Business Planning Powerpoint Project
Innovative Business Plan Presentations: Turning Ten Minutes into Competitive Success
Right or wrong, people form a perception about how competent you are by how you present yourself when you stand and speak. They also form perceptions about the company you represent based on your performance. Does that make you nervous? It should! Never before in the history of mankind has more been riding on the effectiveness of a person's presentation.
In fact, public speaking is an easy way to set yourself apart from your competition, because when you stand up and say what you want to say, they way that you want to say it, you are doing what 95% of the people in the audience wish they could do! A person who is confident in front of a group gives off an air of competence, whereas a person who fumbles might leave a negative impression.
There are many occasions when you, as a small business owner, will be called upon to explain your business. These presentations will be given to many diverse groups including potential customers, bankers, suppliers, and investors. Each group requires different information about your business and it should be presented in a format appropriate to the situation.
Along with computer literacy, professional presentation skills are becoming a new survival skill in the workplace. Not only do people enjoy presenters who are inviting, engaging and informative, in today's hypercompetitive marketplace, presenters have to persuade and inspire to obtain a bid, win a contract, gain the confidence of an ally in a high-stakes competitive task, and motivate others to overcome impossible obstacles.
Words have the ability to change the way that people think, the way the people believe, and can even change their values. If you can alter someone's values, then you can redirect their actions. From values, actions will flow. From beliefs, come a person's subsequent behaviors.
On the other hand, technical expertise and proficiency without the ability to communicate will render us inefficient and ineffective. According to research, people would rather die than stand in front of people and make a speech. The top three things people are afraid of are public speaking, death, and snakes!
Since you as a businessperson will be required to make presentations, sales pitches, pleas for cash, and so on, it is imperative that you recognize that nervousness is a part of the communication experience, and find ways to channel that anxiety into useful energy.
Are you nervous about your public speaking skills? Developing and delivering business presentations, just like most functions in business, are formulaic and are a learned skill. Learn the formula, practice the skill and you will gain competency as a presenter. This document is part of learning the formula. You will have to provide the practice to learn and master the skill.
You are going to be giving presentations in boardrooms. You are going to be presenting your ideas; you are going to try to persuade someone to give you a lot of money. People and their money are not easily parted. They don't like to just give it away. Consequently, it will be your responsibility to create persuasive appeals to capture their imagination and get their attention. Usually you will not be the only one entering a boardroom. In fact, there might be twenty, thirty, forty people in one day competing against you -- one after another. It may be a meeting on the weekend, or a business presentation during business hours – in either case, often you will only have one opportunity to make a good impression.
How do you make your presentation stand out? How do you capture the imagination of a venture capitalist so that they say, "Now that's something that really interests me! That's something that I want to be a part of! That's something that I want to invest in! That's something I want to go for." It will certainly take creativity on your part. It will take strategic planning, creative thinking, a lot of hard work, practice, and a supreme effort on your part.
The purpose of this document is to help you create the type of presentation that will grab the imagination of those viewing and listening to you so that you can take them to a place where they are excited about becoming a partner in your endeavor. Opportunities for public speaking and presentations in business come across our path every day. Most of us turn away from these offerings out of fear. When asked to talk, many of us feel our knees wobble, our voices tremble and our sense of vision dim. It just doesn't need to be this way.
Learning the basic skills of public speaking and practicing regularly can lead you toward becoming an accomplished, polished speaker. What better way to place you and your company in the limelight and boost your own credibility than to be the keynote speaker at an industry association meeting? God gave each of us certain gifts and abilities. You know more about certain subjects and topics than anyone else, so there is no reason not to consider sharing this information with others. God will open doors for you -- it is up to you to walk through those doors and seize the opportunities with all diligence.
Introduction
This workbook offers step-by-step advice on critical components of presentations such as:
� Defining one's goals.
� Visuals.
� Logistics.
� Rehearsal.
� Presentation strategy.
� Delivery.
� Communicating your message so it comes across clearly and confidently.
It focuses specifically on the topic of preparation. The finest presentation techniques and the most up-to-date visuals will not overcome a poorly prepared message.
There are two books recommended if you are interested in public speaking. Peggy Noonan's On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech With Style, Substance, and Clarity. Noonan was a speechwriter for President George Bush, Sr. She is the one who wrote the phrase we are still familiar with today, "a thousand points of light."
The second book is, You are the Message. Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are by Roger Ailes and Jon Kraushar. This title is great because the goal of your presentation is to not only sell your idea, but to sell yourself. Your audience needs to say, "I can trust this person" -- not just trust the idea, but trust the person.
This document provides a critically important beginning to the public speaking component of your career. Consider it your introduction to the presentations you will make for the rest of your life. You must want to improve. This document will give you proven techniques that, if practiced, will significantly enhance your
presentation skills and help you overcome any fear of public speaking you may have. It will also help you prepare presentations for different types of audiences.
The goal of your presentation is being who you really are at your absolute best.
The goal of this document is to get you to be who you really are at your absolute best!
Resources
Craig von Buseck has been streamed in the video links below. It parallels the material in this document.
Craig von Buseck 1 http://media.regent.edu/schbus/busn620/bp1.wmv
Craig von Buseck 2 http://media.regent.edu/schbus/busn620/bp2.wmv
Craig von Buseck 3 http://media.regent.edu/schbus/busn620/bp3.wmv
Optional Resources:
Morrisey, George L., Sechrest, Thomas L. (contributor), Warman, Wendy B. (contributor), 1997, Loud and Clear: How to Prepare and Deliver Effective Business and Technical Presentations, Perseus Press, New York [ISBN: 0201127938].
On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech With Style, Substance, and Clarity by Peggy Noonan
You are the Message. Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are by Roger Ailes and Jon Kraushar
High-Impact Presentations : A Multimedia Approach by Jo Robbins
How to Create High Impact Business Presentations by Joyce Kupsh, Pat R. Graves (Contributor)
How to Make Winning Presentations: 30 Action Tips for Getting Your Ideas Across With Clarity and Impact (30-Minute Solutions Series) by Paul R. Timm
Designing & Delivering Scientific, Technical, and Managerial Presentations; Peter J. Hager, et al
Objectives:
1. After completion of this document, you should be able to successfully give a ten-minute presentation of your business plan to an audience.
Demonstrate skills required to construct and deliver a business plan presentation
Preparing your information for presentation is a skill. For an effective presentation, you need to be certain that you have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish with your presentation (not what you want to say). The approach offered in the text provides a foundation from which you can design a strong presentation that is more likely to achieve the results you want with every group you face, whether they are customers, upper management, colleagues, venture capitalists, or the general public. Preparation for your presentation can spell the difference between success and failure.
Once you complete your business plan, you will be refining your data into clear concise pieces deemed to inspire and move the audience to action.
Be Who You Really Are!
The point is worth emphasizing again.
The goal of your presentation is to be who you really are at your absolute best!
In life we have certain moments when opportunities open up to us because of the intersection of our preparedness, our education, our work experience, and God's grace. Different opportunities will present themselves if we are doing the right things in life. When these opportunities arrive (such as this business plan presentation), that is when we need to recognize the need to shift into our best personal performance gear -- not shift into the, "I want to be like him or I want to be like her, or I want to be like Zig Zigller, or I want to be like some other motivational speaker."
The goal in public speaking is not for you to be whoever you might think is a great speaker. You are not supposed to be the next Elizabeth Dole. You are not supposed to be the next Martin Luther King. You are not supposed to become Ronald Regan or whomever it is that you look up to as a great speaker. You are supposed to be who God made you to be at your very best.
You can certainly learn techniques from other great speakers, but the person you want to be is you. And you want to be at your best.
The best analogy is that of "the invasion of the body snatchers." This is when a person stands up in front of a group of people and may become too stiff in their demeanor, and wooden with their presentation style. Suddenly, they become robotic. Or maybe they start speaking too fast and sound like an auctioneer. Some people become too loose and laid back. Their presentation is not formal enough for the occasion and they lose credibility with their audience.
The reason that I use the Invasion of the Body Snatchers analogy is because we often operate as two different people. For example, when we go out into the hallway at work or the break time during class and we are talking to our friends about the episode of "Survivor" last night on TV, we're animated, we're smiling, and we use gestures. We say things like, "Oh, man, that was a great segment!" You back up your statements with evidence and enhance the statement with the appropriate gestures and appropriate movements. You don't stumble over your
words, and you don't say things such as, "Oh, I am so sorry. I can't believe that I just said that. I am so stupid." You just don't do that kind of thing when you are out in the hallway in a casual conversation situation.
But when we get into a public presentation setting and we start to speak, all of a sudden we stumble across one word and we say, "Oh, I am so sorry, I can't believe I just did that." Or we get stiff and wooden, and we talk very low and monotone, or we go at 180 miles per hour. We may treat the microphone as our enemy. No one recognizes us because we are not who we really are. The goal is to be the same person you are on the stage in front of a group or in a presentation as you are in the hallway during the break.
Now you are saying, "Oh, yeah, that's a lot easier said than done. Do you know how frightened I am of public speaking? " Yes, in fact most people are more afraid to make a speech in public than they are to die. According to research, people would rather die than stand in front of people and make a speech. That's true! Most people are also afraid of snakes. Those are the top three things people are afraid of -- death, snakes, and public speaking.
Fear of Public Speaking
People are more willing to die than they are to give a speech. How do you overcome that fear? You want to be confident, but it's difficult to be confident if you are shaking like a leaf and are really, really nervous. The first thing to do is to acknowledge your fear. You are a speechaphobic. You are afraid of public speaking. You have a fear of pubic presentations and it causes you terrible anxiety. Acknowledge that it exists. And rest assured, for most of us, it does exist.
There is the old trick from The King and I. Do you remember when Anna arrives in Siam and is terribly nervous about meeting the King for the first time? She sings this song to her son:
"Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect and whistle a happy tune, so none else suspect that I am afraid. The result of this deception is very clear to tell. For when I fool people I feel I fool myself as well."
Act confident. The more you act confident, the more likely you will feel confident. The more you feel confident, the more likely you will be confident, and it builds on itself. But you have to start with all of this somewhere. If you go in saying to yourself, "I am afraid," then you have already hurt yourself. Instead, go in saying, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I have the mind of Christ." Go in saying, "I know this project is good. I have done my homework; I have done my research. I know this is a valuable idea. I know there are positive benefits. This project is valuable and I am going to help these people. They are not helping me, I am helping them; they are not interviewing me, I am interviewing them. They have the money, and I have the idea. This is a great fit. This is the beginning of a beautiful relationship." Go in with that kind of attitude and you will be amazed at how well you will do.
Be Prepared. One of the best ways to overcome anxiety is to prepare. Be prepared. One of the primary reasons people are afraid is that they are not prepared. Be prepared. Know your stuff, and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Your audience will know if you don't prepare. It will be very obvious because of the stumbling, mumbling, bumbling -- tripping over words, and not conveying the idea with clarity.
Channel your nervous energy. Make nervous energy your friend. It does not matter who you are, everyone is nervous before a public presentation. Even if you have been giving speeches for fifty years, you get nervous. People who have been doing it for a long time know how to use nervous energy to their advantage. They harness it like a wonderful stallion, and they ride it to glory, to victory. It's much like the marshal arts where you use your opponent's own movement and energy against them. In this scenario, your opponent is fear. But fear and excitement are very closely related. Those two feelings are very similar. Very similar! That's why we go to Busch Gardens. That's why we go to really cool suspenseful movies. There is energy in those feelings. You get on the roller coaster and you are afraid, but when you get off you say, "That was awesome!"
Recognize that it's the same thing in a presentation. When you are preparing to speak, you experience anxiety, just like you do when you are on the roller coaster and you are about to go over that first hill. But once your presentation is underway you start to get momentum until you are really moving! You harness your energy and use it to your advantage to give you enthusiasm -- to raise you to a higher level of performance. You convert your fear and anxiety into energy the same way a dam converts a rushing river into electricity. It takes something that could be potentially bad, and converts it into something good.
Another thing you can do is go for a walk in advance and pray. This does a couple of things. First, the walk oxygenates your brain and that clears your head and helps you to think clearly. When you have oxygen in your blood system, you think better. Your mind is clearer. It also gives you energy because your heart rate is going and the blood is pumping. Of course, prayer is always a good thing! Those last few minutes before a speech I am often praying to get in the right place with the Lord.
Building Your Confidence
Nervousness is healthy--it shows that the presentation is important to you and that you care about doing well. Knowing as much as you can ahead of time will give you confidence. Rehearse until you are comfortable with your material.
Realize that people want you to succeed. Here are some additional tips on how to control nervous jitters:
Relax. Take a deep breath. When we get nervous, we breathe shallowly. If you concentrate on breathing deeply, you'll get enough air to speak and ease your panic.
Use good posture. We have more power and energy when we stand erect with weight balanced equally on our feet.
Concentrate on the message, not on how you are coming across.
Use eye contact. This will help your audience know that you are speaking to them, not at them. Find a few supportive faces and hold their eyes as you make a point.
Turn nervousness into positive energy.
Do not apologize.
Forget perfection. Be Yourself.
Learn to laugh at yourself. The problems that occur during presentations are funny (equipment doesn't work, you trip, you discover a gob of toothpaste on your clothing).
The objective is to learn the techniques that are necessary so when you are standing in front of people, you can be yourself. It may not seem possible now, but we will get you there. You will see, as we go along, that there are certain things that we can do to become ourselves; to be ourselves, at our best. But you need to understand from this point forward that the goal is not to be like someone else!
The Communication Model
In any type of presentation, it is important to first understand how we communicate with one another.
This is called the transactional model in communication. Some of you may remember this from public speaking classes in undergraduate school. It's basic, and yet, you have to understand this to fully grasp what is going on between you and your audience.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was in the speaker's mouth. The speaker encodes a message. That is what you are doing when you are preparing your presentation. You are encoding a message. When I am giving a speech the goal is for me to take information from inside my brain and transfer it into the mind of the listener, and then, hopefully, have that person respond in a positive manner. That's the objective. The speaker encodes the message and sends it along the channel to an audience -- or the receivers, the listeners. When the listener receives the message, he or she decodes the message.
If we are sending an e-mail, this all works well unless you have some sort of a virus. But when we are talking, things get more complicated because words mean different things to different people in different ways. And the way that I say something and the manner in which I communicate those words can mean a lot of different things to different people. For example, say the following phrase out loud putting the emphasis each time on the word in bold print:
"I love this class."
"I love this class!"
"I love this class?"
"I love this class?"
You just said the same thing four times, but it meant four different things depending on where you put the emphasis and the punctuation used. Now, add gestures, facial expressions, the intonation of your voice, the volume of your voice, the rate at which you spoke the words, and the four different meanings may have become eight, or ten, or perhaps as many as sixteen!
Then there are other things that add to understanding and decoding of the message. A speaker must evaluate the feedback that comes to him or her from the audience. We also have to take into account the context of the speech, the frame of reference of the listeners, and a phenomenon referred to as "noise."
Noise is not just physical sound, but it is also the mental interruptions that take place in the mind of a listener during a speech. Are you hungry? Maybe just a little bit? Are you hearing your stomach growl? Do you have a big bill that has to be paid tomorrow? Are you getting paid tomorrow? Do you have a sick child? Does the thought of this presentation scare you to death?
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While everything I may be saying to you is vitally important, I am fighting not only all the physical noise in the room, but I am also fighting the physiological noise, the psychological noise, the emotional noise, the mental noise, the background pressure noise, and anything else that is going on in the listener's life. In fact, I almost have to yell to get in there and have you hear what I have to say!
One of the statistics that is guaranteed to break the pride of any public speaker is the fact that 70% of what I say you won't remember. It's so important to acknowledge that fact! You may say to yourself, "I worked so hard on this presentation!" And yet, when your audience leaves the room, most of it will be gone from their consciousness forever!
This demonstrates what you are up against in working to be an effective presenter. When you are making any kind of public presentation, whether it is a business presentation, a political speech, a message at church, a eulogy, all this stuff is going on inside of the person that is listening to you. Therefore, you need to prepare yourself in such a way that you have devices that will catch their attention on one hand, but will keep in their memory what you are saying on the other. You need to have memory devices built into your presentation so that they don't forget. We call such memory devices performance outlines.
Performance Outlines
There are preparation outlines, which is the typical A, A1, A1a form that we learned in grade school. These are good organizational methods to use to help you put your presentation together in a logical format. But then it is necessary to take that information and whittle it down into what is called a performance outline.
For your business plan presentation in this course, you have ten minutes. How much can you do in ten minutes? Not very much! Perhaps you determine that you can make one key point per minute plus you want to leave one minute for the introduction, and one minute for the conclusion. There goes your ten minutes. Next, you've got to come up with the three key points you want to communicate. You want the instructors to remember your presentation, because they are going to see sixteen other presentations besides yours that evening. How are you going to make yours stand out in the crowd? You need to find the way for them to remember yours.
Maybe you will use alliteration, where every point starts with the same letter. Maybe you will use a rhyming devise, where every main point rhymes. Maybe you will use some sort of metaphor where you might say, "This company that you are part of is a strong sailing ship, but what you don't recognize is that there are cracks in the hull. But I am the glue that can fill those cracks." Those are the kind of creative strategies and themes that you need to be thinking about to find the way to help your audience differentiate your presentation from all the others -- so they will remember it.
The Speech Making Wheel
When you begin preparing your presentation, the first thing that you need to ask is, "Who is my audience? What is their background?" You need to know what the demographics are of the people that you are going to be presenting to. You need to do your homework. You need to do your research. From a business perspective you would ask, "What is the company's market share? What is the background of the company? What kind of profits are they making as a company? " While that's all important, you also need to look at who they are. Are they mostly men, or are they women? What's their age group? What's their ethnic background? What part of the country are they from? You're already learning the research techniques for ferreting out a lot of this kind of information if you haven't got it already, but now you need to find out who the people are.
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Build everything around your audience. In this course, we give you the option of letting you identify who your audience is before you start. Obviously, you are being graded by the instructors while you are presenting to your peers. But if your business plan was designed to be presented to a missions board then you can tell us, "I am presenting this to the board of missions at my church." Or, "I am presenting this the board of directors," or, "I am presenting this to a group of venture capitalists." We allow you to identify the audience to whom you are making this presentation. From that point forward, the audience (including the instructors) is thinking in that context.
If you can't do that, you can at least focus on what the company produces and what is their history. For example, if they are a venture capitalist, then who have they funded before? Try to find out what previous successful presentations focused on. Do research on who that audience is and then select your topic.
While your goal in this class is obviously the business plan presentation you have to do, the key word is "narrow." You have a very limited amount of time. The first mistake that happens is a lot of people think, "If I say a lot of things, I will impress people." That is absolutely the opposite of what is true. You don't need to say a lot of things. You need to say the right things in the right way. Consequently, you want to think narrow, not broad. It's the key principal - "Keep it simple!"
Planning Your Presentation
In creating your presentation, think like a reporter and answer the "who, what, why, how, and where" questions.
♦♦♦♦ Who will attend--and how many? Aim the content of presentation to your audience, and the choice of visuals to meet the needs of your group. Visuals need to be visible to everyone.
♦♦♦♦ What is the purpose of the presentation? Is it to explain a plan or project; to tell people what to do--and how; report on what's been done; get support for an idea; define or solve a problem; gain consensus for a decision; provide training; or encourage motivation.
♦♦♦♦ Why are they there? Is attendance mandatory? Any time anyone attends a meeting, they will always be asking themselves, "What's in it for me?" Be sure you answer that question for them.
♦♦♦♦ What information is needed to support your purpose? How will you present it? Keep your points short, concise and understandable to your audience. Use visuals to clarify and reinforce your message.
♦♦♦♦ Where is it going to take place? The room that the presentation is in will have an impact on how you present. Will you need a projector or can you use flip charts? Will you need a microphone? Do you need a podium?
Determine Your Purpose
What is your overall purpose? Almost always, you need to persuade someone to do something: to take action, to make a decision, to fund your idea, to allow you to market the product, to service the customer, to send the missionary, etc. But within that context, there are four main purposes in any presentation or speech situation. Your purpose is to:
1. Inform.
2. Persuade.
3. Entertain.
4. Inspire.
The fourth, Inspiration, is the holy grail of public speaking—and it is the most difficult to achieve. It is very difficult to inspire people. It is possible, but it takes a lot of work and experience to get to the point where your presentations can
inspire an audience. Therefore, the three purposes on which you should focus will be to inform, to persuade and to entertain—and, just possibly, to inspire.
In the case of your business plan presentation, your goal is to persuade, but in every speech there is always an element of information, and there is always an element of entertainment. If you don't understand this, you will fail as a public speaker.
You will constantly hear people say, "Hey, this is business, and we are not supposed to entertain." And somebody else will say, "This is the church, and we are not supposed to be entertaining..., or this is a public policy meeting and the objective is not to entertain…, or this is …, or whatever it might be." No, no, no! Everybody needs to be entertained!
When Apple Computer presents the latest version of their new computer, everybody's clapping and cheering, there's an upbeat environment with lots of action and people making statements such as, "Wow, this is great! It will change my screen! Wow! have you ever seen these things?" What about when Microsoft comes out with a new product? It is a big, big deal! The product presentations are very entertaining because they recognize that if the customer is bored, then they will not be persuaded to carry their product line, if they are a retailer; sell it in their chain of stores, if they are a distributor; or buy it, if they are a consumer.
If your board of directors is bored with your presentation then you are in big trouble. If the venture capitalists are bored with your presentation, then you lose. You can have the greatest idea or the greatest plan, and if somebody else has a plan that is equally as great as yours, what's going to be the differentiating factor? You bored the audience; your competitor entertained them, you cured their insomnia while they caught their imagination and ran with it. You remained generically plain vanilla while they used memory devices in their presentation. Then, when your audience went to look through this sea of reports, they went right to your competitors presentation documents while they skipped over yours. "Since their presentation was boring, I can only imagine what the rest of their report is like."
Now, you may be thinking, "That seems a little bit shallow." Shallow, maybe, but it's reality, and it's the way things work.
You have developed your central idea, and you have remembered to consider your audience. At every point you have anticipated what the audience is going to be thinking. You now know your audience. Now, what do you need to do when you develop your central theme, when you develop your main idea, and when you gather your supporting materials? In a business presentation you have already been organizing your speech when you did your market planning research and your strategy development research. Now you need to take some time to practice presenting.
Presentation Format
From Toastmasters International, Inc.'s, "Communication and Leadership Program," comes a typical presentation format. It will have an OPENING which
will capture audience attention and lead into the presentation topic. Then, a BODY which has a series of points with each point beginning with a statement of fact followed by supporting material. The presentation then ends with a CLOSING which contains a review (or summary), and a call to action (or a memorable statement).
In timing your presentation, an ideal breakdown would be:
Opening - 10 to 20 percent
Body - 65 to 75 percent
Closing - 10 to 20 percent
Rehearsing the Presentation
"Rehearse? Wait, I need to rehearse this? Hmm, I mean I have done all this work. It has taken me all these weeks and months. I have got it down pat." You might have the facts and figures down pat, but you also have to have the presentation down pat. You can't just come into a place and think that you are going to be successful. You must rehearse. Your presentation must be smooth. It must capture their imagination.
Delivering the Presentation
Even in delivering the speech you must consider the audience. You need to constantly monitor how the audience is responding. If they are responding to you in a negative way, then you might need to adjust your presentation to how they are responding. For example, you might be the last presenter, and everyone in the audience is sitting there looking at their watches. Somehow you've got to overcome that obstacle. You have to recognize that they are tired, they've been through all these other presentations, they're suffering from information overload, and all that noise is going on inside of them. You've got to break through it with your presentation. You can break through it by being rehearsed, polished, and professional. When you are rehearsed and polished you have the added capability of making adjustments, and you need to be able to adjust and do slightly different things to compensate for the adversities.
Dressing for the Presentation
What do you do if you have different types of people in your audience? For example, we all remember the Internet boom. In the late 1990s, everybody was dressing very casual for meetings. If you anticipate that you are going into this kind of setting, then you want to effectively relate to that kind of setting. Again, you have to know your audience. You also have the other traditional business professionals where everybody is in suit and everything is very conservative. But what if there is a mixture where some people are dressed in the traditional style, and others are the laid-back marketing guys? In such cases, always go toward the conservative side.
The rule for any presentation is find out what the attire is, then go one step higher. That means if they are casual, you go dress casual. If they are dress casual, you wear suit. If they are wearing suits, you wear your best suit.
Keeping to Your Allotted Time is a Matter of Trust
It is imperative that you get their attention and then hold their attention. But you have to manage this in the time that you have available, so strategic planning is critically important. In most cases you are not going to get one extra second of time. It's going to be five or ten minutes and then you're out. And if you aren't done, then you're going to be cut off and asked to leave. Thank you, good-bye. And you may have damaged your chance at getting the venture capital because you went over your time limit.
Every relationship is based on trust. Whether it is a marriage or a friendship, or a business partnership, or students working on an assignment for a professor, every relationship in the world is based on trust! Keeping to the time limit in a presentation is a trust issue. If you go over your time limit, then you are breaking that trust right up front, and a big checkmark will be placed against you in the credibility column by those evaluating your presentation.
The Opening
You want your opening to capture the attention of your audience and to hold their attention. The function of introduction is to get the audience's attention. It is there to:
1. Introduce the topic.
2. Provide the motivation for the audience to want to listen.
3. Establish your credibility.
You have to do these three things immediately. Remember, you have to break the process down into its component parts because you only have ten minutes. For our example, we want one minute for the introduction, the one minute for each of the three main points, and one minute for the conclusion. We are going to use a traditional template for speech- making with this example:
1. In the introduction of the presentation, tell your audience what you are going to tell them
2. In the body of the presentation, tell your audience what it is you want to tell them.
3. In the conclusion of the presentation, tell your audience what it is you told them.
If you are employed by a marketing company and you are buying advertising for a client, you are buying what are called "impressions." If you are buying advertising for a large pizza company client called "Pizza-Pizza," then you will determine how many impressions you will be able to afford in different media formats. In other words, if you place your ad in a newspaper, then it's a matter of
how many people will see your ad, or how many impressions will you get if you advertise in the newspaper. How many people will see your ad if you buy impressions on television? What kind of market penetration will you get if you purchase your impressions on radio, or the Internet, or through the phonebook? You might decide to buy impressions using the space on the side of a city bus. In marketing, you will spread your impressions across different media.
Let's imagine the typical day in the life of an imaginary graduate student named Ronald. He wakes up, gets out of bed, and pours himself a bowl of cereal. While he gets ready to go to his marketing class, he turns on the Today Show. He's not really paying close attention because he is shaving, dressing, and getting all his personal belongings together. During the Today Show, they have the commercial for "Pizza-Pizza." Ronald doesn't even consciously hear the commercial. He goes to the door, grabs his books, gets in his car, turns on the radio station he usually listens to and takes off. While driving along, he sings with is favorite tune. When the song is finished the station plays a commercial for "Pizza-Pizza." He doesn't really hear it. It just kind of goes past him because he is busy thinking about school. As he is waiting to turn left into the university property, he is stopped behind a city bus. On the back of the bus is an ad for "Pizza-Pizza." He really doesn't pay any attention to it because he is waiting for the traffic light to turn green. Once parked, he goes into the library, finds a computer and starts doing some online research. He goes to the local newspaper's website, the Virginian Pilot Online, where there is a banner ad for "Pizza-Pizza." Ignoring it, he reads an article about a new business venture in the area. When finished, he logs off and goes to class. At the end of class, he decides to go home, and while driving home again hears another radio ad for "Pizza-Pizza." He gets home and hanging on from his front door knob is set of coupons for "Pizza-Pizza." He goes inside, turns on the news, and "hears" another "Pizza-Pizza" commercial playing in the background.
Throughout the day he has been "impressed" with Pizza-Pizza commercials again and again. Suddenly, while sitting there watching the news, he thinks, "You know, pizza sure sounds good right now. And, I've got coupons right here. Isn't it nice of them to do that? I am going to call them and order my pizza." The advertisers know that it usually takes multiples impressions over an extended period of time to penetrate everything else (all the noise) going on in your life to get through to you. If they can get their message through enough times, then you will begin to recognize their product. This is the fun part of this course!
It takes a certain amount of impressions for us to be persuaded to do something. Our brains are complex and we have a lot going on in our lives. The advertises know that and they also recognize that every time Pizza-Pizza goes across the screen is worth seven hundred dollars worth of sold product because it represents 23,433 impressions (hypothetically-speaking). Advertisers recognize that this is the way our minds work. You need to understand that this the way our minds work. That's the very reason why you tell your audience what you are going tell them, then you tell them, then you tell them what you told them.
Impression, impression, impression. If you only tell them once, they have only had one impression. But if you tell them in your introduction, "I want to talk to you today about Pizza. Let's start with a Pizza. Let's go to the Pizza, and of course we are going to talk about a Pizza. Now, as I said today, small Pizzas, medium Pizzas and big Pizzas are very important. And I would like to have your support in Pizzas. In the name of the Pizza, I thank you." Multiple impressions!
You can't just throw things together; you have to have a plan, and you have to recognize how communication works. You work so hard in doing your research, studying your markets, studying your charts and graphs, and studying all the demographics. You also need to study communication. The number one thing that business employers look for when they hire a new employee is a person who can effectively communicate - both in writing and orally. So many times we become so busy studying the details of a specific craft that we forget that it is equally important to study communication. Technical expertise and proficiency without the ability to communicate will render us inefficient and ineffective.
Each person needs to work toward becoming a great communicator. If you intend to engage in "Leadership to change the World," that change will ultimately occur through communication, not technical knowledge.
The Greatest Communicator
The greatest communicator of all time, according to Advertising Age Magazine, was Jesus Christ. In studying the methods of Jesus' teaching, we talk about Jesus teaching and how brilliant it truly was, and how He was such an effective communicator. You see that yet He was all God, but He was also all man. While he was off praying to the Father, I can imagine that he was also looking for ways to communicate the truths of the Kingdom of God. He may have been thinking, "What is the way that farmer is sowing his seed. There is a story there that will be easily understood. Some of the seed falls on the stony soil, some of it falls on the good soil and begins growing."
You should do the same thing with your presentations. Don't just throw them together, think them through.
The First Seven Seconds
The first seven seconds of any presentation are critical because that's when you are judged. And in many cases your audience will shut you off or tune you out after those first seven seconds, if they don't think that what you have to say is worth listening to. Therefore, you need to recognize that fact and not put any "speed bumps" in your communication with your audience. You don't want to put a speed bump anywhere in your presentation that slows down your communication. For example, you don't want to dress inappropriately to detract from communicating with your audience. And you do not want to open with a story that is totally inappropriate to the audience's frame of reference. You don't want to draw undue attention when you make a mistake. And most importantly, you don't want to disqualify yourself by presenting erroneous or outdated information.
Regent University SIFE Presentations
Have you ever seen speech competitions where people are sitting or milling around, talking casually. Then, suddenly, they start their presentations. You look up from the audience and think to yourself, "Wait a minute! You are the slob that was just leaning up against the pillar with your hands in your pockets looking terrible. Now you want me to be impressed? I don't think so! No, no, no, no."
When the Regent University Student In Free Enterprise (SIFE) Team had to compete at the National Exposition in Kansas City against 200 other teams, I recommended that they distinguish themselves from the other 200 teams by doing something totally different.
I told the presenters to stay out of the room and don't show themselves at all. There were other team members who had to go into the room and they had seven minutes to set up the projection equipment, the sound equipment, get the speakers in place, and get the printed reports distributed to the 30 judges. At the end of the seven minutes, the lead judge said, "Regent University, you may begin." The judges all looked at each other with blanks stares. There was no team! Where were they? They were used to seeing the team milling around as part of the equipment setup. They were used to seeing the presenters standing on either side of the screen with their hands in their pockets, or talking to each others, joking around, or coughing, clearing their throats, or straightening their ties, or adjusting their lapel microphones, or doing something casual to distract the judges attention from reviewing the team's report. But the Regent team members had set up the equipment in only 90 seconds, then quietly disappeared into the back, letting the judges concentrate totally on their report. No distractions, no preconceived notions, absolutely positively nothing.
All 30 judges were suddenly glued attentively on the front of the room. Was there a mistake? Was there a miscue? The equipment was here. The technician was sitting calmly next to the projection equipment. But where was the team?!? The judges had no idea what the presenters looked like, where they were, how many students would be presenting, or why they weren't there. You could slice the focused anticipation with a knife!
The team member at the back of the room opened the door and the Regent SIFE team came walking in like royalty. We had practiced the entrance like you would practice the entrance of a wedding - "step one, step two, step three, step four. Now the next presenter, step one, step…" Each presenter was perfectly timed. As they got up to the front, two to each side of the screen, they all turned in unison to face the screen, and boom, the screen burst into the first scene, which was a roller coaster at the top of the first drop with a narrator telling the judges to hold onto their seats just as the coaster went into the first drop, and their presentation was under way. Thirteen seconds into it, the first presenter turned away from the screen toward the judges with a huge smile on her face and said, "Hello, my name is Kathleen Patterson. I'm a doctoral student in the Center for Leadership Studies at Regent University." Then the second student turned away from the screen and faced the judges with a smile from ear to ear, and repeated
the sequence. And the judges got chills! Maybe you even got chills just reading about this. I guarantee you, if you were there and you saw it, you got chills! Your first thought was, "Wow, this team has their act together. They are sharp. They are professional. I'm going to pay attention and see what they have to say!"
They made the kind of lasting first impression they had strategically set out to make. They out-impressed 162 other teams. They took full advantage of those first seven seconds and what happened? They walked away with the Radio Shack National Rookie of the Year Award. The judges were used to seeing everybody standing around bored while they were waiting to start. Instead, Regent built an apprehension amongst the judges, because the judges were thinking, "Where is the team?" By the time the presentation was to start, the judges' full one hundred percent attention was focused on the team when they started. The strategy captured their full attention. The presenters looked sharp, they looked professional, and that was the tone for the rest of the presentation. That's the kind of strategic planning you need to invest into your presentation.
What you do will depend on who your audience is. You need to think very clearly about how you want to start your presentation to capture your audience's attention. Remember, you have to overcome all the noise, noise, noise. You have to break through that noise. Your audience is bored, tired, and hungry. They are thinking about their businesses; they are thinking about their profits and losses, their appointments, their conflicts. You are just another one of all these things on their minds that they have to get through, so a lot of them think, "Get him over with, and we will read through the paperwork afterwards." But if you can break through that noise, and grab them in your presentation, then suddenly you're your presentation registers in their minds and the rating goes up. They will look at your paperwork first.
Different Types of Introductions
The introduction plays some additional important functions. It provides a psychological orientation. It provides the context of where we are, what are we doing, and where we are going with the event. It also provides the logic orientation, and then it provides an overview - tell them what you are going to tell them.
There are some different types of introductions. You want to grab the attention of the audience right upfront. You could live or die by the first seven seconds. There are many people who start their speech by saying, "I am very privileged to be here today to speak to you." This is not a good way to start a speech. It's a cliché. Never use a cliché. Be creative in starting your speech and you will catch the audience's attention easily.
If you have been introduced by someone else, then you would not have to introduce yourself or give any other information. But how much information should you give if you are not introduced? Your time is going by very quickly, and your purpose there is not to show who you are; your purpose is to show your idea, product, or service. Keep it simple. "My name is Craig von Buseck, and today I want to talk about ..."
The Anecdotal Story: Grab their attention by telling them a story about a real person. When you tell a story you put human face on an issue. You humanize it. You take it from an abstract thing to something concrete. Stories always grab the hearts of people.
The Rhetorical Question: "Why don't people who believe in reincarnation just leave everything to themselves in their wills?" This is a question posed to the audience that is designed to make them think. It can be a quotation that is related to your topic.
Humor: Humor can be used, but I am cautioning you that if you are not good at humor, then don't use it. Otherwise, you greatly increase your risk of leaving an unfavorable impression.
The Strong Statement of Purpose: "Ladies and Gentleman, we are here to make money!"
The Importance of the Topic: A statement regarding the importance of the topic might be something that is very current in the news. Maybe you are working on a presentation for the Defense Department. Your opening might be, "Young men and women could die without this solution. We have the solution here that will save these lives." Right from the very start, you have the attention of your audience.
Many of you will not experience success in closing a sale, getting a contract, getting the bid, landing the client, getting the loan, getting the job, marketing the product, or perhaps even the simplest of tasks because you did not effectively communicate your idea to another person. Remember, the CEOs of the Fortune 500 Companies all agree - the #1 characteristic they want in a potential employee is someone who can communicate - both in writing and orally. If it is that important in our nation's top 500 companies, then just imagine how important it is in every business that has to compete for a piece of the marketshare below them.
Your idea, product, or service might just be that next something that will take their business to the next level, where it goes from just being a novelty to being something that will change the world! If you have that kind of idea, then you have to let your audience know it first thing, up front, and let them know the importance of what it is you have to say. You may never ever get a second chance.
Identification with the Audience: Identification comes from knowing who your audience or the company is. You need to know what their values are. "I know that we agree on the value of this service. That's why I am here today. I could have gone to a lot of different venture capitalists. But I am here because we share the same values." Identify with the audience.
Reference to the Situation: Maybe your idea will fill a specific niche in the marketplace. If so, then you want to say that upfront, and then surprise the audience with the claim or statistic. For example, you might use the amount of oil that is imported in Untied States everyday. "If we were to quantify the amount of oil that we import in this country everyday, we could fill every football stadium in
America five times over to the brim." This is an example of how you could use a surprise claim or statistic that would catch your audience off guard while painting a visual image in their minds. Figure out a way to tell them something that they don't know, but they should know. The reaction you want in their mind is, "I didn't know that," then you have captured their attention.
In summary, the introduction should (1) grab your audience's attention upfront, (2) state the purpose of your presentation, and (3) give them a preview of what is coming next.
Body of the Presentation
Immediately following the introduction, you shift gears into the body of the presentation. In the body of the presentation, you quickly go through your main points or key elements. Your strategic planning will determine how much time you are going to allot for each point or element. In the example we have been using, we have three main points and one minute allocated for each. Keep in the back of your mind that you are going to have to plan to keep your presentation within the time constraints, you have to be smooth, and you've got to be hot (that is, entertaining). You've got to catch their attention and then keep their attention.
So, how can you do that? You do that with clarity of speech. You use concrete words and continue to keep it simple. Don't try to impress them with a graduate school vocabulary. Don't try to impress, just express. Just talk in simple English.
Verbal Visuals. Select what we refer to as verbal visuals. A verbal visual is when you use words that are so colorful and so imaginative that the listener can see the idea in his or her head just from the words you are using. When I was a student in journalism school, one of my professors emphasized that as a writer (and the same is true as a speaker and as a communicator), your role is to take the reader to the location you are writing about. When listening to a public speaker, I don't want to just hear about it -- I want to go there. I want to be taken to that place.
How much information should you include or not include. How much information would an audience would want know regarding the subject about which you are presenting? For example, you are presenting to a group of Christian publishers. You believe that they already know details about the "Left Behind" series. Consequently, you believe it would almost be foolish to give them sales figures about that series. Never assume your audience knows anything, even if you are in the publishing company working with those publishing people. You absolutely positively cannot assume that they know. Instead, you have to make sure that you are telling your audience (regardless of who they may be) what they need to know.
On occasion, I have spoken with bankers who were holding business plans in their hands. Bankers do one thing with business plans -- they turn to the financial section and never read the narrative. If you passed your materials out days in advance presuming everybody has already read the material and you don't highlight your key points, then they may never know what they were. You need to
take the position with the people in your audience that if you don't tell them, then they will never know.
You might be an executive in the company and have no idea what the movie Left Behind is done, because you were focused on another project. Most of us are on so many e-mail lists that we can't even scan them, let alone look at the details because we just don't have the time. Everyone is that way, so never, ever assume.
Avoid Maxims and Jargon: Don't wax eloquent. This is not a time to try to impress them with your vocabulary because you are not the issue or focal point of the presentation. You are the carrier of the message, not the issue. You are communicating the message, not talking about you. You are talking about your idea. Consequently, don't' try to impress them with you when you need to impress them with your idea.
Avoid Jargon: "It's my Q-thirty-six Space Modulator…" "What is he talking about?" If you have highly technical plan, idea, goal, business project, the presentation is usually not the time to go into the minute details of it. Use words that people understand. Otherwise they might not know what you are talking about and you stand a chance of turning them off or causing them to mentally shut down because they cannot understand what you are saying. The objective is to build a bridge of communication to establish credibility, reliability, and confidence -- not a wall. Using jargon that is not understood by your audience will construct a wall through which nothing will pass between you and your audience. Find ways to relate and to be on the same level.
Be Concise and Precise: Construct sentences in the active voice and present tense. Talk about being, and going, and doing. Do not talk about "We did, we went, we were…" Avoid irony, avoid sarcasm, and avoid cynicism at all cost. Negative language can too easily be misinterpreted or misunderstood, and you can do irreparable harm by trying to show how savvy you think you are.
Be Upbeat and Optimistic: The United States government has a nuclear powered aircraft carrier under construction that will sail around the world representing and defending our country -- it is called the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. Why don't we have a U.S.S. Jimmy Carter under construction? From a communication perspective (not a political one), it's because Ronald Reagan was an optimist, where Jimmy Carter tended to be more pessimistic, or negative. Carter talked about giving things up and about not being able to do things because of the limitations and shortages in America at the time. Reagan, on the other hand, came into office and said, "I believe in the American people. I believe that we can do it. America is a great city; a shining city on the side of the hill." He was positive, he was optimistic. Optimism and positive communication is very attractive. Negativity and cynicism is not attractive. Avoid it at all costs.
Cynicism is redundant: We already know what the problems are. Your audience is intelligent, they watch the news, they all know what's going on, and they don't want to hear the problems. The person that people will want to listen to is the person who is going to give them a solution or give them an answer. That's
the person they want to be around. That's the person that makes the energy in a room rise when they walk in. When there are cynics in the room the others leave, and the energy level goes down. We avoid cynics and we don't want to be around them, because we already know what the problems are. Cynics, however, think, "I am showing you how smart I am by telling you what the problems are." In reality they are revealing their ignorance of human nature, and their arrogance in assuming that you don't know what the problems in life are. No, the smart person is the one who gives the solution and that's what you want to do in your presentation.
You want to say "Here how we can solve the problem. Together -- that's the key word. Together we can do this." Act as though it's already done. Robert Kennedy inspired people during the 1968 presidential race by declaring, "Some people see things the way they are and ask, 'why?' I dream things the way they could be and ask, 'why not?'"
The E-myth is one of the things that entrepreneurs talk about when they start a business -- it is seeing the end from the beginning. What is your goal? What is your end purpose? What do you want to be ten years down the road? Once you see where you want to be, then act like it now. Be confident. Act like you are already there, even if you are not.
Display that attitude in your presentation. You walk in with confidence. You know already what the end is. You take the same position as Thomas Edison did when he was looking for the filament for his electric light bulb. If your presentation doesn't land that venture capitalist, then it's just another person that was not the solution. Thomas Edison never said, "I failed," or "I'm going to give up now." He simply stated, "I just discovered another thing that isn't the answer, and I am going to keep looking until I discover what the answer is."
Remember the old Dry Idea commercials? "Never let them see you sweat." Walk in with confidence. You already know that your idea is going to work, because you just spent the entire semester doing the market analysis. If you walk in with that kind of confidence, they will notice it right away. Never let them see you sweat -- never let your audience believe that you don't have complete confidence in your product, your company, and your own ability.
In the body of the presentation, you should use a performance outline. Maybe you use three rhyming words for your three main points. For example, "trying, dying, buying, and flying". You would say, "We know that your company has been trying for years to do this type of thing. And whatever it might be, you have not being able to break through. Now, you've had success, but you haven't had the quantum success that you are looking for. And in a way if you are not moving ahead than you are going backwards, so you are dying. You may not feel it right now, but slowly and surely your company is going to be dying. But you know what, if you join together with me, together we could be buying the right type of equipment. And this equipment will make all the difference, and then you will be flying. You will move on to that point where you will have the success that you have always wanted to have." If you get them to remember "trying, dying, buying,
flying," while they forget all the other presentations, then you have accomplished the objective.
Maybe you use alliteration. In this case, you say, "The approach in Alaska is arcane, but we can alternatively give you the architecture that will advance your area of attributes." These are different types of memory devices that you can use for your main points that will help to get that across.
You might choose to use the letter C, where every word that you use in the body of your text is a C. And each one is a main point that grabs their attention, it's in logical order. For example, you might use the seven Cs. You can say, "This company could sell the Seven Cs. Magellan wasn't afraid of what was out there. He boldly sailed the oceans to discover new territories. This company can be like Magellan. We are going to Sail the Seven Cs. What are those Seven Cs? One, competition. Two, capital. Three, credit. Four, creativity. Five, consumers. Six, compassion. Seven, customer service. The customer is always right and always first. If you will join with me, we can Sail the Seven Cs together and we can see success and discover a new country that we only dreamed of before. Please take time to look over our proposal which provides more details of this sailing adventure. Thank you for listening today." Boom, you've done it!
Then, in your proposal, you have art work of a beautiful tall ship. Across your logo, there is a ship there as well. Your company's name is, "Sand piper Express." You tie it all together. You have to get creative in such a way that they will remember what you did and they will go back and start reading through your proposal, and there are the Seven Cs all over the place with the beautiful ship on the cover, and it's colorful, and it's interesting and they think, "Wow, this is cool." That then gives you the access you need for them to look at your business plan. Your presentation opens the door and lays the foundation for all the subsequent things to be able to happen.
The Conclusion; and "The Takeaway"
The function of conclusions is to summarize the presentation or speech. Tell them what you told them. And make it specific, but don't repeat. Don't repeat it in the same words. Say it differently, but say the same thing. If you repeat it word for word, they will say, "You've just said that." But if you say the same thing in different words, they say, "That's an important point," because it's a third impression. You say it one way in introduction, say it in a different way in the body, say it in a different way in the conclusion, but you are still saying the same thing.
Reemphasize the main idea. Nail all the key points. I call this "the moral of the story." A lot of people will give speeches and it's great and you follow it along, but at the end they never give you the punch line. What's the moral of the story? "And so Goldy Locks said good-bye to the three bears. And the moral of the story is, "Don't steal and sleep on other people's beds" There is always a moral to the story. In communication, this is called "the takeaway."
What is the takeaway? The takeaway is that one thing that you want your audience to remember from your presentation. That is where you begin. You begin with the takeaway. Along with knowing who your audience is, you must also identify what the "takeaway" of your presentation will be from the very beginning, as these two things will be the beginning of your presentation. Remember, the goal is to take the idea from inside my head and to put it into your head in such a way that you get the takeaway. It's reemphasizing the main idea.
If you are trying to motivate a response, then there's got to be an ask. Going back to my years in direct marketing, we always talked about the importance of the ask. You can have the most flowery presentations, beautiful graphics, verbal eloquence, visual dynamics, metaphors, wonderful memory devices, logical construction, great presentation, good verbal presentation skills great gestures, great facial movements, and all those different things, but if you walk away without having asked them anything, then "You have not, because you asked not." There has to be an ask. The "ask" also needs to be thought through. Know what you are asking for, then ask specifically, and ask intelligently. "This is what we are looking for from you. We believe we can partner together to make this happen. What we need is for you to join with us in this way…" You have to ask.
Providing Closure: One of the things that I am always amazed by in my public speaking class is that students will give their speech, then give their takeaway at the end, or the moral of the story, and then they just stand there and look while there is this embarrassing period of silence. Meanwhile, everybody is thinking, "Are we supposed to clap now?" Finally, after what seems like an eternity, one person starts clapping, then everybody starts clapping. The presenter nods, then sits down.
The way to avoid that embarrassing moment at the end is to simply pause and say, "Thank you," with a little nod of the head. That way, everybody knows it's done. It provides closure.
Different Types of Conclusions
What about ending and closing your presentation with thanking God or thanking your classmates or thanking the professors for their feedback? Don't do it. Your presentation in this course is a simulation of the real world. Design it all as if you are in that business boardroom and your company's success is dependent upon the success of your presentation. Consider these different types of conclusions:
Refer to the Introduction: Referring to the introduction is called framing the speech. Perhaps you opened your presentation with a personal story about a little kid who had leukemia as a result of the pollution in a particular geographic area. "It was shown conclusively that this young child contracted the leukemia because of the pollution from the XYZ corporation. That needs to stop and I am here with a solution to this problem." At the end say something to refer back to the original story with which you started. "We don't want people like Jimmy Smith and his family to suffer the way that they have. Fortunately, Jimmy has gotten treatment and now his cancer is in remission. But how many other Jimmies are
out there? We need to stop this, and we can do it if we partner together." You have framed the speech. You started it in the beginning, captured their attention, and framed it at the end. You could also use a statistic at the beginning, and then remind them of that statistic at the end.
Personal Reference: "I am passionate about this because it impacted my family. You see, my father was killed in a car accident because this particular safety device was not there. I believe that we can save ten thousand lives every year in America, if we implement this. But I need your help to develop this product to the next level."
The Challenge: There might be a challenge to the audience. "You have been such a great company, and you have done so many wonderful things. This project could take you to another level. Therefore, we want to challenge you to join with us in funding this project and together we will go to the next higher level with this endeavor."
A Quotation: Maybe you can quote the CEO of the company. You have done your research, you went to the Internet, you've found text from the CEO, something that they believe in that ties perfectly with your presentation and your product. "As your founder said back in 1999… Therefore, we already know that you believe in this product. That's why we came to you, because we know there is mutual interest."
If you have done your homework, most of the time you know how your audience will feel about your idea, product, service, or proposal. You can do the research and find out what the atmosphere is like. If the people hate the founder of the company, why would they be working there? If the founder said something that is of value to the company, then your audience will most likely have the same values.
Overcoming Presentation Obstacles
There are a number of different obstacles that you may encounter in your presentation. For example, you might be up against different models of business philosophy. Maybe your audience doesn't see things the way you do. Maybe they don't believe in your management style, or they believe in a different kind of management style. It might be philosophical noise. You come from Regent and they come from Harvard. It might be political, or age differences, or gender differences, or cultural differences. You may make a reference to certain things that bug them or turn them off.
You also need to recognize that people listen in a certain way. For example, we think faster than we hear. Our brains are amazing processors. As you are reading these words, you are thinking about other things in between the words, whether you consciously recognize it or not. When you listen to someone speaking, you are thinking about other thing in between their words. People's minds are very quick, and so you need to capture and keep their attention. People have short attention spans, especially business men and women.
Consequently, you need to be concise, to the point, and you need to be clear in your communication.
People jump to conclusions. How many times have you watched a movie only to know what the ending was going to be before it got there. That is because of the way we think. People jump to conclusions. Therefore, you don't want to be obvious in your presentation. Instead, you want to be unique and creative.
And, of course, audiences are made up of people and people are easily distracted. Therefore, you don't want any part of you, your clothing, your presentation, your sound system, your PowerPoint slides to be distracting.
What does your audience remember? Your audience remembers less and less as time goes by. This is not because you aren't brilliant, or not because it's not a wonderful idea, but because there is so much information that we take in on an ongoing basis; the Internet, books, TV, radio, kids, wife, husband, friends, parents, children, and on, and on, and on. Our mind is constantly dealing with information, and over time we start to lose pieces of information.
We need to recognize these distractions and work to overcome them.
Additional Tools for your Presentation Toolbox
The following are a number of different tools and techniques you can consider for your presentations. Not all of them will work for your presentation, but like any construction project, you need a certain set of tools. These techniques provide you with the unique set you may need depending upon the circumstances for which you are strategically planning.
How do you capture their attention? Establish eye contact. Don't look over their heads, and don't look down at your nose. Look at them as people -- eye to eye. People like that. People especially like it when you look eye to eye. Your eyes are the window to the soul and if you can't look me in the eye, then what are you trying to hide?
Smile naturally and be yourself. "I am here to help you." If I am walking with an attitude of confidence, then I have nothing to lose. "I am here to do you a favor. That's me. I am your new best friend." That's how you should walk in. Then you deliver your introduction that you have already worked so hard and feverishly on.
During your speech, use effective eye contact. Now what do I mean by that? Let's say there is one person in the room that you know. Do you spend all of your time looking at that one person? No. If you do, then everybody will react in a manner like, "I am in here, too. Look at me." We all like ourselves a lot. We all love ourselves. The Bible says, "Love your brother as you love yourself." We really are good on "love yourself" part. And so, we need to recognize that people love themselves. And they want you to love them, too. And eye contact shares the love. Eye contact means you are sharing your love.
Establish eye contact with your entire audience. Don't just key in on one person. Make sure that everybody in the audience has eye contact with you, and that you are looking around the room. If there are fifteen people in your audience, then
make sure that all fifteen at one point or another have had contact with your eyes.
Use effective language. Make sure you are not talking gibberish, and you are not using jargon. Don't use regional language or colloquialisms. You would not say, "Yawl, we're gonna get us some opportunities here today." That would be a regionalism. You don't want to use language that is not understood. You want to use common English.
Use effective gestures. Some people have their hands and arms moving all the time. That's too much. But at the same time you don't want to be stiff and wooden. Use natural, appropriate gestures at the right time.
Be enthusiastic and conversational. While you probably will want to have some notes with you, they should be minimal because you should be so rehearsed that you are able to do it with only a slight glance to a note as a reminder.
One important thing to keep in mind is your speech rate and pauses. Speech rate is how fast or how slow you speak. There are some places where people just talk a little too slow. You don't want to be too slow. Some places people talk so fast you can't hear what they are saying. You want to have a natural, logical rate.
There might be a place in your speech where you want to pause for effect. Paul Harvey is the prince of pauses. William Shatner is also very good at pauses. Paul Harvey is the master of the pause because he knows just the right place to put it in to keep you in suspense … and then to it pay off. One has to be careful because it can be overdone, but it also can be very effective.
The volume of your voice is also important. You don't want to be too loud or too soft. You want a natural volume for your presentation. Not too loud; not too soft.
Inflection, pitch, and tone. Our voice is like a musical instrument. You can notate speech in a same way that you can notate music. Different intonation, different facial expressions, different gestures, and different volume makes what you say mean different things. Try to have a natural tone to your voice. You are all not going to become the Dan Rather of the business world. You don't have to worry about that. You don't have time to worry about it. Just keep in mind that you want to have a good quality of voice.
It's important to hear yourself. I recommend that you record your presentation on either audiotape or videotape. I recommend that you videotape your presentation before you give it in this class. When you record it and watch it, you have a chance to see what looks good and what looks bad. I encourage you to rehearse out loud and to record or videotape your performance because your mind catches different things when you are the audience than you catch as the presenter. You might notice that you do something distracting. If you record or videotape yourself, you will see those things and you will be able to eliminate them.
We are all communication professionals in a way. Ever since you were a little child, you have listened to sermons in church and have watched movies on television. When you listened to an eloquent speech you said, "Wow!!! That was a really good speech!" Even though you couldn't say why it was a good speech, you knew it was a good speech. Maybe you knew that a movie was a great movie! You might not be able to analyze it, but you knew it was good. You have an inner understanding of what is good and what isn't good, because you have been a consumer of communication your whole life.
When you are giving a speech you are not the consumer, you are the presenter. But when you watch yourself giving your speech, suddenly you are the consumer and you are the expert. Suddenly, you will compare yourself on the videotape to Dan Rather or George Bush and say, "Oh! That person on the videotape is doing that thing and that needs to be changed," when you may have never seen yourself do that before unless you watch it or listen to it.
Pronunciation, enunciation, articulation - make sure that you are pronouncing your words correctly and appropriately. Every semester I have students who will use certain words inappropriately. For example, there is no such word as irregardless. It's regardless. Make sure that you are using your language appropriately. Make sure that you are pronouncing the words correctly. Once again, I encourage you to rehearse out loud and to record or videotape your performance because your mind catches different things when you are in the audience than the things you hear as the presenter.
Another way to find out if you are making mistakes is to rehearse in front of an audience. You will get feedback from others that you might not even think about yourself. Different backgrounds, different life experiences, different cultures, different ages, different religious backgrounds, different philosophical backgrounds let people see things from perspectives that are different from yours. Don't be afraid to receive feedback from an audience before an important presentation -- it could make all the difference.
Adjust your appearance to fit your speaking situation. Your audience might ask you to come dressed casual. Don't come dressed business, if they ask you to come dressed casual because they will be wondering, "Can't you take directions? We thought you would come dressed casual." Just make sure that it's the right match for what is required of you. Typically that's a business suit, unless they tell you something different.
Keep your posture natural. The proper stance is that your feet should be shoulder-length apart. You shouldn't be leaning, as leaning is not good in any presentation. Don't swing your feet, or cross your legs. Stand up straight and professional.
Match your facial expressions with your message. If it's a positive message - smile. If you are excited, be excited. If it is somber, be somber.
If you have charts or some sort of visual aids, then use movement to guide your audience's attention. But never turn your back to the audience because it
creates a wall. There is a psychological wall when you turn your back to someone, so don't do it. In a presentation if you have to move, then move at an angle, always looking at your audience. But be careful that you don't bump into the podium and knock something over.
Be careful that you do not turn your back to the audience to read the screen. If you turn to the screen, then you have turned your back to the audience. What you are saying is, "This screen is more important than you are." In reality, what is on the screen is your communication to the audience, but the audience is still your better friend.
Pointing with your finger is okay in the United states, but in some countries it is extremely rude. This is an example of how gestures mean different things in different cultures. Usually no one in the United States has a problem with a presenter pointing. But if you are presenting in another country, then you might want to be careful. If you are presenting in some eastern European countries, then standing with your hand in your pocket is an insult to your audience.
If you even think that there is one person from another country on the board of directors, then it might not be worth taking the risk. If you don't know, there is nothing you can do about it. This is one more reason why it is so important for you to know your audience. You can always guide the attention of your audience with your movements.
There are certainly appropriate gestures for business presentation. There is nothing wrong with using your hands. There are different gestures that you can use to back up what you are saying.
Part of the rehearsal and part of reviewing your own videotape of your presentation is to look for places where you can insert gestures. Maybe there are gestures you are using that aren't appropriate. You certainly don't want to use inappropriate gestures, such as pointing with the wrong finger.
Additional Tips for Successful Presentations
���� Plan your timing
���� Make your points clear.
���� Each point you make should be clearly stated, illustrated and supported.
���� Speak clearly.
���� Use visuals that can be seen by all.
���� Act as though your audience is not at all familiar with your topic; don't assume they know anything.
���� Avoid jargon.
���� Devote a similar amount of time to each main point, otherwise the audience may consider it less important.
���� Arrange your points in logical order.
���� Use anecdotes to bring the statistics, facts, and figures that you need to deliver to drive them home.
���� End on time.
Handouts
If you give handouts to people in advance, they will be looking at the handouts and not listening to you. I recommend that you use handouts as supplemental material, but wait until after your presentation to distribute them. In many business settings, you may be required to give them your information in advance, and that might be some noise that you will be fighting against. Don't give them more noise by handing out material before your presentation. Try to lessen the noise as much as possible. It's okay to distribute handouts to back-up information in your presentation, but wait until the end to do it.
Summary
Keep in mind, you are the message. Work to be yourself at your best. Remember that God has a specific call that He has placed on your life. No one else can fulfill the destiny that He has for you. Be bold and courageous in going after that destiny. Be free in your imagination. You're a chosen child of the Father God, and you were born for a purpose in this generation. With this in mind you can walk with confidence knowing that He will guide your steps.
Daniel 11:32 declares, "…the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits." You know your God, and that He has called you to this ministry for such a time as this. Therefore you can walk with confidence and know that you will be strong, and you will do exploits in His name and for His kingdom.
Final Thoughts
As you proceed to develop your presentation content, be realistic in terms of picking your audience and setting goals for your presentation. For example, it would be appropriate to identify your audience as the "new product" or new "business opportunity" committee in a company. Your goals in this scenario might be to request approval: a) to continue working on your idea, b) for additional resources such as time and money to support R&D and planning efforts, or c) for permission to recruit a development team.
Another audience might be a new venture forum where you would be given the opportunity to pitch your business idea -- ten-minute presentations are very realistic for this setting. You might also identify your audience as a venture capitalist (VC) or other investor. But, realistically, you would run the risk of having them ask to see your business plan (which of course is not ready). In these scenarios, your goals might include: a) creating sufficient initial interest to warrant a follow-on meeting with interested investors or partners, or b) generating discussions among industry or market experts to help clarify or solidify your business development plans.
Before you begin development of your presentation, be aware of the guidelines the instructors use for evaluating this assignment. For example, this presentation should last no more than ten minutes. In addition, there is an evaluation sheet available which identifies the key criteria on which the presentation will be evaluated. Spend time looking over these criteria to make sure that you have addressed each that is applicable to your presentation as you rehearse.
Finally, be aware of the date and time of the actual presentation if your are an on-campus student, or the due date when the videotape of the presentation is due in the instructor's mail-box in the Graduate School of Business. These due dates are firm and will not be changed.
And in closure, just a few hints:
1. Give yourself plenty of time to build and practice your presentation.
2. Record and review your presentation for feedback and to highlight both presentation strengths and weaknesses.
3. Practice in front of people and get their feedback.
4. Encourage others to ask questions after the presentation is over during your practice sessions. These questions may point out weaknesses in your subject matter.