Tag Archives | presentations

How to Leave Any Client in a Deep Funk

By Michael W. McLaughlin on November 25, 2012 in Uncategorized

It’s easy to get carried away when you assemble a slide presentation, but here are four questions you can ask yourself before you finalize your next set of presentation slides:

Will I say to the audience, “I know this slide will be difficult to read for those of you in the back?” Most times, if your slide is tough to see in the back of the room, it’s tough to see in the front too. If there’s a chance that people can’t see your slide contents, redesign it. Once you’ve got people squinting at your slides, you lose their attention.

What is the central point of focus? Your slides are intended to reinforce (and clarify) your message. So, look at each slide to examine how each one performs that important role. Can your audience see the image or text you’ve chosen, understand the concept, and focus their attention back to you–the messenger? Our minds wander during presentations, so keep each slide focused on the most important idea you’re conveying. Once you’re done, move on to the next idea and slide. You don’t want me ruminating about the meaning of the bubble called “willingness to speculate,” when you are talking about the bubble called “goals and values”

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Sanity Check: The Final Question

By Michael W. McLaughlin on January 13, 2012 in Proposal Writing, Sanity Checks

When that proposal, presentation, or report is ready to go, do one more thing before you send it to your client.

Read through each page or slide and ask yourself, “What can I remove from this document?” Maybe you’ll find unnecessary adverbs, some flabby language, or sentences and images that don’t really add anything to your key messages.

Once you’ve got language in a document or slides in a deck, it’s hard to get rid of it. But, you almost always have an opportunity to do that. And, you’ll communicate more effectively by stripping out the fat.

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Blogs I Like: Nick Morgan’s PublicWords

By Michael W. McLaughlin on May 31, 2011 in Speaking

Nick Morgan

Whether you’re presenting to a client, leading a team meeting, or just participating in a conference call, your ability to influence others begins and ends with how well you communicate.

Whenever I need market-ready advice on presentation or communication skills, I always start with Nick Morgan.

In case you don’t know him, Nick Morgan is a top communication theorist and coach. In addition to his books, Morgan has written hundreds of articles for local and national publications. He served as the editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter and he’s a former Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Morgan publishes a high-value blog at PublicWords.com that can accelerate the development of anyone’s presentation skills.

For example, he recently launched a series of podcasts on his blog summarizing the concepts from his books, Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, and Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. So far in the series, Morgan has done a great job reinforcing the basics, but he always takes things a step further.

If you only have time to listen to one post in his series, make it 10 Quick Tips to Make Your Next Presentation Wildly Successful. You’ll get a great sense of Morgan’s strategies and approach to communication.

Morgan offers lots of advice and it works. If you haven’t seen his blog at PublicWords.com, don’t wait until the night before your next speech to check it out. And you might be interested in my most recent interview with Morgan, a podcast on Seven Steps to a Great Speech.

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Book Review: Speaking PowerPoint

By Michael W. McLaughlin on May 4, 2011 in Books, Speaking

When I started reading Bruce Gabrielle’s book, Speaking PowerPoint: The New Language of Business, I was skeptical. I wasn’t sure I could get through another book about PowerPoint, especially since there are so many good ones out there already.

But Gabrielle’s book grabbed and held my attention–once I understood its purpose: To offer design techniques for presentations targeted at boardroom audiences (decision makers), not ballroom audiences (conference attendees).

That is, the presentation design techniques in the book help the reader build presentations for audiences who will actually use the slides for discussion and decision making. Think final presentations for consulting clients, for example.

Gabrielle calls his approach the Mindworks Presentation Method, and it includes three parts: Story, Slide, and Design. The book emphasizes the logical structure of a persuasive presentation and uses lots of examples to demonstrate the important concepts. Toward the end of the book, I was able to use Gabrielle’s method to diagnose the problems with the example slides included in the book.

In the back of the book, Gabrielle included a Mindworks Presentation Method Manager’s Checklist, which is a handy reference guide to keep nearby as you prepare a presentation.

Many of you are highly experienced, so you’re probably already doing a lot of what Gabrielle suggests. Even so, you’ll learn plenty of new techniques from this book. I know I did. This one’s a keeper.

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You Know Your Presentation Is Bombing When…

By Michael W. McLaughlin on March 24, 2011 in Client Relationships, Speaking

You notice that even the summer intern is yawning
One of your audience members made an origami dragon from your handout
You say “before we get started” after you’ve been talking for five minutes
An audience member calls for a coffee break before you’ve finished your introduction
When you turn up the lights, you’re asked to turn them down again
You start to fall asleep during your presentation
Your presentation software crashes and the audience applauds
You hear the music from Angry Birds playing in the audience
Three of your audience members are in a yoga “corpse” pose
An audience members ask to leave because she has to immediately file an expense report
You offer to give your audience your slide deck and no one responds
You’re forced to say “please bear with me” at any time during your presentation.

Here are four great resources for ensuring that your presentations don’t bomb.

Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire, by Cliff Atkinson.

Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, by Nick Morgan.

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, by Garr Reynolds.

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, by Jerry Weissman.

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Words We Ought To Ban

By Michael W. McLaughlin on January 6, 2011 in Business Life

You’ve probably seen lists in various publications of words people hope we don’t see again. I agree that we should ban the use of some words and phrases. Whether we’ve beaten them to death with over-use, they were always devoid of meaning, or are just idiotic–they have to go.

As we “turn the page” on another year, I published my candidates for elimination from future usage in the January issue of Management Consulting News:

Ballpark figure
Best practices
Circle back
Client from hell
C-Suite
Ecosystem (referring to businesses)
Face time
Game-changer
Hunters and farmers
In the loop
It’s complicated
Making sausage
Perfect storm
Seat at the table
Shove to the back burner
Sourcing with a hyphen: in-sourcing, crowd-sourcing, co-sourcing, and outsourcing
Thoughtware
Throw under the bus
Users (they’re people!) and end-user, user-friendly, and user-hostile

Here are some others that came to me from readers by email:

Ab-so-lutely
At the end of the day
At this point in time
Bandwidth
Blogosphere
Brutally honest
Caught off guard
Client-facing
Economic recovery
Economic stimulus
Global economic crisis
Let me be clear
Let me be perfectly clear
Man-caused disaster
Mission-critical
New normal
No-brainer
On the same page
Shovel-ready
Slam dunk
“Socialize”–as in “Let’s socialize this with upper management before we present to the client.”
Solution
Synergy
Take it offline
Think outside the box
Touch base
Virtualization

Feel free to add more in the comments if you’d like.

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Engaging a Virtual Audience

By Michael W. McLaughlin on May 12, 2010 in Managing Your Business, Marketing, Selling

These days, presenting, meeting, and working in the virtual world are expected. But connecting with an online audience has its challenges. I asked webinar expert, Roger Courville, for a few tips on how to approach and succeed in this new presentation environment.

McLaughlin: What’s the most common misconception about presenting in a virtual manner, as opposed to in person?

Courville: Misconception number one is that you don’t need to adapt your presentation approach to a new medium. Studying communications teaches that the medium of communication changes the way messages are sent and received.

This is obvious when you think about telling a story in a book versus a movie; the discipline of telling the same story is different for each medium. It’s less obvious when you think about making a presentation in a web session because you’re speaking and using PowerPoint.

McLaughlin: Is that because you can’t see your audience?

Courville: Exactly. But that is thinking about, “What I lose” instead of, “What are the tradeoffs.” If you focus only on the fact that you lose body language or other aspects of in-person communications, presenting virtually will forever be a “poor alternative” instead of an “option with new opportunities.”

Presenting virtually gains you the huge benefit of extending your reach with audio-visual communications, and it adds the flexibility and power of influence that only comes with a live connection between presenters and audiences.

McLaughlin: Is there a good technique for improving audience engagement and getting feedback on how the audience is receiving your message?

Courville: Web seminar solutions have all kinds of tools built in, including polls, attention meters, and so on. I coach people to start in one place: If you do nothing else, get familiar with the Q&A or chat capability AND (and this is a big and), figure out how to monitor it in real time.

McLaughlin: You mean instead of waiting until the end of the presentation for questions?

Courville: Yes. The goal is to figure out how to connect as naturally with people online as off. With an in-person event, we do this by responding when we see a hand go up, right? If you can’t see a “hand up,” you can’t respond and your audience engagement level goes down. It’s like becoming a pilot…you have to learn to fly by sight and by your instruments.

McLaughlin: If you could give just one piece of advice about becoming an effective virtual presenter, what would it be?

Courville: Plan how you’re going to interact and rehearse it. Use a poll, stop for questions in the middle of your presentation, use a moderator, plan a spontaneous question, and even plant one if it helps.

And give yourself a grace period. Remember a time when you hopped into an unfamiliar car, went to turn on the lights and the windshield wipers start flapping? Presenting online isn’t hard; it’s just different. Never wing it…that’s a recipe for sub-par performance online or off.

Roger Courville is the author of The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook. He is also co-founder and principal of 1080 Group, LLC, a consulting firm that helps clients to design and optimize web seminar programs. You can reach him at roger@1080group.com.

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Presentation Toolkit: 10 Must-Have Resources

By Michael W. McLaughlin on May 6, 2010 in Consulting Process, Managing Your Business

It’s rare to meet a successful consultant with really poor communication skills, especially when it comes to presentations. I know–there are lots of exceptions. Like you, I’ve slept through my share of consultants’ speeches.

Let’s just say there is always room for improvement for all of us. Fortunately, the market is full of first-rate resources to help you become an outstanding presenter. This month, I’ve compiled an Amazon list of ten books that will help you become a better communicator, whether you’re in front of room full of people or a small audience.

Have a look at this list, and feel free to send me your best recommendations for additions.

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Make One Small Change in Your Sales Presentation

By Michael W. McLaughlin on February 24, 2010 in Selling

By some accounts, more than 40 million presentations are given every day. Many start off something like this:

“Good Morning, I’m Eric Snooze from Global Interactive Services and I just wanted to start off by saying say how happy we are to be here today and to assist you with this critical effort. In case you don’t know about us, we have fifteen offices in strategic centers around the world. We’ve been in business since 1985, and our people undergo hundreds of hours of training in seven areas of specialization…”

By this point, you’ve likely lost the attention of half your audience. But Eric’s presentation would likely go into even more detail about his company before moving on to the real reason he was there—the client’s issue. Thousands of sales presentations start just like Eric’s, even though that is arguably the worst way to launch an effective one. Unfortunately, old-school sellers cling to this type of introduction.

Even if the standard seller-centric opening is short (which it often isn’t) many of your attendees aren’t really tuned in. Besides, if you’re making a sales presentation, the odds are good that your audience has some clue what your company does. Remember, they don’t really want to hear about you, even though they may say they do. They want to hear about themselves. So, they’ll listen to a self-serving opening, but they may not really hear it.

Here’s another way you might introduce yourself:

“Hi, I’m Eric Nodoze from Global Interactive Services, and I thank you for your time today. We’ll cover three topics this afternoon, beginning with what we know about your issues. We’ll discuss that topic and refine our understanding. Then, we’ll review options for how you might address this issue, with an emphasis on how we can work together. Finally, we’ll wrap up with a short review of Global Integrated Services and why we think we’re well-suited to assist you.”

With a simple shift in emphasis, this opening lets your listeners know that their concerns will be up first, and that they won’t have to endure your spiel until you’ve satisfied them that you know what they are up against. Once you’ve done that, don’t be surprised if your audience members want to hear more about your company.

Here’s a rule of thumb for your presentations: Focus on buyers’ issues at least 75 percent of the time, including right from the start. With conscious effort on your part, a presentation that is mostly about them can still answer all their questions about you, without the usual dull recitation.

If your audience doesn’t already know the basics about you, that is, your name and company, then supply that information and get on with it. Or, better yet, have someone else, preferably a client team member, introduce you very briefly.

If you want an easy, effective way to make your sales presentations stand out from those of your competitors, ignore the wisdom of the crowd. Always lead off with an emphasis on your client, not you. Your audience will be pleasantly surprised.

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Should You Present First or Last?

By Michael W. McLaughlin on August 3, 2009 in Selling

When a client asks you to make a sales presentation, you may wonder whether there’s any advantage to going first or last. Of course, you don’t always have a choice. But if your buyers will be listening to more than one sales presentation, try to choose when you speak.

Researchers have found that the order of presentations does make a difference in audience responses. When buyers listen to sales presentations from multiple sellers, presenting last, especially if it’s close to the time of the buyers’ decision, confers a powerful advantage.

Your ideas gain influence from the “recency effect,” meaning that the information people hear last makes the biggest impression. The study also found that sellers who presented between the first and last sellers—in the unmemorable middle—were the least likely to have any advantage over the others.

However, in some competitive situations, clients may identify a clear market leader and a “me-too” seller, that is, one with a similar offer but less market share. If that’s the case, listener reactions to the order of presentations may change.

The market leader still benefits from going last, but enjoys almost a comparable boost from taking the first slot. When market leaders present first, they tap into the principle of “primacy,” which affords more credence to the information people hear first from sellers they already perceive to be the best. A lesser-known competitor doesn’t achieve a similar benefit from speaking first.

If you are sure you represent the market leader in a sale, you should try to present either last or first. Whatever your relative position in the market, you don’t want to present in the middle of the pack.

Research study: “Who Wants to Go First? Order Effects within a Series of Competitive Sales Presentations,” by Judy A. Wagner and Noreen M. Klein, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management (vol. XXVII, no.3, summer 2007).

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