Wishing you all the best for a spectacular 2012
filled with joy, laughter, and happiness.
Leave it to the ultra democratic Swiss to come up with a political party that wants to minimize (or even eradicate) the use of PowerPoint* in today’s business, government, and educational environments.
The Anti PowerPoint Party is open for people from all over the world. Its defined goal is a referendum in order to seek for a prohibition of PowerPoint* during presentations. The real aim of the referendum, however, is to lift the PowerPoint* issue, both to the awareness of the Swiss people and to the awareness of the world population. They don’t really want to prohibit anything to anybody – through this virtual claim they only want people to have a look at the existing solutions and consider alternative approaches for their presentations.
In the words of Matthias Poehm, the party’s founder: “In over 14 years of public-speaking training, I have noticed that the use of a flip chart beats PowerPoint in 95 out of 100 cases. This is not wishful thinking on my part but proven experience.”
As someone who has sat through too many boring presentations — and helps presenters to make theirs more interesting — I can only applaud this move. Naturally, I’ve joined the APPP. Head over to the official website to join as well.
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*PowerPoint is mentioned as the representative of all presentation software
There are hundreds of books available for people wanting to improve their presentation skills. It’s difficult to choose. Here are five books, published within the last three years, that I consider “must reads” for every presenter:
“Resonate” by Nancy Duarte
This is Nancy Duarte’s first book, although it has been published two years after her “slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations“, which taught presenters how to give more visually appealing presentations.
In “Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences,” Duarte shows just how important stories are for compelling presentations. She has studied great presenters and their presentations and suddenly it clicked: Those presentations all followed some form of pattern. A pattern that is not just found in great presentations, but also literary work and blockbuster movies. Drawing from this research, Duarte outlines these patterns and gives useful tips on how to add that special something to your presentations.
One of the most profound tips in the book is what Nancy calls the intentional placement of a S.T.A.R. Moment: Something They’ll Always Remember. This moment should be so profound or so dramatic that it becomes what the audience chats about at the water cooler or appears as the headline of a news article. Planting a S.T.A.R. moment in a presentation keeps the conversation going even after it’s over and helps the message go viral.
“Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds
Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the net — presentationzen.com — shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote.
Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making “slide presentations” in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.
“The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” by Carmine Gallo
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s wildly popular presentations have set a new global gold standard. This step-by-step guide shows you exactly how to use his crowd-pleasing techniques in your own presentations.
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs is as close as you’ll ever get to having the master presenter himself speak directly in your ear. Communications expert Carmine Gallo has studied and analyzed the very best of Jobs’s performances, offering point-by-point examples, tried-and-true techniques, and proven presentation secrets that work every time. With this revolutionary approach, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to sell your ideas, share your enthusiasm, and wow your audience the Steve Jobs way.
The author, Carmine Gallo, writes a bi-weekly column for Businessweek.com and has been a featured contributor to several other major websites including MSNBC, Military.com, Always On, AOL and Yahoo Finance. Gallo personally coaches leading executives for keynote speeches, media interviews, product launches, and book tours.
To read my detailed book review, click here.
“Presentation Skills 201″ by William R Steele
Presentation Skills 201 is for the good presenter who is determined to get even better. Containing over 70 pieces of detailed advice for higher performance, Presentation Skills 201 can be read from cover-to-cover or used as a reference guide. It includes valuable, easy-to-implement tips for every facet of the presentation process from planning to delivery. It’s all here at an advanced level for high-performing professionals who desire that extra edge by increasing confidence and engaging audiences.
Readers will learn how to increase both the impact and memorability of their presentations. Included with the tips are scores of real-life examples and stories from the author’s over 16 years of helping highly-accomplished presenters find that one more thing that they can do to take it up notch and build their careers by making strong, positive impressions on their presentation audiences.
Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
Scott Berkun is a former Microsoft executive who turned writer and professional speaker. Confessions is Berkun’s first-hand account of many years of public speaking, teaching, and television appearances.
In the book, he shares his successes, failures, and some frustrating experiences, to help readers with their delivery of their own presentations. Confessions contains practical advice in every chapter of the book. It teaches what to do when things go wrong: whether it is a tough crowd you are facing or technical difficulties you encounter.
Apple’s former chief evangelist, Guy Kawasaki, recently published his 10th book: Enchantment. In the book, Kawasaki shares his insight about the art of changing hearts, minds, and actions. This book is all about influencing others. Kind of a modern day version of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People“. Because presenting is influencing at its best, there are some great tips in the book to make your presentations more compelling, more effective, more enchanting.
Watch this short SlideRocket presentation to see Kawasaki’s advice to become a better presenter:
The 9 key points made by Guy Kawasaki:
Customize the Introduction
Kawasaki tells the story of a trip to Brazil during which he had to present to LG. Since he owns an LG washing machine at home, he had one of his sons take a photo and send it to him. He then started his presentation with the photo of his washing machine and giving praise to the product. Another way he personalizes his presentations, especially in foreign countries, is to do a bit of sight seeing and then have someone snap a picture of him. One of the images will become the opening slide showing him as a tourist in his audience’s environment. A perfect backdrop to tell an ice-breaking story to which the audience can relate. There is hardly a better way to build instant rapport with your audience!
Make a Duchenne Smile
This one resonated strongly with me: I live in Thailand, nicknamed “Land of Smiles”, and know from experience that a smile can go a long way in building a trusted relationship. Not any smile though… It has to be a genuine smile that is made not only with the mouth. It also involves your eyes conveying a smile and getting a spark of confidence and joy across. A smile known as the Duchenne Smile.
Dress for a Tie
Although we all have been told before to not judge a book by its cover – it’s hard not to do it. We automatically get an initial impression from somebody’s dress and as a presenter, you need to be ultra aware of this. Underdress and you will give your audience the impression of not caring. Overdress and you will give your audience the impression of wanting to be better than them. Dress like your audience, and you’ll build rapport.
Provide Value
This one is such a no-brainer, I was surprised to see a slide and Kawasaki spending time to go into at all. But it’s often the most obvious that is being overlooked and I’m therefore glad he did. Provide your audience with information, give them insights, and offer assistance and they will find value in your presentation.
Tell a Story
The best presenters are story tellers. They understand that an audience is not interested in numbers and facts. It’s the stories that people want to hear. It’s the stories that people remember. When you have personal and emotionally charged stories, people will be more inclined to remember you and your product. It’s the stories with purpose and relevance that people love to hear and that help them identify with you and your products.
Sell Your Dream
Your audience doesn’t really care about your company or your products. They care about themselves. They care about their dreams and their hopes. When you present, do not sell your product and its features. Sell your dream of greater creativity or greater productivity. Sell your dream of how you and your products and services are making the world a better place.
Use Salient Points
Give meaning to numbers by putting them into a context your audience can understand. Instead of talking of Giga Bytes when you discuss storage capacity, talk about the number of songs or photos or documents that can be stored. Steve Jobs does this extremely well. Whenever he presents Apple products, he always breaks down numbers to make them more visual. He turns numbers into meaningful Information…
Shorten
Many presentations are way too long and verbose. Kawasaki offers a simple rule: 10 Slides / 20 Minutes / 30-point Font. Do not use more than 10 slides (or deliver more than 10 major messages), because your audience will not remember them all. Be prepared to deliver your information in less than 20 minutes. Shorter is better! And use just a few words with a font size of at least 30 points to support your verbal message. Less is often more, especially when you want to make your presentation memorable and compelling.
Suck up to the AV Guys
Watching a presentation is a multi-sensory experience for your audience. The way you sound is as important as what you say and how you say it. Making friends with the AV folks will ensure that they will make you sound good and give you the necessary attention if you should encounter any technical difficulties. Kawasaki’s advice to bring your own Countryman Microphone is right on. It will show the AV crew that you are a professional who knows what you are doing.
If you follow just some of the advice Kawasaki has given in the presentation above — and in his new book — you will improve your presentation. If you take all of his advice to heart, you are guaranteed to enchant your audience.
On Monday, February 7th, Carmine Gallo, communication coach extraordinaire, gave a fascinating presentation to faculty and students at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
Through the wonders of web video, the entire speech is now available on YouTube. Watch it below to see Carmine Gallo in action and see him demonstrate what he teaches. Pay close attention to how he uses body language (eye contact, open posture, and hand gestures) and uses his voice and rate of speech for impact.
Key messages in the video include:
Passion is Everything
You cannot inspire unless you are inspired yourself. Carmine Gallo demonstrates this with two video clips at the beginning of his talk. The first clip shows Steve Jobs talking about the role of passion in an informal staff meeting. The clip ends with Steve Jobs saying “People with passion can change the world.”
The second clip is of Richard Tait, developer of the game Cranium, who displays a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for what he does. He has the interviewer visibly excited within a few sentences. Yes, passion is contagious.
Create Twitter-friendly Headlines
John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant, wrote in his book Brain Rules that the brain ignores subjects without contextual meaning. In an interview with Business Week in July 2008, he explained, “We didn’t care about the number of vertical lines in the teeth of the saber toothed tiger. We cared about whether it was going to clamp down on our thigh. We were more interested in the meaning of the mouth than the details.” And we are no different today. Our brains crave meaning before detail.
Reducing your message down to one short statement that explains what your product means in a real life context will not only capture your audience’s attention, it will make your message memorable. In his presentation, Gallo reminded people of just how powerful Apple’s Twitter-like headlines for new products are. Statements like ”Apple reinvents the phone,” or “The world’s thinnest notebook,” provide meaning and as a result will get attention and be remembered.
Present with Picture Superiority
Steve Jobs uses extremely powerful visual slides with just one word or short headline. He uses the slides as a backdrop to support his words — and not the other way around. He only uses high resolution photography, not clipart. Jobs understands that ideas are better remembered when they are presented with an image and his slides are a reflection of that knowledge. In the video, you will see Carmine Gallo show the contrast between a standard bulleted slide describing the MacBook Air and the way Steve Jobs did it: with just a photo of the world’s thinnest notebook on top of a yellow envelope. This is the difference that makes the difference between a mediocre and a superb presentation.
Create an Antagonist
In every classic story, the hero fights a villain. Carmine Gallo shows how Steve Jobs uses this formula and positions Apple as the protagonist in all his stories. When creating his presentations, Jobs thinks of Apple’s products as the hero that saves the world. Every story Steve Jobs creates has a villain, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a competitor. It can be a problem in need of a solution. What’s important to him is to have an identifiable enemy.
Inform, Educate, and Entertain
Through a couple of video clips, Gallo shows how Steve Jobs makes all of his presentations informative, educational, and entertaining. And of course, as a master presenter himself, he followed the lead and made this presentation at Stanford’s GSB a highly enjoyable experience with many snippets of wisdom that are guaranteed to make you a better presenter.
I hope you enjoy watching and learning from Carmine Gallo as much as I do.
Ideally, a software demo moves the sales cycle forward. Your aim, as a demonstrator, is to convey to your audience just how user-friendly your product is, while at the same time showing how it adds value to their business. Delivering your demo poorly, however, often leads to the opposite: it kills sales.
To help you avoid giving such bad demos, I have compiled a short list I call the Seven Deadly Sins of Software Demos:
1. Disregarding Time
Demos that start or finish late are guaranteed to leave a bad impression with your prospect. They signal your audience that you don’t respect their time and most people will associate this with you not caring about their business. Make sure you plan accordingly: arrive early at your demo venue to leave enough time to setup your equipment and keep an eye on the clock to ensure a timely finish of your demo. Finishing your demo before the allotted time has an added bonus: you will be able to engage your audience in a discussion that will allow you to better understand what parts of your product really will help your customer.
2. Saving the Best for Last
Too often, otherwise successful product demonstrators want to build up the excitement for their product. They show less useful functionality first, believing they should end the demo on a high note. However, what happens in practice is they begin to bore their audience and by the time they get to the high point of their demo, they may have lost the audience either mentally, because they drifted off into dreamland, or, even worse, physically, because they left the meeting early. Get to the heart of the matter immediately; no later than 1 minute into the demo. Show your best feature first and you are guaranteed to get the attention of your audience.
3. Being ill-prepared
This one goes without saying: if you don’t know your product in and out, your credibility will take a hit. If your audience asks how your product handles a specific task, and you have to search for it, your product will not look as user friendly as it actually may be. Along similar lines, if you don’t know your prospect’s business issues, they will sense this and not trust you to be in a position to solve their problems. Make sure you know your product like the inside of your pocket and have done adequate research about your prospect’s specific needs to demonstrate your product with competence.
4. Death by PowerPoint
Slideshows can be cool and do have their place in business. But not in a demo. When a prospect agrees to meet with you for a product demonstration, that’s typically what they want to see. They want to see your product in action and how it solves their most pressing issues. Avoid a lengthy introductory presentation about your company’s history, its revenues, and your management team. This only distracts from the real message: how your product will solve your customers specific needs. Focus on showing how your software will alleviate your prospect’s pain points.
5. Difficult to Understand
A presentation that shows feature after feature, has too many key messages for the audience to remember, and uses buzzwords is confusing and difficult to understand. Highlight benefits instead of features. Limit the number of key messages and repeat them throughout your presentation. Use simple language without buzzwords. Tell stories and use metaphors to get your point across.
6. Using a screen that’s too small for your audience
Nothing loses interest more quickly than if your audience can’t see the screen clearly. Use a projector that shows your screen in an adequate size, so your audience sees everything on the screen clearly, without having to squint their eyes. Use magnification to enlarge those areas you’re currently demonstrating. If you are using a MacBook for your software demo, there is a very nice zoom feature: Hold down the Control key, then drag two fingers up your Mac’s trackpad.
7. Not getting any outside help during planning and preparation
As with anything in life, two or more brains are better than just one. Before you give your first demo in a real life environment, run through it with a peer, a family member, or contact me to get a third person’s honest feedback about the flow, messaging, and delivery style of your demo. Consider it a practice session with the aim to get valuable feedback that will make your demo even more effective. It can only increase the likelihood of your demo achieving what it is intended to do: move the sales cycle forward by demonstrating how your product solves your prospect’s issues in a user-friendly and natural way.
At the SXSW Interactive tech conference, Tim Ferriss was asked “What books should I read to learn how to get good at public speaking?” In his typical way to cut right through the chase, he didn’t recommend any specific book, but rather outlined what he does to prepare for speaking engagements:
Here are five things that build the basis for Ferriss’s talks:
- He won’t focus on being a “public speaker”. He focuses on being a teacher from the stage.
- He has no problem if some people dislike you or disagree with him, but he aims to not be misunderstood. Everything he says seems clear and concise.
- He accepts that he gets nervous and stammers from time to time, drops F-bombs where needed, or generally feel like a nervous wreck. He knows that if he gives good actionable, clear advice, people will forgive it all.
- He has fun and laughs at himself whenever possible. Beating the audience to the punch makes it much less fun for them to slam the presenter.
- He has one 16-oz. Diet Coke 45 minutes prior to speaking and another about 20 minutes prior to speaking. He pees before getting on stage to not look like a squirmy kid at a spelling bee. Yes, Diet Coke will give you hairy palms and insomnia, but this caffeine dosing has proven perfect for him for taking the stage. Could be as much placebo effect as anything else.
With the basics out of the way, he drew a summary to explain his approach:
And here are his explanations of the paper summary above:
- If the format is a 60-minute keynote, a typical format, then I automatically build in at least 20 minutes of audience Q&A, which I usually make 30 minutes. This reduces my presentation time to 30-35 minutes and allows me to tailor the presentation to the group (via answering their questions) instead of guessing what is most important to them and delivering as a pure monologue.
- I assume my presentation will be in five parts: approximately 2-minute introduction, three 10-minute segments, and a 2-minute close. I use this “rule of thirds” for the three segments whether the presentation is 60 minutes or 10 minutes.
- I then plan the content in this order:
10-minute segments – For each segment, what is the main takeaway or usable action for the audience? This means I have three main points in this talk, no more. To flesh out to 10 minutes in length, I then use a PEP (point-example-point) format or, my preference, EPE (example-point-example) format. PEP means you illustrate the concept, then give an example or case study, then reiterate the concept and actionable next step. EPE means you give an example or case study, then explain the concept, then finish with another case study or example. I sketch out 2-3 EPE or PEP for each 10-minute segment, and all of this is done on 1/4 to 1/2 a piece of paper.
Introduction – Now that I have a better idea of my content, I decide on the introduction, preferably starting with a story and then explaining that I’ll introduce three concepts that will help them do “X”, where “X” is whatever the overarching theme of the presentation is.
Unless you are a comedian or have already tested jokes with audiences who don’t know you, do NOT use rehearsed jokes. If a joke falls flat in your intro, it will ruin the experience for you and your audience.
- Now the harder work and the fun of discovery – rehearsal:
The PEP/EPE is usually sketched out well in advance, and the rehearsal is done the night before the presentation. I rehearse the intro, segment 1, segment 2, and segment 3, all separately. I’ll repeat the two-minute intro — winging it — until I nail it. I use a kitchen timer on countdown, and each time I finish, I write down any one-liners or wording that I like. Note that I NEVER memorize a speech verbatim, but I do ensure that I have memorized the starting and closing 2-3 sentences for each portion (intro, segments) at this point.- How many times will I repeat each segment? Until I’m happy. I am a perfectionist, so for certain presentations, this could be up to 10 times.
- Once I have these parts in order, I then wing the close (not before), and repeat like the other portions until I’m happy. For me, it’s not productive to work on the closing statements or questions until I have the rest of the content polished and ready to rock.
- Now link them all together and do the whole thing until you nail it at least once. Expect you’ll forget about 10% of your memorized lines or anecdotes, and that’s OK, but review your notes each time to ensure you’re hitting the most important points. Once you’ve blazed through it well once, go to bed.One additional tip: I came to realize long ago that I can barely sleep the night before presentations; it doesn’t matter how many times I do them. So… expect that you won’t sleep and don’t let that add to the stress of the experience. Just get extra sleep the two nights before and plan on an all-nighter. If you get sleep, it’ll be a pleasant surprise instead of a source of panic.
There you have it! Quite simple and definitely way effective.
To read the full article, head over to Tim Ferriss’s blog.
