Archive for August, 2007

Form Handouts for Presentations

Friday, August 31st, 2007

In general, I am against giving audience members handouts during or before a presentation. Why? Because I want the audience listening carefully to me the speaker, not ignoring me while reading ahead. Your audience can read a lot faster than you can talk.

However, there is a system that many speakers, including world-renowned gurus like Anthony Robbins use. These speakers give people booklets that have lots of blanks, sentence fragments, and spaces for writing. They are workbooks, not simply data filled handouts.

Ask For SPECIFIC Action

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

A confession: for years my teeth would grate anytime I heard colleagues brag about how much business they received from word-of-mouth referral.

I wasn�t getting referrals. Why?

My clients seemed to love me; they told me I was great. The evaluations I received were effusive with praise. Clients wrote to me about how I had fundamentally altered their careers for the better. Plus, I know my clients loved me because they would come back to me; I got lots of repeat business. My business was growing, growing and growing�yet very little of my new business came from referrals.

Bad Presentation Advice

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

The world is full of bad advice written in books by so-called “experts.”

“Pregnant women should NEVER exercise!”

“Lose weight by eating only one meal a day.”

“The best way to catch a husband is to play hard to get and to lie, lie, lie” (advice from a now-divorced, but very rich “relationship” expert)

Most of us realize the world is full of charlatans and we take lots of advice with a grain of salt. But for some reason, many of my media and presentation training clients lose all sense of skepticism when it comes to advice they have read about how to conduct media interviews or give speeches.

Old Solutions For New Problems

Monday, August 27th, 2007

In this high tech world of PowerPoint slides, video and laser gizmos, many executives feel like their problems are new and unique. Maybe, but maybe not.

Here is advice on a seemingly unrelated matter from an 1880 book on etiquette entitled “Don’t: A Manual of Mistakes and Improprieties more or less prevalent in Conduct and Speech:”

“Don’t drop your knife or fork; but, if you do, don’t be disconcerted. Quietly ask the servant for another, and give the incident no further heed. Don’t be disquieted at accidents or blunders of any kind, but let all mishaps pass off without comment and with philosophical indifference.”

True Experts Speak. Period!

Monday, August 27th, 2007

You may not like public speaking. In fact, if you are a normal human being, you may down right hate it. But if you want to be considered an expert in your field, sooner or later, you must speak at either a professional conference, your own company’s meeting, an industry trade meeting or at your city hall.

It might not be fair, but human beings as audience members assume that someone asked to speak either has authority or is an expert. If it’s not your own boss speaking to you, then often times you assume the speaker in front of you is an expert. Of course, expertise is a relative thing, in the land of the blind, the one eye-ed man…and all that.

The Unexpected Hit

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

One of the fascinating things about making in-person or media presentations is that you never know when something that seems destined for failure becomes a hit. In 2005 there was a book climbing the best-seller lists entitled “On Bullsh#$” by Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt.

The book’s success is surprising at many levels. It was supposed to fail for the following reasons:

Don’t Read, Even If Your Audience Can’t See You

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

If you’ve been asked to deliver a presentation via a teleseminar or a webinar, this is likely to be your first reaction:

“Great! This will be simple. I can just read my script or PowerPoint. No one will see my face or my eyes. No one will know. This will be a piece of cake!”

Wrong!

Your audience can hear you reading. This is a big problem. If you haven’t rehearsed your presentation dozens of times or unless you are a professional newscaster, your reading will sound awful. Here’s why:

Adjust Your Volume In Your Microphone, Not Your Voice Box

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

Lots of people are comfortable speakers when they are in front of an audience of 20-30 people. Most moderately experienced speakers feel relatively relaxed in situations like this. The speaker seems comfortable to the audience, because he or she is speaking in a normal, conversational tone of voice. Nothing sounds strained, phony or contrived.

Making The Best Of A Bad Situation

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

If you work for a big corporation, sooner or later, someone is going to ask you to deliver their PowerPoint Presentation. And he or she will demand that you don’t change a single element of the presentation (and they can get away with it because they are your boss).

Here’s the problem: the slide show you are given is horrible! Each slide is dense with row after row of numbers, bullet points are strewn about generously on each page and complex graphs are squeezed in four to a slide. In short, you are asked to deliver a PowerPoint slide from hell.

Save Prep Time By Speaking More Often

Monday, August 20th, 2007

One thing I have found to be true with my clients over the years is that the less frequently they give speeches, the more time it takes them to prepare for any one speech. If you rarely give a presentation of any sort, than every speaking opportunity becomes a huge chore. You’ve go to think about the speech, worry about it, produce anxiety about starting to prepare for it, and fret about procrastinating about the speech. Then there are the sleepless nights the week of the speech.