Mastering the Art of Oral Presentations

Winning Orals, Speeches, and Stand-Up Presentations

John P. Stewart, Don Fulop

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119550129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Mentoring & Coaching
• Index: Business

Proven techniques to win over any audience and make any sale

Mastering the Art of Oral Presentations is your expert guide to delivering memorable and effective speeches and presentations. Whether selling a product, offering a service, or bidding for a contract, your oral presentation skills can often determine success or failure. This invaluable resource delivers real-world advice and proven strategies to elevate your game and close the deal. Comprehensive coverage of preparation procedures, delivery techniques, and presentation strategies provide you with the tools and knowledge to motivate and persuade your audience. Emphasizing real-world versatility, this unique book delivers methods equally effective to both individual and team presentations.

Drawing from decades of experience, authors John Parker Stewart and Don Fulop offer keen insight into the process of winning over an audience. From topics ranging from rhetorical devices and visual cues to body language and stage presence, this expert guide will help convey a take-home message that resonates and endures long after your presentation has concluded. A must-have resource for government contractors, sales and marketing professionals, and anyone seeking to raise the level of their oral presentation skills, this book will help you:

• Develop winning approaches to oral presentations regardless of experience or skill level
• Build the confidence to present your ideas to individuals, teams, and large audiences
• Incorporate your personal and professional lives into your communication strategies
• Create and deliver messages that will win the hearts and minds of any audience

Mastering the Art of Oral Presentations: Winning Orals, Speeches, and Stand-Up Presentations is an indispensable tool for those who speak to influence, to promote, and to sell—aiding you in making positive and lasting impressions on potential customers, team members, and decision makers.

CHAPTER 1
Preparation
Preparation Is the Foundation of Success

Before beginning any work on presentation materials, it is imperative that the presenters share a common understanding of the customer’s needs, the team’s offering, the competition, and how each of these elements should be addressed to achieve the highest probability of a win. This step is of paramount importance, yet many companies—losing companies—commonly overlook it!

If a written proposal is required prior to making an oral presentation, it’s easy to say, “We’ve submitted a ‘winning’ written proposal, let’s just summarize it and talk about our key points.” When required, the written proposal forms a foundation for the oral presentation and is nothing more than that. In general, written proposals are technical and sterile. They are written and prepared using proven processes and strictly follow instructions provided or described by your customer.

Even though you may have submitted an excellent written proposal, winning oral presentations mandate implementation of a creative process that capitalizes on, and launches from, the good work that has been done to date.

As you and your team prepare your oral presentation materials, don’t forget that the process of learning more about the competition and the customer never stops until the contract is awarded. You and your team must continue to learn as much as you can as long as you can and leverage these expanding insights to optimize your value proposition for your oral presentation.

Know your customer. Know your competition. Never stop learning as much as you can about either of them.

Customer Intelligence

Thoroughly Understand Your Customer

Demonstrate that you thoroughly understand your customer’s needs, their criteria for success, their concerns, and their vision for the future. Your ability to share their interests, alleviate their concerns, and demonstrate that you understand their environment will greatly improve your chance of winning. The customers who are on the source selection committee are decision makers who will select—or recommend to the ultimate decision maker—who wins. Their decision determines your future. Your job is to help them make their decision in your favor.

To win you must know and thoroughly understand your customer and your customer’s needs. This means that customer contact must begin early, long before the formal buying process begins. Unless you’re selling a generic off-the-shelf product or service, simply responding to a customer’s request for quotation or proposal without adequate preparation is, simply put, a loser.

Starting early provides many advantages. Here are just a few:

• Enables you to know and freely interact with your customer before the “formal” buying or acquisition process is initiated. This provides valuable insight on the real issues surrounding the procurement.
• Gives you an opportunity to “help mold” the procurement requirements by pointing out the benefits and disadvantages of diffe...