Are you in Sales? Don't answer "No" too quickly.

Someone recently wrote that my site and work seems to be focused on sales professionals and wondered if my ideas would apply to a technical group. The concern was that an internal group in the organization was not a "sales" group. Your department may not have a title that has the word "Sales" in it, but I bet you are in sales. Hear me out.

Do you ever present to executives to gain their approval for a project?
Do you present monthly financial figures and recommendations for managers to approve?
Do you teach others procedures or skills that you want them to use on the job?
Do you hold regular update meetings to keep everyone on the team motivated towards the goals?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these four questions, you are in sales.

In all of the cases above, you are "selling" your ideas to others inside your organization. You want them to "buy" your viewpoint or recommendations and take action. So you should be working to make your PowerPoint presentations as effective as possible so that your projects get approved, recommendations implemented and colleagues motivated to be successful. If you've been wondering if your internal group could benefit from a Think Outside The Slide workshop, the answer is definitely "Yes".