Great Speaking Coach

Use Multi-Media as Models for Your Presentations

What words come to mind when you think "multi-media"?

Quick, ever-changing, colorful, active, visuals, sounds, the unexpected...

Your audiences live with--have embraced--multi-media in their daily lives. They gravitate to more color, more action, more variety, more stimulation. Why can't presentations be more like multi-media?

They can if you allow yourself to use multi-media as a model for your presentations. Here are 3 tips to do that.

1) Reduce the desire to explain everything. Your favorite app doesn't explain itself, it works and you learn how to use it by just using it. When you're introducing a new idea or product or service, just start. The typical jargon-laced introductions and the old and boring "tell' em what you're gonna tell' em" rule is out the window these days. Jump right in with a colorful story or example, or a challenge, or a hard question. Your audiences are ready for this.

2) Mix up the visuals in your slide deck. Corporate rules about design parameters are counter-productive to the goal of getting connected with the audience. A fixed three-color scheme, slide templates where everything is exactly the same on every slide, perfect photos or stylized graphics--none of these attract the audience. The human brain's efficient filing cabinet says to itself -"I've seen this before, know what it means..NEXT!" so instead of increasing awareness of the brand, these corporate looks decrease interest.

3) Add sound and movement to your presentation deliberately and thoughtfully. Sounds can be embedded in your slides--show a process or flow and embed a sound that suggests movement. This can be fairly subtle--no roaring plane engines--but your audience will pick it up and their attention will be stronger than otherwise.

Incorporate movement by asking the audience to raise their hands, to write something on a handout, or to handle and use a promotional product or gift. Something small makes a big difference in the course of a 30-60-90 minute presentation.

Multi-media doesn't sit still and doesn't lecture. It moves and it grabs and it makes you participate. Do the same with your presentations and your audiences will be eager for more.

Breathe New Life into Your Business Presentations

All that is required to breathe new life into business presentations is knowing what excites an audience. The human beings in an audience are attracted to speeches and presentations that stimulate their senses; that persuade them to take action; and that have a message that sticks over time.

 

Attraction: When you increase the stimulation of the 5 senses you increase the attraction of your speech or presentation. Go into the layers of the senses below the obvious:

• Vision-B & W and color photos; videos; abstract designs as well as graphics, process flow charts; many colors,not just the brand color palette.

• Hearing - ambient noises or work places; street noises, sounds of nature and travel; music.

• Touch- ask your audience to handle paper and pens; use calculators; raise their hands and move in their places

• Smell- provide powerful pleasing odors such as popcorn, chocolate and mints.

• Taste - the same items that smell good also taste good. Avoid bland or overly sweet snacks.

How do you attract your audiences? Share your ideas through our comment link.

 

Public Speaking - The Secret to Immediately Attracting Your Audiences

What gets through the constant flow of information, images and messages in your day to grab you quickly? Whatever makes you pay attention is the same kind of thing that makes your audiences sit up and notice you. You know for sure that you don't feel attracted by routine or boring things such as the typical opening comments of a business speaker. So why do those things to your audience?

Start with something unexpected--a question that has serious undertones but also makes the audience laugh or feel puzzled. Music and a pantomime. Something that seems utterly in contrast to the topic--show the tropics when you're going to be talking about the frenzy of business challenges in today's economy. Don't be constrained by what you see other speakers do--they are not right, they are just uninspired.

How can you be sure this is a good idea? It's not just me trying to be different--the need to focus on attraction has been proven by brain science and has a long tradition in advertising.

Brain Rules author John Medina, PhD, shows how human beings crave sensory stimulation and are hard-wired to respond to things that are interesting. Of his 12 Brain rules, I think number 9 "Multisensory stimulation increases creativity and learning" provides an umbrella under which speakers can find ideas and rationale for variety in their speeches and presentations.

The idea is that when multiple senses--vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell--are stimulated, the effect multiplies. Therefore 1+1=more than 2.

When you open your speech or presentation by combining sound and visuals and going beyond that to touch deep layers of those senses, you have caused multisensory stimulation and increased the attractiveness of the content.

What layers of vision and sound can you imagine would increase the stimulation of your audience and lead to more creativity and learning? Share your ideas through our comment link.

I have delved into these two senses and discovered at least 5 layers for each one. Ask me more about them!

Public Speaking - Get More Business from Your Speeches

What's the difference between a print and/or online marketing campaign and a speech? The obvious answer is that you are directly in front of your target market when you give a speech. All other marketing campaigns are scatter-shot. Even with expensive, well-targeted lists or online campaigns directed towards your perfect key words, the recipients have to pluck your message out of the mass of information they are surrounded with.

You can speak directly to the needs and challenges of your target market with your excellent speech. Show them you really know their pain. Here is one example of the way to do this:

"You come to work each day to accomplish your (specific mission). The obstacles that stand in your way include (be specific here). We (your own company) has expertise solving this problem and we will work with you to achieve your (mission/goal here).

Then you continue speaking to their needs and the obstacles to meeting those needs. Keep the word "you"--as in the audience--in the forefront. Speak in the active voice with a positive tone--"we will" rather than "we could."

Your content is what will make the difference between being heard or not. When you speak from your passion and inner knowledge about their problem and your solution, they pay attention and you are convincing. Your presentation style may be stiff or simple but that will matter very little if your content is audience-focused.

Do NOT believe that how you say it is more important than what you say. That is a low-value approach that wastes everyone's time.

Conclude your speech with a call-to-action. This does not have to be something so obviously "sales-y" as "call me today."

It should be something that focuses again on their problem. You could get the aaudience to participate by repeating a refrain or a promise. "Yes, I do" is a great response as you ask several questions:

• "Do you want to increase repeat business?" "Yes I do!"

• "Do you want to get more referrals?"  "Yes I do!"

• "Do you know what your next step is?" "Yes, I do!"

How do you get more business from your speeches to your target markets?

Public Speaking - 3 Tips for Business Audience Participation

Business speakers never seem to think that they can and should include some audience participation activities in their speeches and presentations. If you think this way, you are losing one of the most effective ways to make your message stick and get the audience to respond to your call-to-action.

Here are 3 tips for audience participation--even for the most technical and serious topics!

1. Commit at the outset to including audience participation. As soon as you know you have to speak, start thinking about where and when to give the audience some participation. It doesn't happen when you think you'll go back and include it later.
2. Consider these participation options:

• Ask audience members to call out their answers to a question you pose--the more noisy the better!
• Provide a hard copy of a fill-in-the-blanks list they can write on
• Ask them a question and direct them to write it down on their hard copy
• Direct them to discuss their answer to a question with their neighbor
• Ask questions that the audience can raise their hands to answer

    3. Model the behavior you want. Raise your own hand, shout out an answer, show them that you're filling in the blanks on a piece of paper. (Do NOT do this by using a slide). I recenlty asked an audience to use movement to reflect a famous person they would like to be. I made a point of striking the pose of an energetic guitar-playing singer and they all got much looser and did their own imitations.

Make a promise to yourself to try just one audience activity in your very next speech or presentation. Observe the audience response. Pay attention to the energy level in the room before and after and to how they pay attention to you after the activity.

One important piece of advice: if it doesn't seem to work, do NOT give up. Think about what you could do to make it work better: simpler, better directions, different question or topic?

Audience participation is an art form and it will take a few "sketches"  or "beta" versions before you have it working perfectly. You will only achieve perfection with practice.

Share your ideas about audience participation through our comment link.

Public Speaking - How to Add the Sense of Touch to Your Presentations

Getting and keeping your audience's attention is always a challenge. Even more challenging is increasing the learning and retention of your content. Brain Rules author John Medina, Ph.D. devotes considerable time to describing how retention is enhanced when content is delivered in a way that engages several human senses at the same time.

Touch is one of our five senses. Yet with all the concerns about appropriate behavior in business settings, it may seem that bringing touch into a business presentation would not be wise.

I believe that touch should be thought of more as movement and action than as simply putting a hand on someone else. When you think of touch as physical movement you can use these two techniques immediately without fear or discomfort:

1) Raising their hands: Something as simple as giving the audience a reason to raise their hands would help stimulate their sense of touch/movement. Ask a series of three questions that you expect most of the audience could respond to with raised hands. Show them you expect them to hold their hands high by doing it yourself as you ask the first question.

This is a great example of multisensory stimulation because while they are raising their hands They are also watching you (vision) and listening (hearing).

2) Writing: Include a couple of opportunities for the audience to write things down and force the issue by providing them with a hard copy of the exercise. Some examples: solve a puzzle, fill in the blanks or several sentences, make a list they have to share with the person next to them. Near the end of your presentation, have them grab a pen and write down one thing they are going to when they leave.

Your goal is get the majority to actively move, so don't give up because there will be some who refuse. There is always a small percentage of listeners who don't participate. That's their choice.

Focus on the large majority who will participate and give them multisensory stimulation to help them learn and retain the learning.

What techniques do you include in your speeches and presentations to give the audience multisensory integration? Share your ideas through our comment link below.

Public Speaking - Know What Matters Most to Your Employees

How do you improve morale and productivity after you declare that the only view that counts in the one facing forward? According to Jon R. Katzenbach, quoted in the Dec. 28, 2008 New York Times, most motivational managers "make a personal connection to the worker, and that personal connection is used to make them feel good about the work they do."

He added that "that gives them pride in their work and if they feel proud of their work they do a better job."

This advice provides an excellent reminder to those of you who deliver presentations to your team, your division or your company. How much more money could the company make if you use the idea of "making a personal connection to your workers" as the defining concept of your presentations?

Here are three (3) simple ways of making that personal connection through your presentations to employees:

1. Write your own content and be sure that the content is from your inner knowledge and from your passion. Love the work your company does? Proud of your reputation with customers? Use those 'emotional'; words in your presentation. Connections come from the expressions of your heart.
2. Speak from handwritten note cards instead of from slides. Nothing--I mean NOTHING--can be delivered more effectively from a slide than from your own notes.
3.  Learn to craft and deliver meaningful stories. The stories must be from your own experience and relevant to the audience. Take the time to write them out and emphasize drama and impact rather than facts and details. Tell the story, then deliver your key point.

These 3 simple tips for writing and delivering presentations are easier to accomplish than any team building exercises and off-site activities and they cost nothing.

I recommend that you make these kinds of presentations a frequent part of your company's meeting culture. Once a month gather people together for the sole purpose of connecting with them. Omit other meetings if you must to make the time for this. One year from now you will look back and realize that this is the best investment in team building and productivity you ever made.

How do you connect with your employee audiences? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Public Speaking - Know Your Audience and The Stories that Move Them

When Fred Dent CFA re-wrote his speech to truly reflect what was on the minds of his audience, both he and the audience enjoyed the profound improvement.

Fred also incorporated stories into the hard financial material to create a speech that was memorable and made the audience eager to learn more.

Business Presentations - Give Them Your Lines to Increase Audience Participation

This great technique makes the audience feel they are helping you. When they help, they get a sense of ownership of your content. This in turn makes them more likely to respond to your call to action. When they absolutely, positively must be responsive, give them some of your lines.

Here are 3 ways to give them some of your lines.

1)      Let's say that you describe an event that made you say "I don’t believe it!" The first time you say this gesture to the audience to repeat it after you. Then when you use that same gesture several more times the audience will say "I don’t believe it!" at that time.

2)      Ask some questions that would have the same answer each time. The name of the company or their well known jingle or tag line would be good. Think of Coke's "it's the real thing". You can pose some questions and that tag line would be the answer, which the audience can shout out each time.

3)      Teach the audience a new refrain such as "Creating the Future". Then when you're talking about the challenges that lie ahead, you can give them opportunities to participate with that refrain. After they say it five times they'll be filled with excitement and energy and will leave committed to doing just that.

Bonus tip: What would happen if you used just one of these techniques in your next presentation or speech? You would get more attentiveness and enthusiasm than ever and you'd be encouraged to try another one the next time. Pick one way to increase audience participation today.

Speakonomics! ^TM Four Little Words You Must Know to Make More Moneyhelps you increase the economic impact of every speech and presentation. Let me know how it works for you by posting your thoughts through our comment link.

Business Presentations - Rhymes and Memory Tricks Increase Audience Participation in Business Presentations

We learn and remember rhymes and memory devices much more easily than straight text and the memories are stronger.  Using just one rhyme and one memory device in a presentation or speech will make your message stick.

Here are 5 simple ways to do this:

1)      Use a familiar short word whose letters could represent your key points. Stick to 3, 4 or 5 letters and make sure the letters are different. You can use a word that makes people smile or gives them a good feeling. C-A-K-E; L-I-V-E; M-A-T-H; I-P-O-D are some examples.

2)      Write new definitions of the letters in an alphabetic representation of an agency or a concept that the audience is familiar with. TSA is known by many as the Transportation Security Agency. What other words that are meaningful to your audience start with those letters?

3)      Use the letters in a familiar word to create a "cheer." "Give me an "S", give me an "A", etc will spell out the word S-A-L-E-S. This format also gets the audience to speak and perhaps to move if you get them on their feet during the "cheer".

4)      Rhymes are easy if you keep them simple. Think of key points in simple words and make lists of words that rhyme with those key words. Use a simple rhythm. Two or four lines that rhyme will be easily repeated by the group (getting them to use their voices too) and will be long remembered.

5)      Limericks are easy to create and people expect them to be a bit more funny, so enjoy the process and well as the teaching them to the audience.

Bonus TIP: What would happen if you used just one of these rhyming or memory device tips in your next presentation? You'll never know until you try it. Pick one you feel most comfortable with and just do it.

Speakonomics! ^TM Four Little Words You Must Know to Make More Money helps you increase the economic impact of every speech and presentation. Let me know how it works for you by posting your thoughts through our comment link.