Presentation Project

Presentation Evaluation Rubric

Name of Presenter: Joseph McDonald

Your Name: Joseph McDonald

	Missing or lacking	Meets the minimum but could be improved	Excellent
Is there a logical flow and sequence of content? How could it be improved?			Problem, Solution, & request of the audience
Does the presenter anticipate questions and answer them in the right place? At what points did you have questions that were not answered?			I tried to Anticipate questions and answer them. It's hard to gauge non-interactively
Did the presenter grab your attention in the first 30-60 seconds?			With the busy family conversation
Did the presenter ask questions and spark your curiosity?		Probably could have done a little better.
Did the presenter set the context with a concise explanation? Is it clear what the presenter is trying to share?			Very clear.
Did the presenter validate any claims?			This is kind of NA. I plan to validate once I get the venture capital.
Did the presenter avoid inconsistencies and errors, typos and unbelievable claims?			NO
How well did the presenter avoid clutter?			Pretty well
What did the presenter do to ensure readability?			Large Clean font type.
Did the presenter say it, and then show it or did he/she read the slides?

I did my presentation project on a venture capital project that I have thought about for some time. Our economy is now driving toward more and more service oriented jobs. In order to give the people what they want and be successful one must supply what is demanded. In general people in the U.S. need to eat better and spend more time with their families. So, I think that if Americans are offered a convenient and affordable solution to help them with these to shortcommings, they will take it. It's also important to believe in what you are doing for a living and I believe in this.

It was very helpful reviewing some of my fellow students presentations. I thought I was finished a couple of weeks ahead of time, but after watching other presentations I made many changes to my presentation.

Below is the link to my presentation online.
http://www.screencast.com/users/JoeyMcDonald/folders/Default/media/8dbc2ee3-9066-4b2c-8178-54a90a08de10

Tutorial 2: Excel in the Real World

College teaches many things. So many of them seem to be conceptual and quite frankly not applicable to a true professional business person. However, there are some that are very useful. The class on computing in business introduces some key concepts that are essential for succeeding in the real world. Excel has quickly become a staple for business people today. This tutorial below is an example of how excel can allow you to position yourself above peers.

I have been in sales for many years but I recently started a new job. My new boss wanted to know more about my activity than any boss I'd ever had. At first he just wanted to know major wins and losses, then it moved into letting him know what actions had been taken on our team initiatives. Before I knew it I was sending him information on the previous week's sales activities, major wins & losses, the coming week's schedule, and other general updates. It was taking me hours to answer him in a variety of formats. Something had to change.

So I took inventory of all the different information the boss was asking me to report on and the various weekly conversations we'd had. Then I produced a very simple spreadsheet to track all of the information he was looking for, in one place.

Below is step by step instructions and explanation of  the different fields in the report.

For starters the report is assigned to the salesman, territory, and date. I set it up so that the dates in the body automatically populate from the date entered on top.

The Date initiated, Customer engaged, Subject and Description fields can be used later to track progress. The subject field is meant for sales initiative. It will usually contain a manufacturer name, new product, or new service that is being promoted. The description is typically the customer individual name and/or position, their reaction, and next action planned (dead-end or follow-up).

The Wins/Losses fields can be used to report on any major wins and losses of the week. I use this field for any win or loss over $20,000 or any significant accomplishment that will eventually result in wins.

After using this report a few weeks I new it was missing something. Their was always something more that didn't really fit in the report. Therefore I made a place for comments or "General Territory Update" field. I use this to report on industry trends, customer changes, impacts from competitors and other various information.

As I was getting to know my new boss it semmed like he was frequently asking where I was. So, I fill in the Schedule portion of the report with the coming week's schedule to save us both time and phone minutes.

So every week I'm filling in this report, my boss is thrilled and leaving me alone. After a few months I realized that I am quickly building a ton of useful data that is just sitting on my hard drive. Consequently I created the Master Sales Database to track all of the sales activity for my territory. By a simple copy function from my territory update spreadsheets and paste to the Master Database I am able to update the report with little effort. I also added a complete column for filtering purposes.

To mine the data for various purposes I applied a filter to the spreadsheet. I use several different filters for different reporting functions. For example, as I plan my sales calls I filter by customer and completed columns to see what I need to follow-up on with my customers. So I limit the possibility of forgetting or "dropping the ball" on.

Throughout the year our sales team meets with various manufacturers to make plans for promoting products to various customers. Typically the manufacturer and salesman are great out of the gate. Major targets are presented to and some marginal success is acheived. Unfortunatly, busy schedules typically kill the persistent activity required to be truely successful.

So here I am with all of this information in one spot just waiting to be used. Once again by copying and pasteing I created a tool to report to the manufacturers. After our initial plans I report activity quarterly to my boss and the manufacturers on the spreadsheet below.

I am the only sales representative in my field that does this for my manufacturers. Because of this the manufacturers that I work with help ensure my success. Many give me the best price and other useful information simply because my quarterly update specifically tells them the work that I am doing to sell their products.

 
Today's salesperson is constantly bombarded with customer requests, management tasks, and many other demands. By just managing the kaos, most salespeople end up jumping from task to task and never accomplishing anything. What started as a time cutting excercise to report to my boss, now separates me above my peers with my boss and above my competition with manufacturers.

So college students pay Attention! You never know when one of those UF professors are going to teach a principle that will give you that edge you need among today's professionsals.

All Screen Shots were created and supplied by Joey McDonald in February of 2010.

Excel Project

Average of PctIncreaseHR	Gender
Subject Age	F	M	Grand Total
20-29	89.3%	89.3%	89.3%
30-39	90.0%	90.8%	90.4%
40-49	90.3%	90.6%	90.5%
Grand Total	89.8%	90.2%	90.0%

In today's business world Excel is the norm. I constantly utilize Excel to create reports for both activities and sales numbers. I have been in inside and outside sales for the last 8 years of my career. As I have developed as a professional I constantly find new ways to utilize Excel. As an inside sales person I began using Excel to track bid results for daily quotes that I submitted to my various customers. By tracking what price won the business on a simple spreadsheet I was able to improve sales results. As an outside salesperson I now use spreadsheets to track daily sales activities to report to management and track goals.


So, I have been using Excel for years and consider myself pretty spreadsheet proficient. That being said this lesson was very helpful. This self proclaimed Excel veteran picked up several new practices that will make my like easier. Specifically the functions portion was very helpful. Using the “IF” function for comparing values will be very helpful in tracking sales goals in my current spreadsheets. Another helpful hint I picked up is using the “$” to make a cell absolute.


So all in all I found this project very applicable to the business world today. I enjoyed the lesson and know that some of the things I learned will make my like easier.