New Persuasive Presentations Blog
Thank you for following me on The Grab
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. New Public Workshop – August 19th, 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:
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:
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:
Facts Tell, Stories Sell
There has been a lot written recently about the importance of corporate stories. And there is good reason for this. One of my favourite quotes is “People buy on emotion and justify their purchase with logic.”
Stories are sticky. By triggering emotion they light up the neural pathways in our brain and become memorable. Stories make meaning of what we hear: they link one dimensional data with our three dimensional experience.
Stories engage us, inspire us, motivate us and ultimately move us to action.
Here are three tips to help you be a better storyteller.
1. Collect
A study published last year in the Harvard Business Review showed that lecturers who told personal stories had greater credibility with their students than those who did not. In business it’s not just about your war stories. Weaving in your personal experiences as well can make you more approachable, increase your likeability and, as this study shows, increase your credibility.
Stories can come from anywhere. A client from an accounting firm was telling me recently how he and his family had just returned from a holiday in the Northern Territory. One of the highlights was feeding crocodiles.
It involved poking a dead chicken on a pole through a fence where the crocodile would jump up out of the water and snatch the food. He said all he could think about was the croc latching onto the pole, pulling down sharply and flinging his seven year old daughter over the fence and into the water.
FABULOUS! (The story that is, not the daughter as croc bait…)
I then explained to him how he could use this story in his presentation about mitigating risk. Feeding crocs is risky, you need to ensure you have barriers and procedures in place to protect you. The same with financial management in your business – you don’t want to have a client flung into the croc pit!
See the link? It makes your message stick.
2. Structure
Putting some structure around your story makes it easy to follow and easy for you to remember.
Here are two to try:
People, Place, Event
- Who are the main characters?
- Where did this happen?
- What happened and what was the outcome?
Ok, Bad, Better
- OK – this is where we are now
- Bad – But things are going to deteriorate if we don’t act soon
- Better – Here’s where we’ll end up
Keep your stories short and simple, it’s the message and meaning that counts.
3. Connect
A great story on its own will not make you an effective speaker. The story needs to be relevant to your objective and also address the audiences’ WIIFM (What’s In It For Me).
Remember:
Message + Relevance = Great Corporate Story
Want to know more? Give me a call to see how my ‘Facts Tell Stories Sell’ workshop can help you and your team engage and inspire, or you may want to attend my Stand up, Speak up & Persuade public workshop on March 26th
Stand up, Speak up & Persuade – July 29th 2014
So you want to be a confident speaker? You want to be able to think on your feet? You want to be able to put together a persuasive presentation easily and quickly?
Great! I’ll see you at my Stand up, Speak up and Persuade workshop!
- Date: Tuesday July 29th 2014
- Venue: Education Development Centre, Milner St, Hindmarsh SA (Only 5 mins out of the city)
- Still only $550.00!
This workshop is limited to 10 participants only – so I can focus on your needs.
“Sharon is able to transform people into good presenters that thought they might not otherwise be”
Want more information? Email me for a flyer or call me as I’d love to have a chat.
Snipers, Hijackers and Clowns – Managing the tricky personalities when you present
It’s what people fear most during a presentation: Some smart Alec up the back hijacking your presentation, the clown that leads your audience into a giggling fit and the sniper who wants to shoot you down. We have all experienced them at some time. But you can prevent them from occurring.
Here are 3 reasons you may have a disruptive audience and what to do about it.
1. They’re experiencing cognitive overload
Pitching your presentation at the right level is vital. Too much jargon and acronyms quickly increases the cognitive load and can leave your audience feeling overwhelmed. Too simplistic and they get bored and before you know it, the clowns take centre stage to relieve the monotony.
The solution:
- Do your homework. Speak to as many people as you can to gauge their understanding of your topic
- If in doubt, eliminate jargon – as it can alienate people
- Use stories, metaphors and analogies to explain your topic
- Watch the body language of your audience and check constantly for understanding
2. They’ve been sitting too long
Have a look at the people in your audience. What is their normal job? If it’s not sitting for eight hours a day you better get them moving!
The solution
- Get ’em up. Especially after lunch
- Get them to demonstrate what it is you are discussing
- Have exercises where they can practice the skill rather than talk about it
- Move them around the room to interact with other people. An easy way to do this is with coloured stickers on name tags or workbooks
3. They need to talk and contribute
Adult learners bring a lifetime of experience to the table and they all have Google in their pockets. They need to be able to tie in their experience to your message. Talking enables them to develop the link and cement the learning.
The solution
- Small group interaction. (Don’t ask ‘any questions?’ to a large group as you you will hear the sound of silence)
- Give them challenging topics to discuss
- Ask them how they would apply this to their workplace
- Ask them what they think – Yes? No? and if not why not?
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Good luck with handling your snipers, hijackers and clowns and if you have a particular challenge you have, let me know below and I’ll share some recommendations.
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.
Facts tell, stories sell
Do you like being TOLD what to do? I don’t. If people start saying to me “you should: you need to: you must:” I tend to shut down. But if they share a story from their experience and engage me in the moment, I’m more inclined to act on what they say.
People always say to me, “But how do I include a story – my topic is so boring?”
Here are five ways to weave stories into your presentations.
1. Link a personal story to your message
Last year I heard Dr Fiona Wood speak on leadership. She told us that at the height of the Bali bombing emergency when her department was struggling to care for the victims, she came home to discover her four children tucking into a chicken casserole that she had not made.
The conversation that took place went something like this:
Fiona “Umm, Hi kids – what are you eating?”
Kids: “Oh, this is a casserole that Sue’s mum made – It’s FABULOUS! We’ve asked her to make us another and she’s dropped in a choccy cake too!”
Fiona was horrified. She told us how she rang up Sue’s mum and said that she really didn’t need to feed her children. Sue’s reply was priceless.
She said, “Fiona, I can’t treat people with severe burns, I can’t make artificial skin, but I can cook a damn good chicken casserole. You contribute in your way and I’ll contribute in mine.”
It was through that event that Fiona realised that great leaders don’t try to do it all. Great leadership means letting people contribute and work at what they’re good at.
2. Take us with you
The story was highly engaging and humourous. Fiona shared an insight into her life – which allowed us to feel empathy for her, and she related an experience to the message.
Because we could relate her story and imagine us in a similar situation, iit made it memorable.
Here are some other examples from my clients.
3. Think of a metaphor
A client from a law firm I was working with told me how hard it was to bring her topic to life. Outside of work she was a master cupcake maker, so I asked her to explain the parallels between cupcake making and conveyancing.
She then went on to explain how conveyancing was like a cupcake – you need a good foundation and expert preparation before you put on the icing, how experience and attention to detail pays off and produces the best results.
She finished off the presentation by hanging out cupcakes (incorporating reciprocation – one of Cialdini’s 6 pillars of persuasion) to really make her message stick.
4. Bring the facts to life
A trainer challenged me with making a story out of GST, so I grabbed the nearest thing to me which was a glass and I said “I want you to tell me the lifecycle of this glass. Was GST charged when the silica was mined? What about when the glass was produced and sold to the wholesale and then retail outlet? What happened when it was sold to the customer? And then after when they sold the glass at a garage sale?”
By relating the theory to a product people can visualise the GST journey and better understand its application.
5. Get your audience involved
Include personal stories or cases that have caught the public’s attention and then generate the emotional connection by asking a couple of these questions:
• How would you feel if this happened to you?
• How would you feel if you caused this to happen to someone else?
• How would you feel if this happened to your Sister, Mother, Son or Father?
• How would you feel if it was your company on the front page of The Australian newspaper?
The power of the story creates an emotional connection that make you care, it makes it memorable and it moves you to action.
THE GRAB - How to grab their attention and make your message stick! 