Kickass Business Presentations: How To Persuade Your Audience Every Time

Praise for

KICKASS BUSINESS PRESENTATIONS

To persuade effectively, you must develop your entire presentation from the perspective of what the other person wants and how your offering meets their needs. This book teaches you the keys to developing that effective presentation.

Tom Hopkins, author of How to Master the Art of Selling

This book shows you how to make more dynamic, highly persuasive sales presentations in every situation.

Brian Tracy, author of Speak to Win

Goldwich knows that the purpose of a business presentation is to persuade. If you are not persuasive you are wasting your breath and their time. This book is mission-critical to your success in business and life.

Joel Bauer, speaker and author of How to Persuade People Who Don't Want to Be Persuaded

As someone who has spoken from the platform at international conventions and presented to directors and senior management in boardrooms, I know these are very different audiences requiring different approaches. David Goldwich understands what a business presentation is all about. He makes a convincing case that even at the C-level, passion and authenticity are more important than polish. I highly recommend this book to anyone who presents to business audiences.

Allen J. Pathmarajah, former Managing Director, Great Eastern Life

www.kickassbusinesspresentations.com

Published by David Goldwich

© 2013 by David Goldwich

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Illustrations by Emily Zieroth

Cover design by Mala B. Mehsud

Printed in Singapore by ST Commercial Print Pte Ltd

ISBN: 978-981-07-5309-2 (paperback)

978-981-07-5310-8 (ebook)

National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Goldwich, David, 1959-

Kickass business presentations : how to persuade your audience every time / David Goldwich. – Singapore : David Goldwich, 2013. p. cm. ISBN : 978-981-07-5309-2 (pbk.)

1. Business presentations. I. Title.

HF5718.22

658.452 -- dc23        OCN 825043212

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Developing Your Message

2. Structuring Your Presentation

3. Persuasion Techniques of Kickass Presenters

4. The Poetry of Presentation

5. Your Delivery - The Basics

6. Your Delivery - Interacting With Your Audience

7. Using the Tools of the Trade

Presentation Template

INTRODUCTION

It's not a beauty contest, it's about persuasion.

There are a lot of books about presentation skills out there. Many of them follow what I call the Toastmasters approach. They focus on formal public speaking and emphasize style over substance. These books tell you how to breathe, articulate, project your voice, and make gorgeous gestures with your hands. Do you really think you could learn that from a book? And even if you could, why would you want to? A business presentation is not a beauty contest, it's about persuasion.

To succeed in a Toastmasters speech competition every word, pause, and movement must be carefully choreographed. It is not a presentation so much as a performance. The judges don't have time to analyze the quality of your message, its structure, or its impact. But they will note how many times you said ah and whether you finished twenty seconds early.

Don't get me wrong – the Toastmasters approach has its benefits. It will teach you to craft and deliver speeches, help you deal with stage fright, and give you some useful feedback from peers. It is a step-by-step process that helps you improve over time. Toastmasters is a great way to develop basic speaking skills, and even some advanced skills. These skills are nice to have, but that is not what's most important in a kickass business presentation.

The Toastmasters approach focuses on vocal quality, eye contact, gestures, and other stylistic flourishes. This is what I call polish. With a good deal of effort, adding polish can take a terrific speaker from the 95th percentile to the 96th percentile. It can also help a mediocre speaker move from the 45th to the 50th percentile. But it can never take anyone from 45 to 95.

Many books on presentation skills were written by trainers who make a living teaching presentation skills. They may go beyond the Toastmasters approach and discuss skills useful for delivering a one- or two-day training course because that is the type of presentation they are most familiar with. They stress the importance of keeping an audience engaged for two days, usually by means of games or other activities that would not go over well in a boardroom peopled with busy senior managers, vice presidents, and directors. They may also teach you how to design better slides, how to size up your audience, and other substantive matters. But they generally fall short on the element of persuasion. They are really written for public speakers, not business presenters.

Most business presentations are not seven-minute formal speeches or two-day training courses. They are sales pitches, management briefings, and other high-stakes presentations to skeptical audiences. These presentations may take from a few minutes to several hours. Influence, power, ego, and large sums of money hang in the balance. Do you think your business audience really cares about your breathing, voice, or gestures?

This book was written for business presenters. It is ideal for managers who present to no-nonsense bosses, salespeople who present to doubting prospects, entrepreneurs who present to venture capitalists, and lawyers who present to judges, juries, and government bodies. It can help financial planners present to high net worth clients, and environmental activists present to Congressional committees. It can help you sell products and services, tangibles and intangibles, ideas, causes, policies, and visions. The ideas in this book will also work wonders for trainers, keynote speakers, and seminar presenters. And Toastmasters.

PRESENTATION MYTHS – BUSTED

There are some widely held presentation axioms that have been plaguing us for generations. Many of them hold the status of conventional wisdom but are nonetheless myths. Others may be useful in some contexts – a Toastmasters competition or the president's State of the Union address – but do not apply to a presentation before a discerning business audience. Here are some of the more common myths about presentations, debunked.

THE #1 FEAR MOST PEOPLE HAVE IS OF SPEAKING IN PUBLIC

I have seen this proposition cited countless times in books on communication and public speaking, but I have never seen it attributed to any authority. Nevertheless, authors continue to cite it, and readers continue to believe it. Who said this? Where is the proof? It sounds like an urban legend to me.

I can think of hundreds of things that are scarier than speaking in front of a group. What about a tax audit, a gang of toughs coming towards you in a dark alley, a growling dog foaming at the mouth, being told by your doctor that you have an incurable disease, receiving a phone call from the police at 3 a.m., seeing a tornado bearing down on you, being trapped in a burning building, war, terrorism ... you get the idea. The next time you come across this ridiculous proposition in print, put the book down and walk away slowly.

ONLY SEVEN PERCENT OF A MESSAGE'S MEANING COMES FROM WORDS

Nearly every communications book written since 1970 cites Albert Mehrabian, the psychology professor who found that in a very limited range of face-to-face interactions only seven percent of the content of the message came from the actual words used by the speaker. Thirty-eight percent of the impact came from the way the words were used – tone, pitch, pace, volume, and other elements of vocal quality. The remaining 55% of the meaning was due to body language – appearance, facial expression, posture, gestures, etc.

With all due respect to Professor Mehrabian, he has been badly misinterpreted. His study dealt purely with questions of liking or attitude, but has been widely and repeatedly applied to all face-to-face communications. When Aunt Ethel asks you whether you like her tuna and cabbage casserole and you tell her it's very good, anyone can tell you're lying.

If you still have any doubt, go to your auto mechanic, plug up your ears, and ask the mechanic a technical question. Don't listen to the answer but pay careful attention to his gestures and facial expression and see if you understand 55% of it.

Excellent tone and nonverbal communication might help you a bit, poor nonverbals can hurt you, but a business audience will focus on the substance of your message and its implications. Content is king.

TELL 'EM THREE TIMES

There is an old saw for presenters that says you should first tell your audience what you're going to tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em. This might have worked in our great grandfathers' time, when people were less educated and had longer attention spans. If you tell a modern business audience the same thing three times they will feel insulted. Don't treat your audience like children.

If you feel your message is so complicated that you need to repeat yourself, you need to simplify your message instead.

YOU NEED A RICH, RESONANT VOICE

This is true only if you are a radio personality. A good business presenter has a voice with three qualities:

It is loud enough to be heard. If your voice isn't loud enough, use a microphone.

It is clear enough to be understood. This is not a problem for most people (see my comment on articulation, below).

It is enthusiastic enough to be compelling. A monotone is boring. Enthusiasm is contagious. If you don't sound excited about your message, why should your audience care about it?

Provided you are loud enough, clear enough, and enthusiastic, your natural voice is probably just fine. In fact, your natural voice is a large part of what makes you unique. Why try to sound like the stereotypical successful speaker when you could be one of a kind?

YOU MUST ARTICULATE CLEARLY

It's OK if you slur some words together or drop a letter here and there, so long as your audience understands you. Don't try to speak the Queen's English if that is not your natural style. If you have a certain regional accent, revel in it. Be yourself. Your audience wants to connect with you as an individual. They know a phony when they hear one. Moreover, you don't want to sound like so many others have been taught to sound. If you sound like the crowd you will be perceived as a commodity. You want to sound like yourself– unique.

YOU NEED MORE POLISH

A business audience is skeptical, critical, and hard-nosed. They have strong opinions and are not easily sold. Making better eye contact and smoother gestures can make a solid presentation sound even better, but it will not make much difference to a business audience if they don't like your message.

Gestures, body language, and other niceties of delivery style are like polish. Polish can add a bit more shine to something that is already shiny, but it cannot bring luster to something that is inherently dull.

A discriminating audience is looking for content, not a slick delivery. Of course, a polished delivery is nice if you have a sound message, but it cannot compensate for poor content or flawed reasoning.

YOU NEED GREAT VISUAL AIDS

Many presenters use slides and other visual aids as a crutch. They show a slide and read what's on it. Your audience could just read the slides themselves, making you redundant.

Business presentations typically include slides that are overloaded with words, numbers, charts, and graphs. Most of this information can be put into a handout. The slides should add visual impact and provide a framework for the presenter to elaborate on. The audience will not remember your entire presentation, so use the slides to highlight key points and provide handouts to fill in the details.

In many cases you may not need visual aids at all. The most compelling visuals are the mental images you evoke in the minds of your listeners through metaphors, examples, and stories. How can you make your message memorable? What stories can you tell to drive your message home?

YOUR AUDIENCE IS INTERESTED IN YOUR MESSAGE

Most presenters assume their audience is enriched by their presentation. This is a dangerous assumption to make. It's a good bet that some (if not most) of the people listening to you are only there because they have to be. They may not agree with you, they may not want to hear you, and they have other things on their minds. They are doing you a favor by giving you some of their valuable time and possibly some of their limited attention. You need to give them something they value in return. And you need to let them know you are offering value from the very beginning, or you will quickly lose them.

Not long ago audiences were captive. Sure, they could doodle on their handouts or daydream as you spoke, but you were the main attraction. Today, chances are everyone in your audience has aphone with all kinds of entertainment options at their fingertips. You've got serious competition, so you and your message had better be good.

YOU NEED TO REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE

You don't have to practice very much. This is a business presentation, not a soliloquy from Shakespeare. You won't be perfect, and you don't need to be. You just need to master the material.

Mastering the material means being able to discuss it comfortably and convincingly. Your audience expects you to be in command of the subject matter you are presenting. This does not mean memorizing.

Having said that, you should memorize your opening because it must grab the attention of your audience. You should also memorize the call to action in your closing, because it is too important to ad lib.

In between your memorized opening and closing lines is the meat of your presentation. Work from a carefully structured outline, but be flexible.

Most presenters buy these myths. They try to look, sound, and present like other good presenters. They strive to be plain vanilla. Vanilla is popular. Vanilla is safe. But it isn't memorable. If your message isn't memorable, your presentation has failed.

You don't want to fail. You want to kick ass.

CHAPTER 1

Developing Your Message

You are trying to move your audience. To do this, you need to know where they are and where you want to take them. Once you know the starting point and the destination you can devise a presentation to get them there.

WHAT IS A PRESENTATION?

At its most basic level, a business presentation is a platform for communicating information and ideas. But it is really much more than that. While some presentations are just a means to keep people informed, there is usually an element of persuasion involved. Even an informational presentation is not totally free of bias; the presenter always slants it his or her way. Often the presenter is not even aware of this.

A PRESENTATION IS A PERSUASION VEHICLE

Most business presentations are not intended to be strictly neutral transmissions of information. You want to sell your