New Persuasive Presentations Blog

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My blog has now been incorporated into my website, you can view it here www.persuasivepresentations.com.au

I look forward to seeing you there!

Regards

Sharon Ferrier

Stand Up, Speak Up & Persuade 22nd July 2015

Does the thought of delivering a presentation scare you?

Do you want to learn how to be confident in front of a group, think on your feet and deliver a persuasive and engaging presentation?

Then this course is for you!

I only do a few public workshops per year – my next one is at the end of July – Stand Up Speak Up and Persuade works and the lessons learnt stay with you for life.

“I was fortunate enough to attend the “Stand Up, Speak Up and Persuade” course at Scholle. Have attended many courses during my career, but this one has been a clear stand out, and has really stood the test of time. It has continued to resonate with me, and I continue to use the principles when preparing any presentation I do. I couldn’t recommend this course more highly to organisations and people who want really want to make an impact.” Randall Pearce  –  strategic Sales and Marketing Professional

Now is your time to shine – and I can help.

For more information or to discuss your in-house training needs,  flick me an email:

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Is It Time To Ban PowerPoint?

Last month in the Australian Financial Review Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer was quoted as saying “I think one of the dangers in large companies is that people start to think that their job is to create PowerPoints, [rather than] to make decisions and improve things for customers…. I am seriously considering turning PowerPoint off completely,”

He is not the first CEO to feel this way. In 1997 Scott McNealy, then president of Sun Microsystems, banned the use of PowerPoint throughout his company.

Should you be doing the same?

Or maybe you just need to get a big stick and empower your team and beat PowerPoint into submission

 1. Look at your company communication culture

Often when I suggest to a client that they need to change the way deliver their PowerPoints they respond with “Oh, we can’t do that. Our manager supplies the templates and slide headings and we MUST do it this way!”

Forcing people to use PowerPoint is forcing them into ‘lecture mode’. People start telling rather than selling and presentations become predictable long winded and boring.

Your company communication culture starts at the top. Are your managers delivering great presentations or are they presenting with PowerPoint circa 1995?

2. Put PowerPoint last

Many people, when asked to deliver a presentation, open their laptops and start cranking out slides. Instead you should be:

1. Setting an objective
2. Tailoring your message to your audience
3. Developing your topic
4. Structure your presentation
5. Making it persuasive
6. Including a call to action

PowerPoint should be the last thing on your list before you start practicing and you may find that your presentation is better off without it!

3. ‘Flip’ your meetings

This idea comes from the flipped classroom model, where instead of teachers delivering lectures, information is sent out before for the students to read and class time is dedicated to discussion which the teacher facilitates.

How this would work for you

Instead of your team delivering a PowerPoint presentation they would instead email an executive summary of their recommendations and then facilitate discussion on the pros, cons and recommended improvements for the idea.

So there is no need to ban PowerPoint – you just need to learn how to use it to your advantage. If all this sounds a little scary, it’s okay, I’m here to help!

Stand Up, Speak Up & Persuade – March 26th 2015

Does the thought of delivering a presentation scare you?

Do you want to learn how to be confident in front of a group, think on your feet and deliver a persuasive and engaging presentation?

Then this course is for you!

I only do a few public workshops per year – my next one is at the end of March – Stand Up Speak Up and Persuade works and the lessons learnt stay with you for life.

“I was fortunate enough to attend the “Stand Up, Speak Up and Persuade” course at Scholle. Have attended many courses during my career, but this one has been a clear stand out, and has really stood the test of time. It has continued to resonate with me, and I continue to use the principles when preparing any presentation I do. I couldn’t recommend this course more highly to organisations and people who want really want to make an impact.” Randall Pearce  –  strategic Sales and Marketing Professional

Now is your time to shine – and I can help.

For more information or to discuss your in-house training needs,  flick me an email:

Name(required)

Email(required)

Telephone number

Comment(required)

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Perfecting your pitch

For several years now I have been speaking to the budding entrepreneurs competing in the Adelaide University eChallenge. The biggest challenge they face when preparing for their pitches is clarity. Most participants try to cram their 20 page business plan into a 5-7 minute pitch with disastrous results!

When you look at the fundamentals of a pitch, they consist of these three components:

 

Let’s look closer at these three points to help you to achieve pitch perfection.

1. Opportunity

Investors want to know:

1. What problem are you solving?
2. Is there a market?
3. How big is the gap?

This comprises the business opportunity. You may have a brilliant product, but without understanding the market and gap you will not succeed. Steve Jobs predicted that the Segway personal mover would have as great an impact as the PC.

The company forecast that their first year sales would be over 500,000 units. But although technically brilliant, the team misread the market and after seven years the company had only sold 30,000 units. They didn’t research and understand the ‘need’ and their product was not the global success they expected. 

When pitching start with the consumer’s wants and needs  – if there are no wants and needs you’ll have a hard time selling the opportunity.

 2.Idea

This is your product or service. You need to be able to explain clearly how you solve the problem highlighted by the opportunity. Focus on the benefits to the consumer, explain how unique your solution is and how you plan to support its longevity in the market. If your product is anything like these, you may want to start again.

3. Team

Now it’s time to sell you and your team. Have you covered all bases? Do you have finance, marketing, sales, strategy and manufacturing experience in your team? If not, you need to be able to explain how you will meet these deficiencies.

The investor is thinking: “Do I know, like and trust this person?” They want to see ‘skin in the game.’ They want to know if you’re fully committed, passionate and driven to succeed, after all, they’re giving you their money! 

Showcase you and your team or else they may take the opportunity and your idea and give it to someone else!

 

Why you NEVER want to read your speech!

I want you to try something for me next time you’re alone.

Stand up and hold a book at waist height and read it out loud. Listen to what happens to your voice. When you lower your head your voice gets squashed and vocal variety is reduced. It’s also harder for people to hear as you cannot project your voice as well. We also tend to fall into a ‘reading rhythm’ which can have the same effect as swinging a pendulum in front of the audience – “You are getting sleepy…”

Here are four ways to deliver your presentation – but only one of them will increase your persuasion quotient.  

1. Read your speech

When we write a speech we tend to fall into report mode. The language and the tone becomes more formal and doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily.

On top of this, we lose all the things that make a presentation engaging: eye-contact, gestures and vocal variety. 

2.  Memorise your speech 

We’ve all seen someone who as delivered a memorised speech. They stand as if super-glued to the spot, beads of sweat break out on their brow as they desperately try not to lose their way and they stare over your head, fearful that if they look anyone in the eye their brain will turn to mush.

Memorising a speech to the point where you can deliver a natural sounding presentation is possible – but do you really have the time for that?

3. Wing it!

Those of us that love to stand up and speak often fall into this trap. We know the topic, we know the audience, why do we need to prepare?

The challenge here is that we can talk too much, go off on wild tangents and before you know it 30 minutes have passed and we have not even touched on the first main point we wanted to talk about! Even if you know the topic well, a few notes with an introduction, some headings for the main body of the presentation and some thoughts about how you would like to conclude will be enough to keep you on task and on time.

4. Have a prepared plan

Hmmm… a prepared plan I hear you ask, what’s that?

A prepared plan provides you with the structure to stay on task and on time. Your presentation is not written out word-for-word, so you can deliver it in a conversational tone. Your notes are in large font, so it’s easy to see where you’re at if you forget the next point. Most importantly, you can focus on the stories and delivering your message with passion to ensure you are engaging and persuasive. I’ll share more tips and tricks on delivering a prepared plan next month.

Authority vs Credibility – Which one will work for you?

Robert Cialdini in his book Influence – The psychology of persuasion, credits authority as one of the pillars of influence. He cites the 1963  Milgram experiment where volunteers were more likely to be influenced by an individual who they perceived had authority.

The challenge for us is that authority in business is in decline. The days of control and command are long gone and many organisations are doing away with corporate hierarchy altogether. Today, in order to get our job done, we need to be able to influence those we have no authority over.

So if we have less authority, what tools do we have to help us be more influential? 

The answer is credibility.

The Oxford dictionary defines authority as the power or right to give orders, to make decisions and enforce obedience. Unless you work in the military or a para military organisation, you may have a little trouble trying to ‘enforce obedience’. Credibility is defined as the quality of being trusted, convincing or believable, which is something that we can earn rather than wait until it is bestowed upon us.

Here are 5 ways you can boost your credibility in your next presentation.  

1. Establish trust

Do your homework on your audience. Understand their jobs and the burning issues that they are facing. Work on building rapport as soon as you meet them. Smile, shake hands, ask questions and listen intently.

Share a personal story that relates to your message. A West Virginia University study by Myers and Brann in 2009 demonstrated the benefits of self disclosure in building credibility.

2. Weave in credibility

Demonstrate that you know what you are talking about. Give us examples of your expertise. Tell us the projects you have worked on and the results you have achieved. 

If you use examples that are relevant to your message and your audience you will enhance your credibility rather than come across as boastful.

3. Ensure your non verbal signs match your message

Now is the time to stand tall, raise your head and look people in the eye. In western culture we instinctively don’t trust people that don’t look at us. We perceive your clasped hands as a lack of confidence and an upward intonation at the end of a sentence makes it sound like you don’t know what you are talking about.

4. Be authentic

Keep it real and accept your humanity and the limitations of your product or idea. Nothing kills credibility faster than if you bluff or promise things that you can’t deliver. If you don’t know the answer, reply with: “I don’t have that information available on me now, but I can email it to you as soon as I get back to my office” This will help maintain your credibility rather than shatter it.

5. Look the part

Yes, you will be judged on how you look. Fair? No. Reality? Yes. Dress appropriately for your position and consider your audience’s perception. So if you’re speaking on personal fitness, you better look better than me in lycra. When presenting to the board, spend a little extra time making sure that you are professionally attired in clothes that match the company culture.

I once asked an Elders employee what would happen if he arrived on a farm wearing his Italian wool suit and silk tie and he replied, “Well, you gotta remember that farmers own guns…”

So… now it’s your turn. What are you going to do to enhance your credibility?

NEW Presentations skills Workshop 25th September 2013

Stand up, Speak up & Persuade Workshop

Last one for 2013 – Registrations open now!

Make your stats sing!

Maybe it is just me, but I start to hyperventilate when I see a wall of numbers. I then experience a rapid slide into narcolepsy when they say “Oh, the text is a little small… you may not be able to see this at the back.” If you are numerically impaired like me, this is your worst nightmare.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here are three ways  to bring your facts to life and make your stats sing.

1. Make them visual

Professor Edward Tufte, a pioneer in data visualisation challenges us to do away with ‘chartjunk’  and communicate with data rich illustrations. A good starting point when using PowerPoint it is to make use of the SmartArt  tools to create diagrams and models.   

If you still feel the need to show the whole shebang, consider putting a semitransparent box over the irrelevant information and enlarging the data you want us to focus on. Or you may want to try PREZI which enables you to zoom in on specific information and see its relevance in the big picture.  

I cover these skills in my “Escaping PowerPoint Purgatory” course – contact me for more information.

2. KISS (Keep it simple, silly)

In business communication clarity is king. Your Ph.D. tells me you’re smart… Now show me how smart you really are by explaining it in a way that I get it:

• Eliminate jargon as it adds to my cognitive load and makes me feel dumb
• Structure your presentation so it is logical and easy to follow
• Simplify your graphs and diagrams so that they read like a billboard and I can see at a glance what you are trying to say
• Provide ‘snacks’ – snippets of information that I can process quickly and easily
• Put the detail in the handout.

William Butler Yeats said “Think like a wise man, but communicate in the language of the people.” This is not about dumbing down, it is about speaking simply and clearly and ensuring your message sticks.   

3. So what?

Make your statistics meaningful. In their book ‘Made to stick’ Dan and Chip Heath tell us that in surveying their students after a series of speeches, 63% of the students remember the stories and only 5% of the students remember any individual statistic.

Several years ago I heard a speech delivered by a doctor from the American Cancer Society. It was shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. This is a paraphrase of what he said:

“September 11 was a tragic day in American history. But do you realise that we have the equivalent of two jumbo jets filled with people crashing into the earth everyday as a result of death caused by preventable cancers?”

He took the ‘thousands of people who die from preventable cancers’ statistic and related it to a number we could comprehend. He also added an emotional link that made it resonate and made it memorable.

A great example of ‘making your statistics sing’ is provided in the TED talk by Hans Rosling. If you can’t watch it all – just make sure you watch it to the five minute mark.    

It’s my way or the highway! Negotiation skills to build bridges rather than burn them.

So… how do you cope with negotiation? Do you launch yourself under your desk and hope the problem goes away, or do you embrace the moment as an opportunity to speak up and voice your needs and get what you want? 

Like many people I used to fear negotiation. I had the impression that negotiation was all about confrontation, Them vs Us, hit first or be trampled over.

I then realised that my thinking was very old school and that modern negotiation skills involve exemplary communication skills, problem solving and building bridges, rather than walls.

So… what’s your style –  and how do you negotiate well?

Here are three negotiation styles that I have seen demonstrated in the workplace.

1. The Terminator   

The Terminator is not out to make friends. Just like Arnie, they come in with guns blazing, leaving crushed broken bodies in their wake.

The Terminator will get what they want at the expense of the relationship. They will get the order, make the sale and bully people into giving them what they want, but in the process they lose a customer, have high staff turnover and you can forget about getting any repeat business.

2. The doormat

Confession – I was once a doormat. 20 years ago I was a sales rep with a medical company. I was so eager to get the order that my enthusiasm got the better of me. The supplier must have looked out the window, saw my bright eyes and shiny face and thought “This is my lucky day!”

I had no idea about negotiation and he managed to corner me into giving him an outstanding deal on our product. I ended up losing other suppliers as I couldn’t possibly offer them the same deal and I lost my job in the process. Being a doormat is not much fun.

3. Win-Win

Good negotiators know that by aiming for a win-win solution you can get what you want as well as helping the other party get what they need. To do this you need to win over the person, be a great listener and find a creative solution.

So… if you want to become a better negotiator what do you need to do?

Prepare

• Know what you need (your ‘floor’) and what you want (your ‘ceiling’).
• Get some understanding of what the other parties needs and wants are.
• Brainstorm the variables that may be used to negotiate with
• Think about your BATNA – Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.
• Brainstorm strategies and solutions to enable you to get what you want.

When you meet:

• Demonstrate – positive body language that is non confrontational.
• Listen – for facts and feelings.
• Question – for depth and clarity.
• Discuss – how both needs can be met.

Be open to discuss

• How both your needs can be met.
• Control your emotions (anger, greed, enthusiasm).
• Be prepared to say ‘no’ to the request, but ‘yes’ to the person.

This preparation gives you confidence, and confidence in negotiation is a huge advantage.  Remember, negotiation skills are just another form of communication, and, like most things, will improve with practice.