In my book, presentation skills and selling skills go hand and hand.   The principles of effective selling will help you to produce powerful persuasive presentation and the principles of great presenting will help you sell much better face to face.

Almost every type of presentation is about persuasion.   You want your audience to do something as a result of your presentation.  So to do this you need to consider the same sort of things you do when planning a sales call.

1. What is your outcome
2. Who is your customer(audience)
3. What are their needs and wants?
4. What is there initial attitude to your message (product)
5. What features of your product or message can you turn into relevant benefits for the audience
6. What are the potential pitfalls of staying with their existing behaviour or supplier and how can you use these to “disturb” the status quo?

The answers to these questions will allow you to develop an effective and tailored sales proposition for your audience which you can then bring to life with great presentation skills.

Remember most of the skills needed to be a great presenter or speaker work whether you are speaking to 1 person or 1000!

1. Establish rapport through mirroring non-verbal signals, tonality, volume and vocabulary
2. Engage with confident eye contact
3. Vary your vocal delivery to maintain interest and build enthusiasm
4. Ensure that your body language and gestures are congruent with your message
5. Use silence effectively to allow your audience time to process your proposals

So if you are just a good salesman, polish your presentation skills and you will become great!

And if you are just a confident presenter, learn how to use the techniques of selling and influencing to supercharge your presentations.

Stories are incredibly important tools for communicating all sorts of information. I have been an “unconscious” story collector now for many years and as a trainer, these stories have been incredibly helpful to my participants in bringing the material I teach to life.

To be honest I tend to take them for granted because I use them without thinking but today their importance was drawn to my attention. It was the final presentations and feedback session from a class of managers who have been facilitating through a monthly series of leadership training modules.

 During the feedback I suddenly realised that stories were a key part of my USP and what makes my training so effective.  Not only do they help to make the topic relevant in the seminar, they also serve as memory hooks which help the participants retain their learning and then apply it in the real world  long after the course is over.

So, are you a story collector?    Do you capture and file away, either mentally or on paper, iconic stories that illustrate key principles.    Do you then weave those stories into your presentation, speaches, conversations and seminars?

If you don’t you are missing a trick!

In this day and age it seems like everybody is looking for the quick fix without any effort.   Whether it’s making money, getting fit, loosing weight or becoming a celebrity.  Andit seems to me that this obsession for instant success is supported and encouraged by adverts for all sorts of products both online and offline which claim to help you achieve success in your chosen field without doing anything!

I find the same think with aspiring presenters.   They want to go on a 1 day course or even just read a book and then start earning big money as a presenter or speaker.  It’s time for a reality check – nobody gets to be a great speaker without lots and lots and lots of practice!

So, if you are not prepared to put in the hours, set more realistic expectations. 

But if you are prepared to practice then the sky’s the limit.   Jack Nicklaus, one of the worlds greatest golfers said “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”     I agree.    I have been speaking in public since I was around 14years old and I still actively seek opportunities to practice.

When I first started writing speeches, I struggled to know how many words to write for a speech of a given length.  The only way I would know was to rehearse the speech and time how long it lasted.

Now I have learned that I typically speak at an average of  80-100 words per minute when presenting in public and so I can quickly calculate how many words I need to write  i.e. 400-500 words for a five minute speech and so on.

Now not everybody speaks at the same pace.   Some books quote the normal speaking rate as around 125 words per minute but remember that there is a big difference between normal conversation and public speaking.   The best public speakers tend, on average to speak a bit slower so i would recommend that you start of with around 100 wpm and see how you get on.

Most word processors have a word count function built into them so it’s easy to check how much you have written.

Of course it goes without saying that when writing a speech of any length don’t  forget the basics.  You need an interesting opening, a powerful conclusion and relevant body content. and remember to rehearse it out loud.  Give as much time to planning the delivery as you do the planning the content.

Good luck

Gavin

Last night I attended a meeting of a new public speaking club called Hamwic Speakers- Southampton.  Hamwic have only been going since March but are doing extremely well.   At last nights meeting I was entranced by a wonderful speech by a young man called Rich Watts, who talked about “A trip to grandma’s“.

On the face of it, not the most exciting of topics but Rich delivered a most entertaining and excellent speech in which, by describing in vivid detail, what it was like to visit his grandmothers, from the perspective of his five year old self, he evoked powerful memories and emotions in all of us.

I was particularly impressed with the way Rich matched his energy and pace of delivery to the story he was telling.  At the start his pace was slow and measured as he described the rather boring car journey where he was too small to see much out of the car window but clouds.  Then, when he arrived at his gran’s the pace picked up dramatically as he described zooming into her house (an Aladdin’s cave for a five year old boy!) with his arms outstretched behind him pretending to be a plane.

The pace stayed high as he described how he explored and played and then slowed a little as he started to describe the other family members present.   The pace slowed further as he brought us up to the present day and how things had changed.  How his granny wasn’t as energetic as she had been, how the food wasn’t as home cooked as it had been and so on.   This “gear change”change of pace brought a poignancy and a sense of reflection to this speech that worked beautifully and lead us up nicely to Rich’s take away message.

Rich finished with two key messages, about remembering the importance of Granny and perhaps even more important, remembering (& not losing) the sense of wonder and playfulness we had when we were younger.

I hope this short article has captured the importance of being able to change gear in any speech or presentation in order to be a more effectie story teller and influencer.

In my last post I focused on the delivery side of an impromptu speech but what about the content?   How do I stop by brain going blank and running out of things to say?

Well here are two further technique to help you wow your audience ;

Use the PEP model

• Position – Start by stating your position on the topic – do you agree or disagree?
  
• Explain – Now expand on that by explaining why you hold this view.  How can you justify it?  What evidence support it? What alternatives have you considered and why have you dismissed them?
• Position – End by restating your position confidently and authoritatively.  Some people are good at coming up with a powerful and clever closing quote but if inspiration escapes you try a simple “and so I believe ….”

Paint a picture: See, hear & feel.

Stories and case studies come to life when the speaker paints word pictures that hep us re-create the situation in our heads as they speak. To do this you need to use sensory specific language to bring your words to life.   A good tool to practice this skill is to describe  three things you could see, three things you could hear and three things you could feel (and also things you could taste and smell if appropriate).  This sort of detail really helps your audience see, hear and feel what you are talking about it.

For example, if your story is about meeting someone in the queue at the post office you could describe:

• See – What they were wearing, the looks on the faces of the other people in the queue, the curling posters on the notice boards etc.
• Hear – The muttering complaints from people in the queue next door, the laughter of a child playing at his mothers feet…
• Feel – The mounting frustration as all the other lines seemed to move faster than yours, the firmness of their grip as they warmly shook your hand etc.

Have fun experimenting with sensory word pictures and see for yourself how they can make even the dullest subject come alive.

This may sound like a strange question but it is a vital one for presenters and public speakers.    Most of us take our voice for granted and yet  it is a such more powerful and complex  that we owe it to ourselves to develop our ability to make the most of it.

In this post I’d like to explore just one aspect of the voice, that of resonance.  The human body is fully of hollow, air filled cavities that resonate when we speak.   The main resonating chambers are

• Chest cavity
• Throat
• Nasal Cavities & Sinuses

Some people  have learned to speak “normally” from one of the these three chambers and as a result they have a particular vocal tone.   If you tend to project your voice via your sinuses you will have a brighter, higher pitched and more nasal sound.  If you tend to project from the chest cavity, your voice will be deeper, more rounded and resonant because the chest cavity is much bigger.

The good news is that anyone can easily learn to vary their tonality simply by changing the resonating chamber they are focussing on.

Here’s a simple exercise to get you started.

Stand up straight, take a deep breath and put your hand lightly on the bridge of your nose.   Now, imagining that the sound were coming from this area of your head, say out loud “This is my nose” and notice the quality of the sound produced and how it feels within your body

Now repeat the above exercise with your hand placed lightly on your throat and focus on projecting the sound from this area of your body.  Say outloud “This is my throat” and notice how it sounds and feels.

Finally, place your hand on the middle of your chest and focus on your voice vibrating in this part of your body.  Say out loud “This is my chest” and again pay attention to the sound and body feelings.

These exercises, if practised regularly, will help you to develop an awareness of how each area effects your voice.

Once you have this awareness you can experiment with speaking “normally” from one of these areas and notice how flexible you can become.   The next stage is to start to combine the resonance from two or more chambers at the same time to “craft” the vocal tone you desire.

Have fun and let me you how you get on.

I regularly get asked how speakers can improve their ability to engage with their audience and hold their attention.   Given the number of dull boring and apparently pointless presentations I have had to sit through this is no great surprise,  I am often complimented in my ability to quickly engage my audience so today I’ll share with you some of my secrets.

1. Set a clear intention.
2. Have a clear outcome for the presentation – Know what you want them to do as a result of your talk
3. Connect with your audience before you start to speak. Silently welcome them as you scan the room
4. Quickly establish “What’s in it for your audience” so that  they can see the relevance of your content
5. Maintain good eye contact with the whole audience -
6. Vary you energy and expression – a  monotone delivery will send your audience to sleep
7. Turn your presentation into a story or series of stories that communicate your key messages
8. Don;t overload them with too much detail – less is more!

That’s it in a nutshell.   If you want more detail on any of these steps – just send me an email or ask a  question in the comments box below and I’ll be happy to expand on any one of them.

In several of my previous posts I have talked about the importance of having a clear outcome for your presentation or speech. Today I’d like to take a look at the next step in the design process – finding a
logical flow.

Your audience need to see that there is a path between your starting point and your outcome and they need to see this logic early on or they will switch off!   Nobody wants to listen to a ramble or apparently disconnected set of information that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

So what can you do? Well one way is to consider an “off the shelf” template. There are a number of tried and tested story formats from which you can choose the most appropriate one for your message ad audience.  Here are a few of the simplest and most effective ones.

• The Chronological flow:
  This is a simple, past, present and future structure where you start by talking about the history of the organisation, project or approach then move on to talk about the current situation before finally painting a picture of future developments.

• The Pro’s and Cons Analysis:
  This approach harks back to the classic exam essay question  “Compare the pros and cons  of various  options and then recommend the most appropriate one.”

• The Problem/Solution mode:
  In this template you start by identifying an amplifying a problem or issue faced by your audience,  Then you propose a solution and support your recommendation with appropriate evidence.   This model is often used to great effect in TV commercials for cleaning products.   Scene one – “Oh no! you have a sink full of dirty dishes and your wife is due back in five minutes! Scene 2 – “Don’t worry, a quick squirt of  New JIFFO Cleaner and everything will be sparking clean before you know it!” Scene 3 – “Phew I with JIFFO that was so easy”, Husband putting clean and sparking dishes away just as his wife arrives home”

• The Solution First template:
  In this approach you start by outlining the solution to a real problem, challenge or issue facing your audience and then work backwards to explain how you got to this solution. It’s a bit like a murder mystery where the murderer is revealed early on in the drama and the interest lies in the story of how thy came to be in this position

Choosing a template:
If it is not immediately obvious to you which template to use I suggest you start by getting away from the computer and start by jotting down the main ideas in your presentation onto post it notes.   Stick these up on a suitable wall or whiteboard and step back to see the bigger  picture.  What makes sense?  Move them around and read them as if you were a member of your audience?   What order is simplest?   T and clearest from the listeneres perspective? Next ask yourself “What type of story flow will suit this situation
and help me achieve my desired outcome?”

Crafting a great presentation takes a little more time but the results are always worth it!