middle, and end...