S& SPEAKERS & CE CONTINUING EDUCATION CONNECTING RESOURCES

By: Tamara A. McCullough

Marketing expert, professional speaker, and former buyer Shawna Suckow may not be a juggler or magician as she points out, but she is a woman of many talents. She was able to take her 20+ years as a successful buyer and parlay it into a whole new career as an elite keynote speaker, where she takes her expertise in marketing and sales to present to audiences all across the globe. Shawna focuses on authenticity and realness to connect to her audiences. This helps them better connect to her to take more away from her presentations. For a better understanding of Shawna’s personable, funny and engaging style, it’s helpful to take a closer look into her background.

Buying was Shawna’s first job out of college. “I kinda got thrown into the hospitality industry as a planner, and I did that for 20 years.”

Over the years, Shawna started noticing vendors’ habits when it came to making sales. “I was sold at by vendors all the time, constantly sold at and marketed at because they wanted me to buy.”

There were certain commonalities that Shawna and other buyers noticed that wasn’t helping the buyer-seller relationship.

“Salespeople were cold calling and being too aggressive without a relationship. There’s been a real shift since the recession, and people don’t answer the phone and don’t want to be sold at. They want you to help them buy.”

Through her observations and insight, this led to her developing a unique moniker.

“My friend said, ‘you’re like the buyer insider.’ I thought that was a great name. There’s nobody with my buyer experience that can help anybody trying to sell and help them do their job the best way.”

As the buyer insider, Shawna sees herself “like the bridge between two sides who don’t usually share their secrets between each other.” In her role, she helps to create smoother transactions and build better relationships between buyers and sellers.

While still a buyer, Shawna founded The Senior Planners Industry Network, SPIN, in 2008 as a way to connect with senior-level buyers because there wasn’t really anything out there for that experience.

“It was the early stages of LinkedIn, and I was watching a webinar about how to connect. I watched how to create your own group and did it in five minutes. I sent it to my friends, about 20, 25 people. Now, it has 2500 members.

About 10 years ago, Shawna decided to write a tell-all book for sales professionals about how buyers really think. “This started the phone ringing with people asking if I would speak to their groups.” Shawna was less than enthusiastic about speaking, and in her own words, she “would rather have swallowed glass.”

Luckily, she didn’t swallow any glass and a friend was able to convince her to speak to a small group. She was immediately struck by their reaction. “They were so grateful because I told them things nobody else would.”

At this time, Shawna felt that it was her calling because she knew she would be able to help a lot of people. This is why eight years ago, she took the plunge and made the major career change full-time. “I loved my first career, but I love this even more.”

She learned early on that a good speaker focus-

es on the audience and not herself, which is why she’s developed a more relaxed speaking style, where she “doesn’t believe in being over-rehearsed.” As her website describes it, “My style has been described as a gentle slap in the face from a friend, just when you’re about to go to prom with that loser.”

Shawna also focuses on sounding more natural and not “over rehearsed where the speaker can be simply delivering a performance on any stage speaking to any audience.”

“The lessons I teach aren’t easy for people to hear, so the humor alleviates the stress. I’m just there to help. I tell stories, so everything is not canned material.”

For Shawna, it’s also about customization to keep things fresh. “I have different slides that I change with every presentation. They trigger the points I make, but I don’t say everything the same way every time. It’s not the same speech in Pittsburgh as in Portugal.”

Ahead of any speech that she gives, Shawna speaks to the planner and stakeholders and does an interview on the audience to gauge its personality, so she can ensure that the conversation is relevant, casual and fun. Regardless of the audience, Shawna’s goal is to, “Be more human, more personable.”

While many speakers have had to adjust and enter a whole new realm with virtual presentations, Shawna is already a pro in this arena as a Certified Virtual Presenter, CVP, and she’s been a virtual presenter for the past eight years. She sees a lot of speakers “hopping on as a necessity,” but she’s already a Zoom expert, so her style is tailored for both the stage and the virtual world.

Through her time on stage, Shawna has truly found her voice and has earned one of the most coveted honors as a public speaker as a Certified Speaking Professional from the National Speakers Association. Only a very small percentage of professional speakers earn this distinction. With her reputation, Shawna is called to do both opening and closing keynote speeches and she differentiates between the two.

“The closing keynote is so important. Both are important, but the closer shouldn’t be one and done, not a self-contained speech. It should summarize all the things before and tie it with a bow and leave the audience with a message. If I’m doing a closing keynote, if possible, I want to be there for whole conference and have the common thread from beginning to end.” Shawna also strives to make the closing keynote more interactive.

“My style of closing keynote is I want to get them up and talking. I don’t want them passive and taking notes. When they get home, they tend to put the notebook up and go back to business as usual. It doesn’t get a return on the investment.”

That’s why Shawna likes to ask the audience, “What is one thing you learned that you’ll apply immediately? With accountability partners, they’re more likely to make changes they want to make.”

When it comes to an opening keynote, Shawna explains that it “needs to set the stage literally and figuratively.” To get the feel of the audience, Shawna likes to talk to theplanner about goals and objectives because it “affects how, why and what I’m going to present.”

“I don’t believe in delivering the same speech. Each audience is different and unique and deserves a different speech. If somebody hears me speak and says ‘I want that same speech,’ I still want to customize it the way audience needs it customized.”

Over the years, Shawna has honed her style by “organizing and curating and watching speakers who did it well and did not.” In the end, Shawna says it’s all about trust to get the audience to believe what she’s saying. “I don’t always speak on stage, if possible, I go into the audience, so they can see that I’m one of them, I’m somebody they can hear and trust.”

While she loves hitting the stage, Shawna made a conscious decision to decrease her trips away from home last year since her son is finishing his junior year and her daughter has finished her freshman year in college. “I’m home more now, so my teens might wish I was gone more,” Shawna said laughingly. “Next year, when my last kid is off to college, I will rev back up.”

Just like the rest of the world, Shawna has been keeping a close eye on the pandemic and the changes that must be made to not only survive but to be successful. In particular, she’s been keeping a close eye on how brands have been responding and observes that she’s been seeing more ‘we’ instead of ‘you’ as brands and companies try to connect on a more personal level. She’s also looking at the commonalities of who “The salespeople who will be most successful through the pandemic will be those who are helping. It can’t be those who are pushy or tonedeaf or business-as-usual – that’s my biggest thing right now.”

When the pandemic first gripped the nation and the world, “people were worried about their health, family, well-being,” and many salespeople didn’t quite understand how to pivot.

“A lot of salespeople got more aggressive, and it backfired. There has to be a shift.” Shawna said, “There were so many emails about how companies were managing COVID-19, the timing was poor, and it felt like, ‘We have to share our COVID precautions because everybody else is.’ When everybody is saying the same thing, you have to do something different to stand out.”

As the world experiences a third wave, it’s also aptly the title of Shawn’s fifth book, “Third Wave: How to Market and Sell in a Post-Pandemic Economy,” that she’s working on and is coming out later this summer. Since she self-publishes, she explained she will get it off the presses “when I have more concrete data.”

Shawna said, “The third wave is what we’re in now because there have been three major shifts this century. The first was 9/11 and the second was the Great Recession.”

Throughout the waves, Shawna remarks that there’s been a “change in consumer behavior, fundamentally, permanently, and salespeople have to adapt to survive and recover, frankly.” Shawna said that the companies who handle it well will be prepared for third wave. “That’s what I talk about, that’s my obsession.”

One of the main themes of “The 3rd Wave” is the three R’s.

“Remind, reassure and recover. Remind – we’re seeing companies doing it well now. They have the tone right. ‘We’re here when you need us,’ reminding us that they’re there. It’s beautiful. We see that and it feels better than, ‘Buy our widgets!’ Next is reassure. ‘If you come to our store, here’s what we’re doing differently now.’ We’ll all enter the recovery phase at different times as a country, different states at different phases.”

What is marketing going to look like post-pandemic? “That’s the million-dollar question, and I’m finding out myself. We’re still very much in the middle of the shift. I’ve been seeing some beautiful ads on TV of companies who are no longer tone deaf because they realize where customers’ heads are. That will continue to evolve as we move through the pandemic. I don’t know what the other side is going to look like just yet.” She added, “This is what happened after 9/11 and the recession. We’re still riding the wave. It hasn’t reached shore yet. I know that marketers will have to change how they think of their target audiences and be more sensitive to people’s experiences.”

She also remarked that consumers will and have changed as well. “If you’re a consumer, you’re shifting your behavior. It doesn’t matter your industry as a sales professional; it’s all shifting.”

In the current climate, Shawna has more time on her hands, so she’s been doing webinars and online classes. Shawna also has more time to reflect on how what she calls ‘the next normal’ will look and says that we are now living in a business casual environment, which she describes as the death of professionalism.

“We’re a more business casual society. We don’t dress to the 9’s every day like we used to. We talk like normal people as buyers and we expect marketers and salespeople to do the same. We’re not uber-professional as a society anymore. Buyers have changed and so should marketers. It will fundamentally change how we market and sell.”

Shawna said “that means in your sales and marketing, you have to talk like a real person” and gave a poignant example.

“United Airlines was sending out communication and they were very professional at the beginning of the pandemic. I’ve watched them evolve their communication, so my latest update was from Ed, the CEO; it said it in the subject. No last name. I loved it.”

She explained why it’s important for companies to speak in a more straightforward fashion. “We’re having the same shared human experience. It’s removing all the barriers. This pandemic will kill professionalism.”

“Two years ago, I was talking to the Iowa Bankers Association, and I told the group that we need to reflect our audience, the way they talk, the way they dress. Who’s your target audience? Are you wearing a suit when a farmer is coming in jeans? They think that you’re not on their side. There’s a barrier of trust there. After my speech, the bank manager came up to me and said, ‘I’m changing our dress code tomorrow.’”

From first speaking to a small group to speaking to some of the biggest brands in the world, Shawna’s no-nonsense style of speaking has taken her all over the globe, including Asia, Africa, Europe and South America, along with 90% of North America. She wants to speak on all continents just like a lot of speakers do.

“I really want to tackle Australia, so I keep putting it out there.”