Reading Age and Hearing Age

In his blog Graham Jones recently examined the need to write your business blog as if you were writing for children. To make your blog or website easy to understand you should aim to write for a reading age of 7. This blog has a reading age of 13 to 14, so I still have some way to go to make it better.

But more importantly it made me think about the “hearing age” of presentations. That is, applying the same measurement style as used for “reading age” to the words that you say when giving a presentation.

When giving a talk you should try to make it as easy as possible for people to follow what you are saying.  Because if they have to concentrate too hard, for too long most people will just stop listening. Then all your lovingly prepared presentation is going to waste.

You don’t want to talk down to people, just make it easy for them to listen.

To lower the “hearing age” of your presentation you should talk in short sentences, avoid using long , multi-syllable words when short plain words will do. Avoid unnecessary jargon and technical terms.

Some of the worst presentations I have sat through have been full of what I refer to as “brochure talk”. They are full of corporate statements such as ” Our core competency is the provision of integrated solutions which cause a paradigm shift through the rigorous performance management of your human resources capability”.

What that actually means in plain english is anyone’s guess.

I remember one person who came on one of my courses. When it came to the practical he started talking using a pre-written script. It sounded very formal and staid. Then half way through he stopped using the script and just started talking about his personal experiences. The second part of his presentation was far livelier, far more interesting and I’m sure it had a far lower reading age than his original script.

Your speed of delivery has a similar effect. Talk too quickly and they will stop listening. You should talk slightly slower than you would in a normal one to one conversation. This allows people to hear what you have said, take it in and then listen to the next bit.

So it is not just your business blog that should be written for children, it is your business presentations as well.

The One Minute Presentation

With the rise of networking meetings the need to be able to give an effective presentation in only 60 seconds has become increasingly important. These short speeches, sometimes called  “elevator pitches” compress all the rules of presenting in to one short burst.

Think about the objective of your talk. Is it to sell your products and services? I think not. Networking groups do not usually like the high pressure sales pitch and no matter how simple your product or service is I doubt that you could do it justice in 60 seconds.

I suggest that the objective for your talk is to spark an interest so that anyone who is interested can find you and talk about it in more detail later. It may also be to make people remember you and what you do, so that if and when they hear someone else asking for help in that area they will remember you and pass on your details.

Are you good at remembering people names? Most people are not good at remembering your name unless they are already interested in you and think it might be important to remember your name. So starting your 60 seconds with your name and your company’s name is a complete waste of time.

What you should do is put a spin on what you do to make it more unexpected, more interesting and therefore more memorable. I run presentation skills training, so I might start by saying “I teach business people how to talk, for those of you who already know how to talk, I’ll teach you how to make people listen.”  For an accountant rather than saying “I’m a chartered accountant with 35 years experience in handling the accounts for small businesses” you might start with “I count beans”, for a florist “I soften wills and strengthen hearts”  for a copywriter “I put your thoughts and emotions into other people’s heads”.  I’m sure you understand the idea, you want some intrigue in your introduction.

Having established what you do, the best way to make it memorable is to tell a story. One with which your fellow networking friends can associate. Tell them about a funny incident or a particular success you have had recently.

I always remember a story by a guy who works in data recovery. He told me one of their clients called him from his hotel room in New York. The client had just arrived in town to give a major presentation the following morning. Unfortunately, while out sightseeing he had dropped his laptop and it had been run over by a Yellow Cab. The laptop was ruined and it held the only copy of his presentation.  Luckily, he remember putting my contacts number on his phone a few weeks before.  He called, my contact then called the local agent, who sent someone out to the hotel, recovered the data and enabled the presentation to go ahead as planned the next morning.

Finally, end the presentation with your name and your call to action. There is a much greater chance that they will remember your name, once they are interested in what you do. And of course, no business presentation is complete without a call to action which tells the audience what you would like them to do.  For me that call to action is “Give me a day – I’ll change how you give a presentation, for ever”

Dire State of Presentation Skills

In 2009 Young Markets has been running a survey on the way people give presentations. Given all the publicity and material available on the internet about how to give an Effective presentation,  the message doesn’t appear to be getting through.

An astounding 73% of people rely on their slides to remind them what to say next with 83% revealing a whole side of bullet points at one time.

The vast majority of people are still using their slides as handouts, either before or after their talk.

With presentations techniques such as these being so common it is no wonder that the vast majority of audiences suffer from “death by PowerPoint” and that presentations are boring people to death.

If you are one of the majority of people who rely on your bullet point slides during a presentation, you are probably thinking what is so wrong with that. After all, it is what most people do. I’ll let you in to a secret; that is exactly what I used to do as well. But now I have seen the error of my ways, I now realise how boring it makes it for your audience.

I am not one of the anti-PowerPoint brigade or even anti-Prezi  who believes you should give a presentation without any slides. I believe that slides add value to a presentation and can help to make a presentation memorable and motivational, but only if they are used in the right way.

So what is so bad about relying on your slides to remind you of the key points, what is so bad about having a number of bullet points on the screen and what is so bad about using copies of your slides as handouts?

Essentially, it all boils down to one thing. Using slides in this way will let your audience get ahead of you. The slides will tell them what you are going to talk about next.  And as everyone knows there is no point listening to someone when you already know what they are about to say.

Speaker notes, visual aids and handouts are three completely separate things with completely different objectives. Your speaker notes are to remind you what to say. Your visual aids should be designed to accompany your words and create strong mental images for people to remember.  And your  handouts need to be stand alone documents  that cover not just the slides but what you said as well. By planning to use the slides as speaker notes you tell the audience what you are about to say. By using the slides as handouts you tend to overfill the slides so they still make complete sense even without your words. Both of these things will ruin a presentation.

Most of the time, the bullet points on a slide make excellent speaker notes, so use them as that and think up new visuals for the slides that you will share with your audience. The write down your talk and put it along side the slides in a PDF document which you can have as a handout, to give to people after your presentation.

If you are confronted with a pre-written corporate presentation that you have to use, which has lots of bullet points in it, then my advice is to use bullet point reveal facilities of the presentation software to display the bullets one at a time, and then talk about each topic and bring the bullet point up after you have talked about it. This has the affect of reinforcing what you have just said, rather than pre-announcing it and making your words superfluous.

Just because the majority of other people do it, doesn’t make it right. Stop, relying on your slides, stop displaying bullet point text and stop giving copies of your slides as handouts. Your audiences will thank you for it.

To find out more about how to structure and give an Effective Business Presentation visit my presentation training website  or book a place on one of my presentation courses.

How to answer questions in a presentation

Today’s twip is:

#prestip: Paraphrase a question to ensure you have understood it and give yourself time to think. http://digg.com/u173rk

Yesterday the tip was about how to ask questions, today it is the turn of how to answer them.

When you are asked a question from the floor, always wait until the questioner has finished speaking, don’t be tempted to interrupt just because you think you know what the question is going to be.

Give the questioner some respect by waiting until he/she has finished, then paraphrase the question back to the person who asked it. This serves three purposes. First of all it makes sure you have understood the question properly, secondly it ensures everyone else in the audience has heard the question and finally it gives you some time to think of a good answer.

Normally, when you answer a quesion, 25% of your eye contact should be to the questioner and 75% around the rest of the audience. When you have finished answering the question look at the questioner to ensure he/she is happy with your answer, unless of course you think this is likely to create an opportunity for them to ask another unwanted question. In this case, you should ensure you are not looking at the questioner when you come to the end of your answer, and then just carry on with the presentation.

In general, it is a good idea to think of the three worst questions you could be asked and work out three good answers as part of your presentation development. Doing so will help boost your confidence and with any luck they will never be asked.

For more hints and tips on effective business presentations please visit my presentation training web site.

All the best

Graham Young

Walking about

Today’s twip is:

#prestip: Walk about the stage area in a purposeful manner, it helps keep the audiences attention. http://digg.com/u173rk

 

You, the presenter, are the most important visual element of a presentation. Your face, your expressions and your body language are far more important than your visual aids. As the old saying goes “people buy from people”.

 

So you need to be seen. Step out from behind the lectern, stand in the middle of the stage area, let your audience see you. Even better walk around the stage area. Movement attracts attention, so if you are moving about you will attract even more attention than if you are standing still.

 

Some people have a tendancy, when nervous, to totter, to shift their weight from one foot to the other. This style of movement is not good, as it contravenes the “little things irritate” rule of presenting. If you find yourself starting to totter,take a proper few steps and move to a different part of the stage. Not only will it attract attention, it will give you a different perspective on the audience, which in turn will energise your presentation.

 

By moving around you can address different parts of your audience with different parts of your message which has the affect of personalising your presentation.

 

However, make sure you don’t break the projector beam. There are few things worse than having your visual aid lighting up you face, while you cast a massive shadow on the screen. Try to arrange the equipment so that you have room to move around without interupting your slides.

 

Go on try it. At your next presentation try walking about. I guarantee that you will enjoy the feeling of freedom it gives and that feeling of freedom will help you to be more passionate about your subject, making it a far better presentation.

For more hints and tips see my presentation training website.

Hands Up

Today’s twip is “#prestip: If you want a show of hands, put your own hand up when you ask the question. http://digg.com/u173rk “

This is a fairly obvious tip.  If you don’t put your hand up people will not know how to answer the question.

While I’m on the subject of asking the audience questions, did you know that you are unlikely to get an honest answer to the first two or three questions that you ask?  Some people will not want to raise their hands to answer a question, not because they don’t trust their deodorant but because they don’t trust you. They may think that if they put their hand up, to your question, you might pick on them and start asking them more questions.  So if you want an honest response to a question you need to ask a few preliminary questions first, to show that nothing nasty will happen to anyone, if they put their hand up.

I once gave a short talk about giving an effective presentation and asked the audience to select which particular aspects of giving a presentation they would like me to cover in the time available. I made the mistake of asking if anyone wanted to discuss handling the nerves and anxiety of presenting as my first question. No one put their hand up. With hindsight that was only to be expected, as anyone who is nervous about presenting is also likely to be nervous about putting their hand up, in case I pick on them.  By the time I got to the fifth question, everyone was putting their hand up.

Remember at most business presentations, the audience think that they are “just there to listen” not to participate. It takes some time and encouragement for them to realise that it is okay to participate.

For more hints and tips visit my presentation training website.

Don’t tell it, sell it

Today’s twip on twitter is:

#prestip: Giving the same presentation repeatedly? Remember you always have to sell it not just tell it. http://digg.com/u173rk

What is the difference between telling it and selling it?

Telling it, is when you stand up and say the words. It most often happens when you have done the same or similar presentations many time before. You know the material backwards and so you just stand up and say it. The problem is you tend to lose all the emotion from your voice. It isn’t new and exciting to your mind, so it is said in a way which isn’t new and exciting to your audience.

Whenever you give a presentation you have to perform it. You have to show that you care about what you are saying and put the emotion in to your voice.

For more hints and tips visit my presentation training site.

I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand.

Today’s presentation twip on Twitter, from me was:

Confucius said “I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand” get your audience doing something.

Let me elaborate on this quick twip.

I HEAR  – I FORGET

If all you do in a presentation is stand and talk at a group of people, the will hear what you say but then most of them will quickly forget it.  If you don’t believe my, think about all the presentations you have heard, how many do you actually remember everything that was said?  How many do you remember some of what was said? And how many have you completely forgotten? 

I’m willing to bet that the majority are in the last category.

I SEE – I REMEMBER

Now, why do people use powerpoint when the give a presentation?  Okay, there are all the wrong reasons for using PowerPoint, like to remind the speaker what to say, because everyone else does, because that’s what they always do etc etc.,  but the good reason for using visual aids is that, if used properly, the will help the audience to remember what is is you have been talking about.

Tests have shown that people remember more when they see it as well as hear it.

I DO – I UNDERSTAND

However, if you really want people to understand what you are talking about you have to make them do it. You have to get then mentally if not physically involved in the process.

It is like driving to a new location. The first time you go somewhere you probably need to get the map out to find out where it is and how to get there, but having driven it once you can then go back there without having to refer to the map.

Now if you were just a passenger on the first trip to the location, and then you have to drive yourself the next time, you probably will not remember exactly where it is and how to get there and have to resort back to the map or satnav. That is because as a passenger you just heard and saw things, but you didn’t do it and as such you don’t understand exactly where you went.

So to make a presentation work you can’t just talk at you audience, you need to make them think. Ask them questions, make them list things down on paper, get them to put their hands up, compare feelings with the person next to them or get them to imagine a particular scenario.

This last suggestion is why storytelling is such a powerful presentation technique. By telling a story your audience can associate with, it takes them to a different environment or situation in their head. The more realistic you make the story the easier it is to suck your audience in to that story. So use as many of their senses as you can in relating the story, what they would see, what it feels like, what it tastes like or smells like.

Don’t let your audience be passengers in your presentations, make them particpants.

7 Questions to ask when creating a presentation

One of the hardest aspects of developing a new presentation is deciding where to start. To help you I have 7 questions that you should ask yourself, or the others around you, which will help to define and structure your presentation.

These questions come from a summary of the answers I received from a question posed on LinkedIn, and I would like to thank everyone who responded to my question “What three questions do you ask yourself when you create a presentation?”

Let us start with an assumption that you know roughly what the presentation will be about. The questions to ask, starting with probably the most important question of all are:

1.  Who is my audience and what do they care about?

The more you know about you audience the better. How many of them will there be? What do they know about this topic already? How receptive to your ideas will they be? What are the demographics and psychographics of the audience likely to be?

The number one question that the audience members will be asking themselves is: WITFM? (What’s In It For Me?). After you have created the presentation, go through each and every part of it and ask “Why is this bit important to my audience?” If you don’t have a clear answer, then change the presentation.

 

2.  What is the goal of the presentation and how will I measure the success in meeting that goal?.

Your goal should be relatively short term, so that when you measure how well you achieved it, you can still remember how the presentation went. Think about the goal in terms of “What do you want your audience to do as a result of the presentation?” “What would everyone do in an ideal world?”. The more quantitative these actions are the better.

A secondary question, once you have established your objective is “What call to action shall I use at the end of the presentation to reinforce this objective and encourage people to meet my goals?”  The last thing you should say before you sit down is your call to action, which tells people how to meet your objective.

 

3.  What pain does this presentation cure and how do I express or get the audience to feel that pain in the opening?

A well established principle of the solution selling approach is that without pain, there is no change. If people are completely happy with the way things are they will never feel the need to change. In order to create a need for change you have to expose the need, which is mostly commonly done by exposing the pain. As business presentations are invariably promoting some form of change you need to establish a case for change early on in the presentation.

Highlighting only the pains can leave a sour taste in the mouth, so ensure you also paint the vision of success, i.e. what it will be like once that pain has gone away.

 

4.  What would potential objections be to my message and how do I overcome such objections?

If there are likely to be any potential objections then you are far better tackling them head on rather than trying to skirt round them. Thinking of the three worst questions you could be asked and formulating a response to those questions will boost your confidence and give your presentation a more rounded feel.

 

5.  How can I make my messages memorable?

All too often presentations are listened to and then quickly forgotten. You need to think about how you can make it memorable. Think about where your passion lies in this topic, devise ways to make your audience think about the subject. After all the more people do the more they understand.

Your visual aids can also help to get your message fixed in their memory. Use creative imagery that creates a strong mental image, rather than the ubiquitous text bullets.

 

6.  How much time to they have to spend with me?

There is nothing worse than running out of time or running overtime. Establish up front how much time you have for the presentation and then ensure you take 10% less.

 

7.  How will I grab their attention at the start?

There is little point in giving a presentation if your audience are not listening. Right at the start you need to grab their attention and make them think about the subject to hand. The reaction you are looking for is a “Wow! I thought this would be good but this is going to be great! I really need to give it my full attention!”

 

Answer these 7 questions and your presentation should be practically complete.

Thanks to everyone who contributed by answering my questions on LinkedIn. You can see the original questions and answers here

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers&discussionID=8686329&gid=883047&commentID=7610095&trk=view_disc

And here.

http://www.linkedin.com/answers?viewQuestion=&questionID=571190&askerID=1347785

 

Finally, if answering all 7 questions seems a bit too much for you then there is another approach to presentation development promoted by David Eastman,of  Chicago which I think deserves a mention. It is:

1. What’s up?
2. So what?
3. Now what?

 As David says “Those are the three subliminal questions most participants have when attending any presentation. I structure every presentation around those three questions so the participants understand my main points (and the problems or situations to which they apply), why those points are important, and then how to apply the information they just received.”

 

All the very best with your future presentations.

 

If you need a helping hand, drop me an email. If you would like to add another question to ask when creating a presentation please add it as a comment below.

Who needs presentation training?

Why would anyone want or need to go on a course about how to stand and talk. After all, we can all stand up and talk already, can’t we?

We don’t need training on how to talk. And as for what to say, how can a trainer who has little or no experience of your company and your job know what to say better than you do?

Anyway, training courses are an expensive luxury, which we can’t afford in the current economic climate. Anyone who needs to learn how to give a business presentation can just watch how other people in the company do it.

We don’t need presentation training!

 

But there again if you just keep doing what you have always done, nothing will change, your success rate will at best remain the same and in these difficult times when competition for business is ever harder you are more likely to lose ground to your competitors.

 

Let’s approach this from a different angle. How many presentations have you sat through?  

Probably hundreds ?

 

How many of them do you remember?

Probably less then 10% ?

 And that includes all the ones that were memorable for all the wrong reasons. The ones that went wrong. The really boring ones. The ones where the presenter made a fool of him or her self.

 

How many really good, inspiring presentations do you remember?

Less than a handful?

That is not a very good percentage success rate, is it?

 

How effective are the presentations in your company?

Do you want your next presentation to be instantly forgotten, or remembered for all the wrong reasons?

No? 

 

Then maybe you could benefit by going on a presentation skills training course. And so could many of your colleagues. Brush up your skills, eradicate the bad habits and make your talks more effective.

 

What are you likely to learn on a Young Markets presentation skills course?

We start by understanding what you would like to improve, which particular aspects of your presentations you would like to be different in the future and what types and styles of presentation you are likely to give.

Then we discuss the 5 most important aspects of giving a presentation, for which we have an acronym OSRAM, which stands for Objective, Speaker, Room, Audience, Message.

Most of the morning is then spent investigating the traits of a good speaker, including:

• How to overcome any nervous anxiety and use it to your advantage
• How to remember the key elements and structure of your presentation
• Why it ain’t what you say that is important, but how you say it.

In the afternoon, we turn our attention to your message, including:

• The structure for the ideal presentation
• How to influence everyone in the room and motivate them into taking action
• How to make your presentation memorable, for all the right reasons

You will discover how to handle questions and awkward audience members, as well as what your visual aids should and shouldn’t contain and a myriad of other hints and tips.

We’ll highlight a few bad habits people can pick up that are presentation killers. Things like relying on your slides to remind you of what to talk about, having too many bullet points and filtering out the emotion in an effort to hide the nerves.

During the day, everyone delivers two short presentations and is given a video of their performance.

By the end of our 1 day course you will be more confident and much better prepared to deliver influential presentations that will be remembered and acted upon by your future audiences.

After all there is more to giving an effective business presentation that just standing up and talking. See details of our upcoming courses here.