Show Notes
This episode is the second of two conversations with Ron Whitson, and it picks up where part one left off. Ron returns to walk through the remaining four of his seven timeless behaviors for presales and solutions consulting professionals: show empathy, have a conversation, practice humility, and tell a story. Each behavior sounds intuitive on paper. Ron's job, and he does it well, is to show exactly how technical people get each one wrong in practice.
The empathy conversation goes further than the standard put-yourself-in-the-customer's-shoes framing. Ron draws a clear distinction between being in service to your audience and being focused on your own performance, and flags a specific mistake that catches a lot of experienced practitioners: when someone shares something and you jump in with "the same thing happened to me," you think you're building rapport. You're actually discounting them. The humility section is one of the most candid stretches of either episode. Ron talks openly about the early-career arrogance that came with knowing every piece of software on the market, and the slower realisation that telling an audience "I don't know, let me find out" can do more for your credibility than pretending you have every answer.
On storytelling, the conversation gets concrete. Ron argues for plain language over technical vocabulary, and makes the point with a tight example: one company presented storage capacity as 300 gigabytes an hour. Another described the same capability as 40 hours of content. Only one of those stays in the room after you leave. Ben adds his own angle on the Aristotle trifecta of credibility, logic, and emotional connection, and there is a brief, genuinely useful argument about English mustard.
Ron Whitson is Senior Director of Solutions Consulting at Thomson Reuters and author of A Friendly Human in Presales, a practical guide built from 28 years in the field. A signed copy and free audiobook codes are available at timelessbehaviors.com. Connect with Ron on LinkedIn.
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Listen and subscribe:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts
Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com
Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts
Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals
Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations
Ron Links https://timelessbehaviors.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronwhitsonse/
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