If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Today I was phoned by a guy who I have met on a couple of occasions at local networking events.  he works for a company called the disc directory, a local on-line business directory covering Portsmouth and Southampton.

Now I’m pretty hard on tele-sales people but his approach was so refreshing that I just had to post on it.   He called me up, started by saying something like ” Remember the good looking guy who’s been bumping into  you around the local networking scene regularly> - Well that’s not me!  I’m the ugly one and I promised to call you”  - So far so good, he made me laugh and his tone and delivery were congruent.

Then he said”   I’m going to be really direct, it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve got my targets to hit  so I am prepared to offer you a great deal.  Three categories for half price?  How does that sound?”

I paused and he said ” I know you are just wondering which of my arms you are going to bite off to take this great deal.  Well I can tell you that they are both equally tender so it doesn’t have to be difficult.  What do you say?”

Again he made me laugh and I was hooked and after a bit more discussion I agreed.

Now I am not saying that this irreverent and cheeky approach is the one to use all the time but it has it’s place.  He had ready my right and decided to give it ago and it paid off!

What’s the cheekiest sales pitch you have used or had used on you that has worked?

Often people ask me about humour in presentations and how best to use it.  

Humour can be a powerful tool in public speaking but it is a bit of a double edged sword.  If it doesn’t work, the presenter falls flat on their face and often finds it difficult to recover their credibility.      

In the past I have discouraged people from telling jokes as part of their presentation for this very reason.  Instead I advise gentle, self deprecating humour to make a point. 

Recently I read a fabulous book called “Be Heard Now” by American presentation coach Lee Glickstein.   Lee dedicates a whole chapter to humour and sums the topic up nicely by explaining that there are basically three types of humour.   Laughter of the Head, Laughter of the Spleen and Laughter of the Heart.

Laughter of the Head is exemplified by those clever or witty “bon mot’s” beloved of some speakers. Whilst it can be amusing, it has a tendency to put down audiences as the speaker demonstrates just how “clever” they are.  Most “jokes” invoke laughter of the head and as such should be avoided when trying to connect and build relationships with your audience.

Laughter of the Spleen is evoked by humour at the expense of another person or group.   As a Scot, I have heard lots of jokes about mean scotsmen and, whilst some may make me smile, I cannot help but cringe a little inside.   Again this type of laughter does little to build rapport and empathy with your audience and is therefore best avoided. 

 Laughter of the Heart is evoked by humorous stories  which recognise, in a light hearted way, that we are all human and therefore prone to gaffs, blunders and embarrassing occurrences.  This is the humour of Billy Connolly, a master at observing our human foibles and turning them into hilarious anecdotes.   This type of humour is relaxing and reminds us all of our similarities rather than our differences.   Sharing such embarrassments about ourselves demonstrates our humanity and vulnerability and therefore demonstrates empathy with our audiences.

Of course, despite all this, you need to consider 1) Is humour appropriate for this topic and this audience?  and 2) Have I got the timing and delivery to pull it off?   If you stick to humour of the heart, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about the latter point.

Today I came across a post on a blog called “Eight to Late” by  Kailash Awati, an IT development manager in Australia which I loved and so I thought I’d share it with you.

“Some weeks ago I sat through yet another presentation that had me drifting into dreamland within minutes.  To stay awake,  I started to put together a list of stereotypical soporific speakers,  much in the spirit  of a couple of my earlier posts on project mismanagers and meeting time wasters.  It was, I confess, the best time I’ve had at a bad presentation in a long time. Without further ado, here’s my list:

Pete PowerPoint: Peter’s presentations are a vehicle to showcase his undeniable virtuosity at PowerPoint.  The content? Who cares. The slides are absolutely brilliant.

Freda Funny-font: Freda loves visual aids. Her problem is that she uses unreadable fonts.

Marty Mumbler: Martin has something useful to say, I’m sure. The only problem is
I can’t figure out what it is. His presentations invariably consist of an inaudible
issuance of intonations that even those in the front row cannot interpret.

Greta Garbled: Greta has mastered the art of the unfocused presentation.  She manages to cram a lot of diverse  - but not necessarily relevant - material into her talks. It’s quite a challenge to figure out what she’s going on about.

Barry Backside: Barry’s presentations can actually be quite good - if only I could get to see them. His problem is that he refuses to face his audience while speaking, often unwittingly covering his slides, or the whiteboard or whatever visual aid he’s using.

Umberto Unprepared: Umberto likes to wing it, but unfortunately ends up crashing every time. He never prepares for his presentations, and it invariably shows right from his starting stutter to his final fumble.

Oscar Overtime (Thomas Too-much): Oscar is in some ways the extreme opposite of Umberto - he prepares way more material than he has time to deliver. Consequently he ends up going over his allotted time. He’s mastered the art of ignoring frantic signals from meeting moderators and cues from annoyed audiences. He’s prepared all that wonderful material and he’s going to deliver it (all), come what may.

Mike Microphone-Muddler: You’ll hear about half of Mike’s presentation. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict which parts of his talk you’ll hear because he keeps drifting in and out of microphone range at random.”

I’m sure we can all recognise the stereotypes outlined here.   If you want to do something about eliminating them, why not sign up to my free booklet at www.reluctantpresenter.com

You can checkout Kailash’s other posts at http://eight2late.wordpress.com

It happens to the best of us. We know what we mean to say but somehow the words that come out of our mouth aren’t what we really wanted to say. Here’s one of mine which I thought might raise a smile.

I was giving a workshop on renewal rituals, tips and tricks for coping with stress and pressure. one section was about getting a good nights sleep and I suggested that delegates should keep a pad an pen handy, and, just before they went to sleep, should jot down all the issues that were worrying them or that they needed to remember. I called this a brain dump before bed.

So far so good, but in my summary I said, before I could stop myself. “so remember that it’s a great idea to do a dump before going to bed.”

The group exploded with laughter and I went a little red. Oh well, it they certainly remembered that tip when it came to the final review and thankfully nobody was offended.

Quote - “If you can laugh at yourself, you well never be short of something to smile about.”

Is there life after Death By PowerPoint?

The title of my blog is Laughter, Learning and Light bulb moments. Well it occurred to me whilst reviewing my recent postings that, whilst there has been lots of learning and light bulb moments, there hasn’t been much laughter. By the time you have finished watching the linked video clip, I’m sure you’ll agree that my omission has been well and truly rectified!

I thought that you might enjoy this short but pithy video clip by American Don McMillan.
I only wish I had made it because Don manages to communicate some of the most common PowerPoint errors in a funny and entertaining way. I hope it brings a smile to you face but, perhaps more importantly, it causes you to think a bit harder about whether you need PowerPoint or not and, if you do, how you will use it without falling into all the traps shown in this excellent little video.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1529637984

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Gavin