Passionate Presentations

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Nov 092011
 

I’ve ranted about PowerPoint presentations before. A good few other folk bang on about them as well. But the message still isn’t getting through to many presenters. PowerPoint is the most effective tool ever invented to kill a performance stone dead. Note the use of the word ‘performance’. I have seen communication defined as ‘the transfer of emotion’. So just think about your next presentation. How will you transfer the emotion, the passion you have for your subject, to the audience? By the way, if you aren’t passionate about your subject, why are you going to talk about it? Get someone else to do it. Or just don’t bother.

What are you trying to achieve? Are you selling something? A product, service or an idea? Perhaps you are trying to recruit people to your cause. Or trying to persuade the Dragons in their den to invest in your business. Or perhaps you want to tell people about your solo voyage around the world. Whatever it is, surely you want to excite them not send them to sleep? Of course, if you are trying to sell something or are seeking investment or permission to do something, it is likely that you’ll want to present some facts. But these should be to help the audience to rationalize their decision. Facts alone won’t be sufficient. Or if they are, why do you need to make the presentation?

OK, so we need to put on a passionate performance that arouses the emotions of the listeners so that they are persuaded to our point of view in their hearts and we are going to appeal to their heads with a few powerfully presented facts. That is, the really, really important facts; the ones that will make them sit up and take notice.

There are five times more bacteria on the average desk than on the average toilet seat.

There, I bet that got your attention … especially if you happened to be eating your sandwiches off your desk at the time!

The reason for this startling fact is that we tend to clean our toilets rather more frequently than our desks. So it would be a great one-liner for someone pitching for an office cleaning contract. Just imagine two companies pitching for the business. One has dozens of PowerPoint slides and goes on for ages about how they started in a garden shed and now have a multi-branch operation in half a dozen towns around the West Midlands … and on and on. Are you asleep yet? The other business says nothing but puts up one slide with that single sentence. And then waits for the questions to start. Which do you think is more likely to get the business, all other aspects being equal?

I hope you noted that the presenter said nothing when the slide went up. It is a reasonable bet the audience will be able to read it, so let them do so. Never, ever read what is on a slide. If you want to talk, put up images that are relevant to what you are saying, that add to the impact or the understanding of your point.

You are trying to make an impact, to communicate your passion for what you do. Keep it simple and allow the emotion to come through.

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Seductive Pricing

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Aug 082011
 

Ben Kinnaird’s comment against the previous post, Working For Free, has caused me to think some more about how we charge for our services. Ben recently ran a series of workshops under the banner of his Rather Inventive business. The first was free to attend as a ‘taster’ in the hope of encouraging people to sign up for subsequent events where there was a fee, but this approach didn’t work out quite as well as had been hoped.

I am inclined to think that a better route for the next series of workshops will be to charge for all but at a price level that doesn’t deter the many people who are self-employed or from small businesses where there is very limited funding for discretionary spend. One problem we face when promoting this type of activity is that it is discretionary spend. It is helpful to our business and may well make a significant contribution if we take on board all of the learning. However, many (most?) of us tend not to be particularly rational in our approach to purchase decisions.

If you disagree with my view about your rationality (is there such a word?), then I invite you to consider your purchases over the last few months. Frankly, my defence wouldn’t survive past last Friday! So if logical persuasion doesn’t work, what do we do? Step on stage the advertising man! A good advert appeals to the emotions. It might be backed up with facts to help us to feel we have been rational, to help us justify the purchase decision, but it is targeted fairly and squarely at our irrational side. It aims to seduce us into parting with our money.

Having written all this, it has now prompted me to consider how we market our future Successful Speaking workshops! Not sure how good I’ll be at the seduction though!

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More Than Words

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Jul 132011
 

Communication is so much more than words. Studies have shown that the words we use account for 7-10% of the impact of the message only. Or to put it another way, 90-93% of the impact comes from the way we use the words, our body language and other factors. The way we dress can have a significant impact on people’s perception of our professionalism. The problem is that different people will perceive different things. If we are to speak to an audience, how should we dress? If we know they’ll all turn up in suits we can probably work out the answer fairly easily. Suggestion: if in doubt, aim to be over rather than under-dressed. We can always remove a jacket, for example, to adjust rapidly to our surroundings.

And what about cars? What have cars to do with communication? Simply that we turn up in something new and very expensive and the customer concludes we’re over-charging for our services. Turn up in an old banger and the customer assumes we can’t be any good at what we do. Solution? Arrive by taxi?

I once selected a company to give a quote purely on the basis that their depot was across the road from my office and I saw they washed their vans every day. Logic: if they take that much care they are likely to be good. Unfortunately, the sales department were less careful than the transport department and sent a rep so full of herself that we took an instant dislike to her and she was shown the door. Note to sales people: you are there to tell the potential customer how your product or service can solve their problems. You are not taking part in a job interview. Come to think about it though, a job interview is also about showing the employer how your skills and experience can solve their problems.

Talking of problems, I am far more impressed by sales people who point out the shortcomings as well as the benefits, than I am with those who bombard me with the hard sell. The former communicate to me that they have integrity, the latter that they want to grab my money and run. No amount of hair gel and sharp suit will part me from my money with these types.

And now for a shameless plug. I am immensely pleased with the enthusiasm of the customer feedback communicated on this video; look at the body language – much more powerful than the words: www.SuccessfulSpeaking.co.uk.

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Why, What & How To Communicate

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Jun 152011
 

This morning I am speaking at a business networking meeting. I am focusing on three aspects of business communication:

  1. Why we communicate i.e. what is our purpose
  2. What we communicate i.e. what is important for the listener, not what we want to tell them
  3. How we go about communicating effectively  

When we speak to people at events we need to think about the above issues. Let’s look at them in turn:

  1. We are talking to people to promote our business. But let’s not forget that true networking is about building relationships so that we can help others with their business issues or seek assistance ourselves. Our communications should be a two-way activity.
  2. What are we communicating? Maybe not as obvious as it sounds. Gill Hutchinson from Aardvark Marketing Consultants reminds us that Black & Decker are selling holes not drills. People tend not to buy drills for the sake of it, they buy them because they have a need for what they can do. Well worth remembering when we communicate what our business has to offer.
  3. I could go on for a long time about how to communicate effectively! Just remember that research shows that the precise words we use account for 8-10% only of the impact of the message. Yes, have a core message that you want to get across, but then concentrate on how you communicate that message. Make eye contact, be animated, vary your voice. Make an impact!

And finally, when standing up to speak or entering a room full of strangers at a business event, remember that you are not alone in feeling nervous. Embrace it and enjoy it!

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Best Networking

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Apr 052011
 

This morning I was the guest speaker at Circle Events Networking Worcester breakfast meeting. During the one minute opportunity to introduce our businesses I was surprised and delighted when Ben Kinnaird chose to talk in glowing terms about a speaker development workshop that I’d helped to run a couple of weeks ago. Hold on Ben, you haven’t got the hang of this – you are supposed to plug your business, not someone else’s. Somewhat taken aback at this unexpected turn of events, I resolved to mention Ben’s company website, as it is exactly what the name implies. But of course, what one intends to say and the words that actually come out are often subtly different. So to rectify the omission, please do take a look at the Rather Inventive website. It’s rather inventive!

 

In my previous post I mentioned a couple of examples of how not to network. The people I met this morning understood the benefits of ‘proper’ communication and I came away feeling that it was worth getting up early to be in Worcester for breakfast. Each networking event has its own personality; each offers something a little different. The people one meets have their own personalities; each offers something a little different. Gradually you build a network of people who you encounter at various events. You get to know them better and understand what each has to offer. You start to greet them like friends and actively seek to link them up with people who might be able to use their services. Surely that is what best networking is about. And as this post has proved, taking a rather inventive approach to promoting your business may have a beneficial effect. 

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