SP Tip # 79: Distance yourself from a bad idea...

Distance Yourself From a Bad Idea

Bad ideas in the past

There might be times when you want to persuade your audience to change. You can use logic, stories, charts and success stories to move them. Here is a subtle technique that can help you.
You physically position the good from the bad.

How do you do that?
You move from left to right. Be sure to move left to right as your audience sees it - not your left to right. You will have to rehearse this to get it right.

Good ideas in the future

Why does this work?
European based languages, including English, reads from left to right. Therefore we have been conditioned since we first started to read to assume that progress moves from left to right.
We read text from left to right to discover more, to learn what happens next and are rewarded with the answers to our questions. Hence the simple act of moving our eyes from left to right tends to build our expectations of progress and good things.

When presenting, you can use this to your advantage by placing bad ideas, the status quo or the past on your right side. That is the left side for the audience.

You can also do this by holding your right hand out or taking a step to your right when you talk about the bad ideas. That visually places the bad idea in the past to acknowledge it while guiding the audience to move on to better things.

Then you show progress by taking a step to your left or holding out your left hand when you talk about good ideas. You place the idea you are selling in the future to encourage acceptance.
You can use this technique to place objections, past failings or criticism's on your right (the audience's left) and hence in the position of bad ideas.

You can use this technique to position a question or idea as bad or good just by your physical movement without saying a word.

Of course, when you speak in the Middle East you need to remember that they read from right to left.

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Great Boss = Great Presenter ???

Dear Great Boss,

Great War

If you’re reading this note that means that I’ve died, moved on or won the lottery. So it’s time for me to finally share a secret with you. Not sure it this qualifies as a big secret because everyone else knows this except you.

This might come as a big surprise to you. I and the rest of the staff have done our best to protect you from the brutal truth. Apparently our conspiracy of silence and sycophancy has succeeded. 

You might believe that you are a great presenter. Naturally whenever you asked for comments or feedback on your presentations we dutifully responded with “You are a great speaker.” “That was a great presentation” And the greater sycophants added “You’re a great boss”.

Technically, those weren’t lies because great does not mean good or even better than good. For instance, there was the Great War, the Great Depression and the Great Plague. Your presentations were in this category of great.

You might want to sit down while reading this. Your presentations suck. If fact they suck - greatly.

That could be a great surprise to you.

You might wonder, “Was it one bad presentation or one little thing?”  No.

Take your pick:

• Your jokes stink.
• Your slides were boring and confusing.
• It was annoying when you read your text slides to us.
• The clichés you tossed around were unoriginal and uninspiring.
• Your words were often insulting and condescending.
• Your attempts at rapport felt insincere and manipulative.
• You didn’t speak with us. You spoke at us.

Why do I tell you this?

Because these repeated mistakes cost the company money, created stress for people and wasted resources.

I found traits to respect and appreciate about you. I hope that you might now respect and appreciate these truths that I offer you about your presentations.

I hope that you might stop basking in the glory of those great presentation reviews and start delivering more effective presentations.

PS: Don’t expect to receive honest and constructive feedback about your presentations from the staff because they still work for you and will praise you as great.

PPS: If you think you’re great, check out the horrors of the Great War, Great Depression and Great Plague.

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Presenting with Power: Planning and Preparing Presentations

Presenting with Power: Planning and Preparing Presentations from Studio B Productions, Inc.

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SP Tip # 78: Four Ways to Transform Your Presentation into a Conversation

 

Four Ways to Transform your Presentation into a Conversation

 



Which feels more inviting to you - "Let's talk" or "I'm going to deliver a speech"?

Most of us don't want to hear another lecture or a pitch. But we are more inclined to participate in a conversation.

Deliver your presentation like a conversation and your audience will feel more engaged and less like prisoners. Hence they will trust you more and listen better. Therefore they are more likely to remember and act on your message.

What are the critical elements of a good conversation that you can use in your presentation?

Language
Imagine that you are talking to one person. Use the word "you" which is both singular and plural. Use "you" more often than the word "I" so your message is about them not you.
Avoid these phrases: "Welcome everyone", "Does anybody have a question?" and "You guys". Those mob words distance you from the audience by placing a barrier between you and them. You wouldn't use those words when talking to one person. Talk to one person.

Eye contact
Look at a single person when you speak. Move your glance from one person to another so that you are almost always talking to a single individual. You might need to glance at your notes, but don't waste time staring at the back wall, the floor or your slides. Talk to people. That individual eye contact will make them feel like they are part of an intimate conversation.

Questions
A good conversation includes good questions. Ask good questions of your audience and listen to their answers. Don't annoy them by repeatedly asking them to raise their hands. Invite questions from the audience and address their concerns. Be sure to pose rhetorical questions for the concerns that they might have - then answer them. That feels conversational.

Pause
A good conversation contains moments of silence. Allow the audience to absorb your message in silence. That demonstrates respect and allows them to internalize your message. Sprinkle pauses throughout your presentation.

The best experience for people in your audience is when they felt "the speaker was talking directly to me".

Don't deliver a lecture - engage in a conversation with each individual in your audience.

George Torok

 ps: 

Call to arrange for me to speak at your conference, corporate event or sales meeting.  
905-335-1997 

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Superior Presentations Tip #77: What’s the purpose of your presentation?

What’s the purpose of your presentation?

Presentations fail when the presenter doesn’t understand the real purpose.

Presenters have told me that their plan was to speak for 30 minutes, cover all the material or represent their company. Some confessed that their goal was to deliver their message, prove their point or receive a standing ovation. Executives and managers said that they needed to report the latest numbers, update the board or bring everyone up to date.

Each of those is a poor description of the presentation purpose. Why? Because those are speaker focused. And if you define success based on the speaker and not the audience the presentation will almost always fail.

You must define your presentation success in terms of the audience. The only valid reason to speak – especially in business – is to move your audience. Every presentation is a step in advancing the group.

Here is the critical question you must ask yourself before every presentation:

What do you want people to think, feel or do after your presentation?

Design, deliver and evaluate your presentation on the answer to that question.

The real purpose of speaking is to move people. If you moved them in the direction you intended your presentation was successful. The level of success is determined by how many moved and how far they moved.

If all you did was cover the material, the presentation was for you and not the audience. That makes it a failure.

Perhaps you want:

Front line staff to adopt a different approach with customers

Association members to volunteer for committees
Investors to contribute more funds
Shoppers to buy
Voters to support you

Be clear about your purpose and be able to state it clearly so everything you do contributes to your success.

The purpose of speaking is not to speak; it’s to move people.

Design, deliver and measure the success of your presentation based on what you want people to think, feel or do.

 

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Superior Presentations 75: The Most Striking PowerPoint Slide to Include in Every PowerPoint Presentation

If you use PowerPoint slides to accompany your presentation, you might like this powerful technique to distinguish your talk from the ocean of PowerPoint presentations. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to create this slide.

This is such a simple technique that many presenters overlook it. That’s one reason you will stand out when you use it.

Use a blank (blacked-out) slide at critical moments.

Here are three ways to use this technique

Start your presentation with a blank screen

Set up your computer and projector before your presentation.  Check your slides for size and focus on the screen then blank the screen. 

You start your presentation standing in the middle of the stage talking to your audience. That is most powerful position and often that is dominated by the screen which forces the presenter off to the side in a less significant position.

With the screen blank there is no distracting slide stealing attention from your opening words.

This means that the first impression that people have of your presentation is you. This gives you the opportunity to connect directly with your audience. This first impression helps to establish rapport and trust. A title slide will never do that.

After your opening you move to the side and click for your first real slide.

Blank the screen during your presentation

During your presentation there will be points when you want to reconnect with your audience by removing the distraction of the slides. You simply blank the screen and move to center stage to talk with them. This will often feel like an intimate moment to your audience.

Do this when reinforcing an important point or answering questions. This technique allows the audience to focus on you and your words.

End with a blank screen

The close to your presentation is important because it’s the last thing they hear. It’s your opportunity to reinforce your key message. It’s your last chance to build on the human connection. The best way to do that is with you speaking to them from center stage while delivering your closing words.

Before you close tell the audience that you are wrapping up with your closing message. Blank the screen and move to center stage. Then deliver your close.

How do you blank the screen?

Here are three ways

Click the “B” key. This is a PowerPoint shortcut. It’s a toggle so you simply hit it again to display the slide.

Use the blackout button on the remote. Most remotes have this feature. Hit it again to display the slide.

Insert a black slide in your PowerPoint presentation so it becomes part of your slide sequence. If you provide copies of your slides to the audience you probably want to exclude this slide from those handouts.

The words that you deliver with the screen blank will tend to have more credibility because you will appear to be more intimate with your audience.

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Superior Presentations 74: Tell Colorful Stories Because...

Tell Colorful Stories

Stories in your presentation can paint pictures in the minds of your audience and connect emotionally.

Notice the visuals in this story and feel the emotional connection.

At the age of seven my son, Chris, started playing mini soccer. The field was tiny to accommodate the youngsters' short legs, stamina and attention span. The goal posts were fluorescent orange pylons set about five feet apart. The kids hadn't grasped teamwork so they clustered around the ball like bees around a flower as the ball rolled aimlessly around the field. You almost never saw the ball but you knew it was inside that moving cluster.

At one game you can imagine my pride and excitement when I noticed my son, Chris standing downfield in position to shoot on goal. Incredibly the ball escaped the cluster and rolled lazily towards Chris. I excitedly jumped up and down on the sidelines yelling, "Chris, get the ball! Chris, shoot the ball!" He moved awkwardly towards the ball then stopped. He ignored the ball and my sideline antics. Instead he stared up in the sky in a catatonic state. Incredibly, every player on the field also stopped running and did the same. My curiosity overcame my frustration and I looked up along with every parent on the sidelines. I half expected to see the alien mother ship hovering over the field. Instead there was the most perfect rainbow I've ever seen. It curved from one horizon to the other. The bands were vibrant in all their colors from red through to violet.

The referee knew when to admit a losing battle. He blew his whistle and announced, "Time out. One minute to look at the rainbow." A minute later he blew the whistle again and called, "Play on." The game resumed. I don't remember if Chris scored a goal that game or who won. That seemed unimportant after the rainbow.

What did you see while reading that story? Notice how the words in the story can plant vivid images in your mind.

Did you see the rainbow?

Did you see me jumping on the sidelines?

Did you see the cluster of children following the soccer ball?

You don't need slides to convey images. You can do it with colorful stories.

What did you feel?

Did you feel both my excitement and frustration as a parent?

Did you feel the beauty of the rainbow moment?

Did you feel as if you were there?

An effective story conveys images and emotion. Those are the two most important senses to reach your audience. They also make it easier for people to remember your message.

Inject more color and emotion to your stories.

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Superior Presentations 71: How many times should you repeat...

 Repeat your key message

If you want your audience to remember your key message, you’ll need to say it at least three times during your presentation.

Your key message is likely summed up in about three to ten words. Average speaking speed is between 110 and 150 words per minute. That means in a five minute presentation about 500 to 700 words were spoken but only ten were critical. Your key message could be lost in that sea of words.

If you only stated your key message once and all your words were equally weighed, there would be at best a 2 percent chance of anyone remembering your key message.

Yes, there are other techniques to emphasize your key message which you should also use. Repeating your key words is the simplest way.

By repeating your key message at least once, you’ve doubled the emphasis and increased the memorability. State your key message three to five times and people will tend to hear it and remember it.

Most of us need to hear a phrase, message or name several times before we remember it. Perhaps you’ve met someone at a meeting and then forgotten their name before the end of the meeting. When you want to commit important information to memory you should probably repeat it several times.

Marketers know this principle. That’s why a 30-second radio or TV ad will mention the product or company name a few times. That’s also why one promotion never seems enough.

You probably remember the key phrase from the famous speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. – I have a dream. It would be difficult to forget because he stated it 11 times during that speech.

Here are three ways for you to use this technique:

Repeat your key message like a refrain, as in “I have a dream”.

Capture the key message within a rhetorical question and then answer using the key words, e.g. why is it important to exercise? It’s important to exercise because…

Use slight variations in the wording so the phrase doesn’t appear overdone. e.g. In this tip,  message, words and phrase have been interchanged.

If there’s one thing for you to remember from this tip, it is: “repeat your key message”.

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Superior Presentations 69: Don't Speak at the Audience, Instead...

Speak to One Person at a Time

 

 

If you want to connect with the people in your audience you need to talk to each person one at a time. Each person needs to feel, "The speaker is talking to me!"

How do you accomplish that?

With direct eye contact and the right language.

 

Eye Contact

 

Imagine having lunch with a colleague who is sitting directly across the table from you. Throughout the 45-minute lunch that person never looks at you - not while you are talking or even while that person is talking to you. That person looks at the meal, out the window or at other people in the restaurant. Apparently you don't deserve even a sideways glance. How would you feel?

Now imagine how your audience might feel if you don't look at them. It's not enough to look at them as a group. Instead you must look a person directly in the eyes. As you deliver your presentation don't deliver a speech to the crowd. Instead make it appear that you are having many one-on-one conversations. Deliver a sentence or phrase to one person then connect with another, then another - until each person in the room feels that "The speaker spoke to me." You can enhance the feeling by occasionally smiling at an individual.

You might need to check your notes or your slides occasionally but make it a point to be looking at an individual 80% of the time.

 

Conversational Language

Use language that talks to an individual.

The most important word that helps you establish the one-to-one connection is the word "you". Say, "I'm happy to see you today." "Here's how this will help you." "You might be wondering how this works."

Don't say "you guys". That's trailer trash talk. It's okay when chatting with buddies at the bar but not for a business presentation. In addition it's treating your audience as a mob not individuals.

Construct and deliver every sentence as if you were talking to one person. When you look at a person, imagine that person is the only one you are talking to.

Avoid using these mob words: anybody, everybody and crowd.

How is everybody today? That's bad for two reasons. It lumps the people into a mob. It's also a dumb question because no one can speak for everybody.

Does anybody have a question? That's similar to everybody. It's a mob word and it's a dumb question.

What might you say instead? How are you today? Do you have a question?

Notice the difference.

Don't deliver a speech at your audience. Instead connect with each person by engaging in many one-on-one conversations.

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You Are Always Selling and Negotiating

The accountant was a partner at a major accounting firm. She was clearly qualified as an expert in her field. She admitted to me that she was quite comfortable talking about her area of expertise to her clients. She was sincerely willing to help her clients.

The point where she ran into difficulty was selling her services to the client. She got anxious when discussing the price and detested “closing the deal”.

Accounting training had not prepared her for the angst of selling your value.

Every presentation is a sales presentation even if you don’t want to see yourself as a salesperson. Every time you speak you must convince people to listen to you, trust you and believe what you say. Most importantly you must convince them to act on what you say.

You are selling your credibility, ideas, services and team. When offering professional services you are also selling your experience, personality, character, strengths and flaws.

Yes, sell your flaws. Tell your audience what you don’t know. And tell them what you can do to get that information. Tell them what you won’t do. That’s more important that you might think. Clients need to you know your limits – and so do you.

I had a conference call with a prospect on a Friday who asked for a response from me for Monday. I told them that I don’t work on the weekend and would have their answer for Tuesday. After a pregnant pause, they agreed. They hired me to train their staff on presentation skills.

In the 1997 movie, The Devil’s Advocate, Keanu Reeves ask Al Pacino (The Devil) “Are we negotiating? The devil answers, “We’re always negotiating.”

When you speak – you are negotiating – you are selling – you are attempting to persuade your audience.

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Five Habits of Highly Effective Public Speakers

You can consistently deliver more effective presentations if you develop the habits of highly effective speakers. Success is a matter of habit.

Clear Purpose

Start your presentation with the end in mind. The only reason to speak is to move people. So start preparing by thinking about this question. What do you want people to think, feel or do after you speak? Keep that purpose top of mind as you prepare and deliver your presentation.

Prepare

Don’t wing your presentation or hope to think on your feet. That’s a formula for disaster. Instead consider the mind set of your audience. Design your presentation. Rehearse it. Arrive early to check out the room. Be prepared to cut it short or deal with interruptions. Rehearse dealing with difficult questions.

Open & Close

There are three parts of your presentation – the opening, the body and the close. They are not equal in time but each is important. Many speakers make the mistake of only focusing on the body. The opening of your presentation needs to grab the attention of your audience, establish rapport and set the direction. The close is the last thing you say and hence might be the strongest thing they remember. Ensure that it reinforces your message and what you want them to do next.

Pause

Nervous and novice speakers are afraid of silence. Yet, silence is your friend. You don’t persuade anyone by speaking constantly, rapidly and louder. You persuade them by saying something poignant then pausing while they absorb and consider your words. The more often and longer that you pause the more confident you will appear and the more comfortable they will feel with your ideas.

Conversation

The most important point is that your presentation should not feel like a pitch or a lecture. If you come across that way people will tune you out and resent you. So, how do you make your presentation feel more like a conversation? Do the things that you enjoy in a friendly conversation. That will include some of the techniques above – telling stories, pausing and making friendly eye contact. Here’s one more technique to have the conversation – ask questions of the group and listen without judging. Also punctuate your presentation with rhetorical questions to repeatedly engage their minds.

We are creatures of habit. You can be more successful when presenting by following these habits of highly effective speakers.

© George Torok is The Speech Coach for Executives and the author of the Superior Presentations program. He coaches executives and trains business professionals to deliver million dollar presentations. Discover free tips and presentation resources at www.SpeechCoachforExecutives.com Arrange for personal speech coaching or a training program by calling 905-335-1997 Find more presentation ideas at the blog www.Speechcoach.ca

 

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Anyways: What does that really mean?

 
Anyway or Anyways

What does that mean?

When you hear that word from a speaker what happens in your mind?

It might create a disconnection between the speaker and the listener. When I hear either of those words my head snaps back to listen for the change of thought. In other words, what was said before that word was irrelevant to what follows.

That suggests that this is a disjointed presentation or conversation. Perhaps the speaker got lost in thought and took us down the wrong path. Now, he’s trying to get back on track with the expression “anyways”.

Where do these words really belong?

We’ll get there any way we can. We’ll do what ever we need to. That might be reminiscent of Hannibal crossing the Alps with his war elephants.

But the expression, anyway or anyways is a dismissal of previous words.

It implies, “Ignore what was said earlier; what I really mean is…”

The speaker wants you to forget the words that were said earlier.

Does that mean those words were a lie, a lost tangent or a waste of time?



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Move from Left to Right

English and other languages originating from Europe read left to right. That means that those people naturally move their eyes from left to right when reading.

They prefer to absorb information in the same manner.

When you speak before an audience you can use that principle to enhance the acceptance of your message.

First you must realize that it’s the audience’s perception of left to right and not your on-stage left to right that counts. It’s not what you thought you said. It’s what they thought you said that is important.

How can you use this principle in your presentation?

Timeline

Ask these folks to draw a timeline of a project and they will likely draw it from left to right. The left represents the beginning while the right represents the end or the future.

Here’s how to move while presenting about your project or proposal. Talk about the past while standing on the extreme left side of the stage (your right). Stand in the middle of the stage when talking about the present and move to the far right of the audience when describing the desired future.

You could also simply gesture to your right when talking about the past and to your left when talking about the future.

Progress

Use the same methods to place problems in the past and solutions in the future.

This is not natural so you will need to rehearse these movements. But the audience will be more willing to accept your ideas when they can SEE progress.

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