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Reprinted From “The Journal of Sales and Marketing Management” ( www.salesandmarketing.com ) :

Tips to Enhance Personal Presentation Skills In the Digital Age

Article | Mon, 01/07/2013 - 01:00

Marc H. Kalan

Part I of III

In the current age of emails, texts, tweets and social media, the importance of personal communication, whether one-to-one or in front of a group, has never been more important, nor more difficult to accomplish. While the movement to digital communications channels provides speed and potentially broad reach, they generally fail to incorporate that which makes each of us unique, our personalities and human traits. From my experiences in the business and academic worlds, whether delivering a business presentation, making a sales pitch, or over the past decade teaching business classes, the ability to engage colleagues, clients or students, has become more challenging and critical.

For the business executive, manager, sales representative, in fact from virtually every functional area, this vital skill set is often overlooked in favor of analytic analysis, or the creation and utilization of the next ”hot app” for our ever-increasing reliance on the individual’s smartphone or tablet. There is no argument that texting, tweeting (with its 140-character limit), posting on social media such as Facebook and Linked-In, and other digital options, are rapidly becoming our modern “lingua franca.” PowerPoint, with its disengaging format of slides rather than speech, has become the preferred “modus operandi” of the business world, supplanting the individual as the focal point of corporate communication.

Yet none of these communications mediums delivers like a personal address. From hybriding the words of communication, to eliminating human characteristics such as body language and voice usage, modern digitized communications falls short. No matter how technology changes there will always be situations where a personal presentation is the most effective way to reach someone and convince them of something. The simple fact is there is nothing more powerful than one’s ability to forcefully deliver a speech, presentation, lecture, address or other personal communication. An individual’s presence is that unique element that differentiates these from a written, or in today’s environment tweeted, communication.

A major part of any lecture is without question the material you are sharing. Yet we all know that a good presentation goes well beyond the material. So what makes one presenter more interesting, engaging and successful than another? We’ve all experienced both excellent speakers who make time fly by, as well as dreadful speakers, who make every minute seem to last forever. So what makes the difference? Here are some tips I’ve picked up during my career that might help your presentations be more engaging, impactful and memorable.

Kalan’s Presentation Tips: Part I

Organization Balanced with Flexibility – Be organized, be prepared, know what you want to cover and in what order. Yet also be flexible. Be comfortable allowing your presentation to flow with the interests of your audience, which may not be immediately evident. And while you exercise the option to follow an unplanned path, always remember what you intended to accomplish and bring your audience back to that destination. You are in control of the flow and pace. Don’t feel so constrained to “stick to your script” when opportunities to expand beyond present themselves. Take advantage and capture your listeners by speaking “to them” and not “at them”.

Introduce Yourself - Always introduce yourself as well as all of those who will be presenting you so your attendees are aware of your full team. Be sure to consider your relationship with the audience (do you have an existing relationship or are you a new face to them). Your introduction has several objectives:

· The first objective is to begin the relationship with your listeners, if you are already familiar to them, this is a chance to remind and renew that familiarity.

· A second objective is to begin to build rapport and trust – don’t assume these already exist. Trust especially needs to be earned. Audiences are skeptical; it’s a normal human characteristic. The ability to read your audience and gauge levels of trust as well as skepticism provides valuable insights towards building strong bonds. Generally audiences are warm and inviting. They are there because they anticipate a valuable experience. Understanding this expectation is important.

· Third, we all like to know about others, especially those talking to us as experts, or peers, or subordinates. Let the audience know who you are and why you are there. If you are being introduced by a third party, provide them with a few key facts that are relevant to the audience as well as the subject material (after all they are here to learn from your expertise so remind them of just that).

· Fourth, audience member names: while it may not be practical in every situation if you are able to learn and utilize individual names this often enables those participants to feel more of a personal connection to you, stimulating rapport and reinforcing that trust. If practical consider having name signs for audience members – keeping in mind you need to be able to read those names easily and clearly from your presentation location. I now require this simple act in each of my courses and I find it a great method for rapidly building and enhancing my ability to interact with individual audience members, while drawing each member of the audience in.

· Fifth, if you are wearing a name tag, place it on your right side (not left which seems logical to a right handed person). Not only do people read from your right to left (their left to right), but if you are shaking hands this places your name tag out in front and avoids forcing those you are greeting from being forced to look “across your chest”.

Cell Phones and Other Electronic Devices – Audience members texting, emailing, tweeting, surfing the net, etc. are not engaged in your presentation. These behaviors are distracting both to you and those in the audience. Other than for taking notes, I always ask for electronic devices to be turned off while I’m speaking. In my classes, I have been known to ask those breaking this request to leave the room.

Bring a Passion – It starts right here, right at the beginning, the opportunity to win or lose your audience. Your personal commitment to your presentation is paramount, and nobody can or should care about your subject more than you do. Your audience will read this from word one, and once lost it is difficult, if not impossible, to regain. A comment I often hear these days is that I bring a passion to each of my classes, a passion that is seen and appreciated by my addressees. So bring your passion and grab your audience with it.

Individual skill areas to enhance your physical presence and managing the overall presentation experience will be covered in parts II and III, which will be posted here on Wednesday and Friday (Jan. 9 and 11).

Marc H. Kalan is a marketing/business development executive with more than 30 years of diverse consumer marketing experience at clients (from established Fortune 500 to start-ups), suppliers, and promotional marketing agencies. Kalan’s background includes a foundation in brand and sales management. Upon an extensive industry career he began teaching at the college and graduate level in 2003 and now serves full time on the faculty of the Rutgers Business School, Department of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences. Kalan can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected] .

Tips to Enhance Personal Presentation Skills in the Digital Age: Part II

Article | Wed, 01/09/2013 - 06:00

Marc H. Kalan

Editor’s Note: “Consistently better sales presentations could be the most important New Year’s resolution your team could make,” Rutgers Business School Professor Marc Kalan stated in an article that was posted here on Monday. He introduced the need for strong personal presentation skills, beginning with organization and a personal passion. In Part II, we move into individual skill areas to enhance your physical presence and abilities to maximize the focus and attention of your audience.

From my experiences in the business and academic worlds, whether delivering a business presentation, making a sales pitch, or over the past decade, teaching business classes, the ability to engage colleagues, clients or students has become more challenging and critical.

Here are more tips I’ve picked up during my career that might help your sales and marketing team’s presentations be more engaging, impactful and memorable.

· Open strong – Catch your listeners’ attention from the start and engage them in your subject. In today’s fast-paced, rapidly changing world, attention spans are decreasing, so you need to grab your audience right away. Audiences are there because they want to learn from you. An interesting fact and/or rhetorical question are two tools to engage and draw your audience into your talk. Just be sure these are relevant to your listeners, their backgrounds and interests. Concentrate on making them feel comfortable. A relaxed and comfortable audience is ready to welcome you and absorb your talk.

· Speak clearly– Don’t mumble, don’t cover your mouth or hold a paper or script in front of yourself blocking the audience’s view. This is a common error that creates a distinct barrier between you, the speaker and your listeners. Notes are fine, I use them all the time; just keep notes below face level. Listeners like to see who they are listening to.

· Avoid filling space with non-words– So many speakers feel the need to fill every moment with sound, fearing the lack of sound communicates something, although I have yet to figure out what that is. This is a major point of challenge for most speakers who fill space with what speakers call “non-words.” The most egregious non-word being the ever present “ummm,” followed by the use of conformational expressions such as “like” or “OK.” While occasionally useful terms, in the vast majority of cases (and always with “ummm”) these space fillers actually are a negative. There is truth to the expression “silence is golden.”

· Don’t speak too quickly– We speak faster than we can listen and consider what’s being said. Don’t rush yourself. Use pauses, they allow your listeners to catch up to you and digest what they have heard. In fact, those pauses are comforting to the audience and seem much longer to the speaker than to the listener.

· Make eye contact– Look at your audience often, and look at individuals and not just the “general audience.” I mean really look at individuals. Look them right in the eyes. Be sure to include individuals in all parts of the room, as well as way in the back. You will draw them, and those around them, into your presentation and they will reward you with their attention and interest. Eye contact also provides you with excellent listener “cues” that will let you know how the audience is reacting to your presentation. Wandering and “sleepy” eyes tell you a lot. You can use these cues to adjust your talk as warranted.

· Stick with your natural style– Your individual style and personality should come through. Personal body language is a powerful communication tool. If you are naturally lively, be lively. If you are naturally more reserved, that is fine, too. Just don’t recede away. Your “natural style” will create a forceful presence.

· Stories and anecdotes add depth and reality– Stories may be the most effective way to convey information, as well as to provide “color commentary” to an audience while building a relationship with them. It confirms and reinforces you as the “expert,” and demonstrates a practical knowledge that only comes from experience. Stories are easier for people to recollect than straightforward information. They are entertaining, often relatable on a personal level, and probably the most remembered and repeated part of any talk. It’s not a coincidence that many of history’s most notable “communicators”, individuals like Aesop, Plato, Jesus and Lincoln, utilized stories and parables to make and reinforce key points.

· End strong – A strong key point – perhaps the answer to the rhetorical question that started your talk or a challenge to the audience with another rhetorical question – are great ways to “leave them wanting more.”

Part III, which will be posted on Friday, will look at how to manage the overall presentation experience.

Marc H. Kalan is a marketing/business development executive with more than 30 years of diverse consumer marketing experience at clients (from established Fortune 500 to startups), suppliers and promotional marketing agencies. Kalan’s background includes a foundation in brand and sales management. He began teaching at the college and graduate level in 2003 and now serves full time on the faculty of the Rutgers Business School, Department of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences. Kalan can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected] .

Tips to Enhance Personal Presentation Skills in the Digital Age: Part III

Article | Sun, 01/13/2013 - 01:00

Marc H. Kalan

Editor’s Note: “Consistently better sales presentations could be the most important New Year’s resolution your team could make,” Rutgers Business School Professor Marc Kalan stated in an article that posted here on Monday. He introduced the need for strong personal presentation skills, beginning with organization and a personal passion. In Part II, we move into individual skill areas to enhance your physical presence and abilities to maximize the focus and attention of your audience.

In Part I the author presented the need for strong presentation skills in today’s digital age. Part II expanded upon the subject with specifics on voice, eye and body languages. Part III focuses on managing the overall presentation experience and provides suggestions to leave your audience wanting more. It’s Friday the 13th, and it’s going to be your lucky day!

You have been polite to your audience and now it's your time to shine. Here is my last set of tips for better presentations in 2013.

Don’t Let Others Get Into Your Head– Don’t be overly nervous or exhibit stage freight. Although many of us feel awkward getting up in front of an audience, it is up to you to “own the room” and be in charge. Your audience will react to your confidence.

Demand the attention your presentation deserves– Even those who seem to drift away bring a part of them that wants to be drawn into your talk. You just have to engage that part of them with a nugget of new information, an engaging story or something that has relevance for them. Once engaged, you can demand your audience’s attention by your presence. They are there to hear you and will appreciate your being in command of the room.

Mistakes and Missed Points– These can happen and often do. But in most situations no one but you will know, so don’t point them out or feel obligated to correct minor miscues. More often than not it’s better to just keep moving forward. And in those cases where the missed point is critical there is no need to apologize for having missed or skipped something. Just incorporate it where it falls as “another important aspect worth mentioning.”

Speaking Alone or In A Group– If you are working alone, make the audience a partner in your presentation by engaging specific individuals around the room with a short question or two. Consider how a few questions (even rhetorical questions) can capture the attention of listeners. If you are part of a group, be sure each member has a meaningful role (or why else are they there?).

Questions and Answers– Time permitting, open the floor to questions and really respond. When asked a question, don’t rush with a response. Instead make each question a chance to reinforce your relationship with your listeners, and start by repeating the question back to the audience. This will:

· Confirm you understand what the questioner is asking; clarity is important and not always self-evident.

· Enable the whole audience to hear the question, which is often not the case. Often those not hearing or knowing the question become left out and lose interest and focus. This is especially true when multiple “unheard” questions have been asked.

· Give you time to think. Thinking before talking is more than just a good idea; it’s a chance to consider your response and its applicability for your audience.

· Maximize your opportunity to respond to the whole audience and not just to the questioner. Avoid getting into a one to one discussion when speaking to a group. Its fine to begin your response focused on the questioner, but once begun expand your response to incorporate the entire audience by looking around and not just at a single individual, your questioner.

Thank Your Audience– This seems like such a logical and normal thing, yet speakers often forget this simple courtesy. Be sure to thank your audience for their attention, their interest, their consideration, or just for the time spent with you. Recognition of the importance of their time, the most limited asset for most people, is a great way to leave a positive impression and communicates respect. Every speaker gains stature by acknowledging that respect.

Effective presentation skills are ever more important in today’s limited-attention environment. Ironically, as the digital age opens even more channels of communication, opportunities to showcase your knowledge, points of view, new ideas, business updates and personality continue to become more constrained by competitive time pressures. For most professionals, the chances to speak in person and captivate a live audience are limited. This makes each and every one precious. It all comes down to developing a style that engages your listeners, building rapport and trust so that you stand out as a speaker, enjoyed and remembered by your audience.

While there is no single style or form for effective presentations, we do know that even when content is the same some presenters are just more interesting, engaging and successful than others. This has never been more important than in today’s era of quickly seen and forgotten social media. Effective presentation skills are a valuable part of your professional arsenal. Build them and use them.

Perhaps its best summed up with this simple statement: Have fun: Your audience will feel it and they will have fun too.

Marc H. Kalan is a marketing/business development executive with more than 30 years of diverse consumer marketing experience at clients (from established Fortune 500 to startups), suppliers and promotional marketing agencies. Kalan’s background includes a foundation in brand and sales management. He began teaching at the college and graduate level in 2003 and now serves full time on the faculty of the Rutgers Business School, Department of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences. Kalan can be reached at mkalan51@hotmail.com or [email protected] .