WIN THE PRESENTATION GAME

52 POWER PLAYS to CAPTIVATE, ENERGIZE & ACTIVATE your AUDIENCE

Tom McCarthy, David Hutchison

• Publisher: Thomas McCarthy & Associates
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780996498913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

PART ONE: Create an Engaging Story- ideas for developing and delivering dynamic content that instantly hooks your audience. Everyone loves a great story! PART TWO: Feel Like a Winner!-ways to get yourself feeling confident, energized, and ready to go in front of anyone. There's simply nothing more important than how you feel. PART THREE: Energize Your Audience-strategies for getting and holding your audience's attention, staying connected, and moving people to action.

PART ONE:

Create an Engaging Story

Often, the first hang-up in presenting comes from not knowing what to say—or, more precisely, how to say it in a way that will interest other people. If you’ve been asked to speak, you probably already have a topic, something you know about or are excited to share. Now put yourself in the audience’s shoes. Which would you rather hear: someone giving a presentation or someone telling a fascinating story?

The trick is figuring out how to put together your message in the form of an engaging story. Don’t worry—you don’t have to craft the next Great American Novel. I’m talking about “story” in the simplest possible terms: following a process or storyline that begins with a problem your audience can personally relate to (the conflict) and ends with your solution (the happy ending). Most people love a good story, whether it’s a powerful metaphor or the tale of how a business solution can make a customer’s life easier; what they don’t like is you reading one long paragraph after another or even bullet points to them. Great stories don’t require you to read from a script. They inspire you, so you can be much more natural in telling them. Plus, a story of any kind has a way of drawing in your audience, especially when you put your heart and soul into it.

This section reveals the best ways to take an ordinary presentation and turn it into a fascinating story: how to organize your ideas, the method for bringing your audience into the heart of your message, and strategies for applying these principles in multiple situations, including the long-form presentation, the impromptu speech, and the elevator pitch.

POWER PLAY #1

Begin at the End

Bestselling 7 Habits of Highly Successful People author Stephen R. Covey famously counseled that successful people “begin with the end in mind,” by which he meant that if you want to accomplish something great, it’s best if you first figure out what that something is. Metaphors abound: know what you want to make before you start cooking. Create a set of plans before you build a house.

Yet when it comes to making presentations, most people do it backwards. They start by asking, What am I going to say? Honestly, that’s the wrong question. Totally overwhelming! There are millions of things you could say when you don’t yet know the end result of your presentation.

Think about the GPS system in your car or on your phone. What’s the first thing it asks you to do? It asks you to input your destination. Then, once it knows where you want to go, it gives you the exact directions on how to get there. But it can only do that if it knows where you want to go. You will be most successful in figuring out what to say in your presentations by first figuring out what you want to accomplish with your presentation. The best presenters give presentations to accomplish a quantifiable result, not just to recite a bunch of details and information.

So before you even begin drafting the presentation content, always start by thinking about what result you want the presentation to achieve. Ask yourself, What is my outcome? What do I want people to do after they hear me speak?

The best presentations drive action. Average speakers get people excited or a little bit interested. Outstanding speakers do that too, but they also get people moving. The ideal is for your audience to take action to improve their situation, get rid of a problem, or fulfill a want or need—using an idea or a solution you offer them.

Years ago, back in the days before PowerPoint, I watched a seasoned presenter talk for three hours completely without notes. He was an amazing communicator who moved people to action without having to look at or think about what he was going to say! When he was done, I asked him how he was able to do that and he told me, “I knew my outcome. Because I know what I want to happen, I’m able to focus on that, and what I need to say stays easily available to me in the moment.”

Four guidelines for creating a powerful outcome statement:

1. Be specific. Zero in on the action you want your audience to take, and consider what they need to get out of it, too. Hint: know what your audience expects from your presentation, what result they would like you to achieve, and what problems they want to solve. If you’re not sure, ask someone who represents them.

2. Be audience-centric. Average presenters focus on what they want to get out of the presentation, while outstanding presenters focus on what they can help the audience get out of the presentation. So instead of having an outcome like, “This customer bought my product,” you’re better off creating a win-win like, “This customer eliminated their problem and delivered a 20 percent return on investment by implementing our solution.”

3. Be exciting. When writing your outcome statement, choose words that make you eager to accomplish your objective. You must believe in it if you want anyone else to believe in it, too.

4. Be certain. Write your outcome statement in the past tense, and you’ll act as if it has already happened. You’ll be more confident and better able to create the future you desire.

For example, if you’re meeting with clients to tell them about ideas you’ve generated for their ad campaign, a good outcome statement could be: my client enhanced her brand and increased revenues by 10 percent by implementing our advertising concept. It’s specific, action-oriented, short, positive, upbeat, and in the past tense.

So start there: for every presentation you give, create a written outcome statement using these guidelines. You might be wondering if this is really necessary for every single presentation, even if it’s brief. Yes, it is—absolutely! Establish and write down your outcome for every single one and you’ll go into your presentations with a huge edge.

POWER PLAY #2

Focus on Your Audience’s Problems, Not Yours

One of the worst mistakes you can make is to think that the presentation is all about you—an opportunity to talk about your ideas, your products, and your solutions—and never relate it to anything the audience already cares about. Instead, remember why your audience is there in the first place: they want or need something from you. The best thing they can hear is that you care about them, that you get them, that you understand their problems, and that you can discuss it in a way that’s meaningful to them. For both you and the audience, the ultimate objective is to improve their situation somehow, to give them a way to get what they really want. That’s one of the secrets to winning the presentation game: understanding that it’s not a win-lose game; it’s a win-win! When your audience wins, you win too.

Of course, this means you need to find out what they want and need, what gives them a headache or heartache, what makes them frustrated or angry, what they’ve been itching to learn or improve. So ask!

Key Questions for Pre-presentation Preparation

Long before you give the presentation, get answers to both the obvious and the more subtle questions:

• What problems do your audience want to solve?

• What are the obstacles keeping them from where they want to go? What do they believe is keeping them from getting this result so far?

• Where are they now in terms of this result?

• Are there things about the company, industry, or economic climate you need to know?

• Is there anything else unique about the group that would help you tailor your presentation to their needs?

If you’ve learned about your audience in advance, when you give your presentation you can engage with them and help them find solutions to their problems. This is the difference between self-centered presenters, whose primary objective is only to enrich themselves (“I need someone to buy my stuff!”) and a presenter that an audience can trust to help them. Separate yourself from everyone else by making sure your presentations revolve around solving the audience’s problems and the outcome is a win-win. By the way, one of the perks for you in presenting like this is that it feels really good. When you know that the reason you’re talking is to help someone else, you worry less about how you look and sound, and instead lose yourself in serving the audience and creating solutions that improve other people’s lives.

POWER PLAY #3

See the World Through Their Eyes

Let’s say you’re on a car lot looking to buy. A salesperson saunters up for a meet and greet, gauges your interest, and determines you’re serious. It’s actually going pretty well—no pressure yet, and he seems nice enough. When he asks what you have in mind, you say you’re interested in a compact hybrid, because you’re looking for the fuel economy of a smaller car.

But then he gets all animated: “Look at this baby! The color is fabulous. And check out these rims and premium wheels! The body of this car is verrrry sexy.”

If you’re the type of person who buys cars for their styling, great. But didn’t you just say that your primary need is fuel economy? Wasn’t he listening?

Classic misstep on his part. You told him what was important to you and then he talked about what he thought might impress you or what interested him. Don’t do this to your audience! Instead, try to see the world through their eyes.

When you’re preparing your presentation, remember to focus on what’s important to your audience, what interests them, what inspires them. Figure out what anecdotes, examples, stories, and experiences will resonate most with them. And when you share your solution, don’t do it in a cookie-cutter way, as if you’re delivering sales patter. Every audience is unique. The key is customization. What works for one audience may not work for another. When I’m speaking to a technology company, for instance, I use different examples than when I’m talking to a financial company, even when I’m talking about the exact same topic. It takes a bit more work on your part, but your audience will love it.

POWER PLAY #4

F----- the Audience

At the beginning of any presentation, attendees are usually restless. They have no idea whether they’re going to be bored or get anything out of it. They’re distracted, too, and often will be fiddling with their phones or whispering to someone next to them. Seriously, unless they’ve paid to be there or you’re famous, it’s likely they don’t care about you and your presentation, and they just want to get it over with.

Well, you know what? F----- them!

In this case, F stands for focus, and that’s right, your job is to focus the audience on you and your message. You can’t expect them to arrive already focused, because they have too many other things on their minds. So plan for this as you develop your content. Know that before you dive into the heart of your message, you need to get their attention. How do you know when your audience is focused? What I always ask myself is: are they responding to me? Not just one or two people, but the whole group. Responses can include answering a question, raising their hands, closing their laptops and looking at me, leaning forward in their seats to listen, or any other action that gets them more involved in the presentation. Getting your audience to be responsive at the beginning is critical to the success of your presentation. The audience’s response or lack thereof can set the tone for the entire presentation. Lack of audience response is incredibly painful when you’re presenting. So commit right now to making sure you get your audience responding from the get-go.

Ways to Draw In Your Audience

Here are some of the best strategies for getting your audience to start responding to you.

• Start conversations before the presentation. Show up early for every presentation and strike up frie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: Create an Engaging Story.
• Part Two: Feel Like a Winner!
• Part Three: Energize Your Audience.
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors