About seven years ago, I was shooting my third-in-a-series Hartford Life Insurance video. In the video series I played fictional life insurance agent John Russell. I used an ear prompter to deliver a perfect life insurance sales presentation that I didn’t understand at all. But I didn’t need to understand it—I just needed to deliver the words with sincerity. At the shoot, the Marketing VP approached me about coming to London as a consultant to “teach our guys to be as convincing as you are in the videos.” Ever the entrepreneur, I jumped at the chance.
Over the course of the next four years, I traveled the country visiting Hartford Life Insurance offices and holding one-day sessions on communication technique for sales. I had no background in life insurance or sales, but I was able to offer the insurance agents something their managers could not—effective communication techniques delivered in role-play mode.
In other words, I did scene work with them. The script: their sales presentation. The characters: a life insurance agent and a client couple. The objective of the scene: to close the sale.
We performing artists tend to take for granted that we possess skills and techniques of great value to our counterparts in more conventional business industries. I’ve now worked with Hartford, and other companies, on presentation technique (how not to get buried in your Powerpoint), team communication (seeing a vision together), and a wide array of general communication skills (talking to non-technical people, telephone sales, top-down communication, etc.).
Throughout it all, I’ve essentially reoriented my theatrical skills to address whatever communication issue they’re having. Very few business people are interested in theater skills or performing, but they're absolutely fascinated by a simplified distillation of performance techniques that they can apply to their jobs.
What do corporations need from actors?
So if you’re considering making a leap into the wild world of corporate training, the key is to think of it this way: ask yourself where you think they have a real, tangible need you can fill. Do that instead of trying to find companies who want a theater or performance seminar. (Chances are, very few have a budget for something like that.) It’s not enough to simply bring your bag of tricks into the room. You have to address an actual need of theirs.
As actors, we have spent our careers making something that is meticulously rehearsed seem completely effortless. This concept is generally foreign to most of the clients I’ve worked with. We can offer businesspeople simple ways to rehearse their presentations, and encourage them to work toward an effortless but well-crafted delivery.
As actors we also know a lot about entering a room with energy, staying focused, and being present in the moment. With those skills we can offer companies assistance on bringing more of themselves to a meeting than just their Powerpoint. We can help them learn to live in their skin and not just in their heads.
As directors, we know a lot about seeing and constructing a vision. We absolutely tend to take for granted that what we do, day in and day out, is to manifest a three-dimensional, living vision in conjunction with a team. Hard as it may be to believe, this skill is very rare among the leadership groups I’ve encountered.
They tend to look at minutiae first and have a very hard time believing in an abstract vision of a completed project. They want the numbers to add up correctly before they’ll see it. But think about it—as directors we work with a team of designers and actors, all of whom instinctively understand that we’re all heading toward a finished, shared vision. Saying “no” at any stage of the process is simply inefficient.
We accept all the crazy ideas so eventually the best will surface and become the realized vision. And it’s all being done in a fiercely constrained time frame with extremely limited means. We can offer our business counterparts assistance on achieving their goals by seeing a realized vision as a group.
As playwrights, we know how to build things with words. We know how to construct a presentation that’s two hours long and (hopefully) never gets boring. We know how to spell, use grammar, and employ a colorful vocabulary.
All these skills are in great need at the moment.
I’ve sat through hundreds of sales and other business presentations thinking, “Why, why, why didn’t this person put any effort into organizing their material in a way that provoked questions and sparked interest?” There is a great tendency toward information overload in presentations I’ve seen, with absolutely no time spent on basic structure.
Would you start your play with a long explanation of yourself and your background? Would you start your play with a detailed monologue that only makes sense if you already know the plot and all the other characters? No. As playwrights, we can help correct basic mistakes like these in order to make presentations that actually communicate something to the people at the meeting.
Working with Hartford opened my eyes to possibilities for my theater skills that
I’ve now explored with dozens of other companies.
As theater professionals, we have a lot more to offer than a night of entertainment or artistic edification. All it takes is imagination.
I'm pretty sure we've got that too.
