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Membership has its Rewards - A Tool for Sales Teams and Individuals

8/6/2015

At The Presentation Pros we are all about helping you present yourself and your ideas with passion and persuasion. In this busy world it’s often hard to find the time to attend a workshop. And even if you do, perhaps you forgot to ask an important question or weren’t sure of what questions to ask because the situation you now need answers for had not yet come up.

Do you have a sales team that needs polishing or employees with potential that just need to be taught the right skills?

Do you have an important presentation to deliver and need a few tips to put it together persuasively?

Do you need some help on what to wear, or how to put together your PowerPoint presentation?

Are you being interviewed by the media and need to know how to stand or sit, where you should look, who to face, etc.

Because we know that questions pop up all the time, we have created a membership area of our site that includes:

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The Critical P's—Pace and Pause

7/28/2015

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In order to be a presenter you have to have an audience and in order to have an effective presentation you have to have an audience that listens to the message you are delivering. It is the job of the speaker, not the listener, to make a presentation easy and comfortable to listen to. There are two critical components to speech that can make or break you in the listening department—they are pace and the proper use of pauses.

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Here’s Looking at You Kid

7/22/2015

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Eye contact is one of the fastest ways to build rapport with an audience and yet I am always amazed when I hear a workshop participant tell me that they have been told to look at the person’s forehead or above their head or to imagine they are naked or a baby. Not only do these techniques not work, they will actually have you as the presenter becoming more nervous. Making eye contact with someone is about making a connection. It is about seeing the person and knowing the person has seen you. You can’t build rapport with someone who is looking at your forehead or above your head and you can’t stay focused on them if you are imagining them as naked or a baby. You need to be looking right into their eyes to build rapport.

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Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) - An Easy, Effective Way to Eliminate Nerves for Good

7/14/2015

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Back in the late 90's Jack Canfield introduced me to a very interesting and effective technique to eliminate fear and trauma called the Callahan method. This was later called Emotional Freedom Technique or (EFT). I used it to eliminate a lot of my own fears. It’s easy to learn, has profound effects and the individual can do it for themselves with or without the help of a facilitator.

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Gestures are Your Most Valuable Visual Aid

7/8/2015

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It is not your PowerPoint slide filled with data, or your precision with the white board or flip chart that are your best visual aids. Your best visual aid is YOU! Studies have proven that gestures and facial expressions significantly help the audience understand the message being delivered. In a study conducted by The University of Chicago, they found that by not using gestures you run the risk of your audience missing large chunks of your presentation. The same study found that “…Gesture is a hand movement that is as much a part of language as speech.” So the question is not whether you should gesture or not but how do you gesture effectively?

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Are There Any Questions?

6/30/2015

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You can craft the most brilliant presentation, have visual aids that hit it out of the park and deliver the presentation flawlessly but if you fumble on your Q&A you can damage your credibility quickly and maybe even permanently. The challenge is that no matter how knowledgeable you are, once you lose credibility it is very hard to get it back. The Q&A segment of your presentation is a great way for your audience to see how knowledgeable you are, how well you think on your feet and for you to answer any of their concerns. It also provides you the opportunity to reinforce your message and persuade the audience to take the desired outcome. Here are some pointers in dealing with Q&A and crafting a persuasive ending.

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Practice, Practice, Practice

6/24/2015

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Mark Twain once said, "It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech." Everyone knows that in order to have a successful presentation you need to prepare properly. You need to put your presentation together and create your supporting visual aids. But this is just the beginning. Your preparation isn’t done until you have practiced your presentation thoroughly. I hear so many people say that they don’t practice their presentations because they believe they deliver a better presentation when they “fly by the seat of their pants”. These are usually the same people who get sick with stage fright. The more you practice the more you know your material and the more relaxed and confident you will become.

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Membership Has Its Rewards

5/1/2015

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I am very excited to announce that starting May 4, 2015 we are adding a membership component to The Presentation Pros website. We will still provide our monthly newsletters and blog posts to those who wish to visit the site or are signed up on our email lists, but our membership area will provide you with so much more.

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Humor Isn’t Always a Laughing Matter

4/3/2015

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Last week we spoke about happiness. I believe that in order to be happy you must be able to see the humor in life. This week I would like to touch on humor because all humor is not created equal.

One of the questions we get asked a lot at The Presentation Pros is: when is it appropriate to use humor in a presentation, or should it be used at all? Humor when use appropriately is a wonderful way to build rapport, ease tension, diffuse a hostile question and emphasize a key point. Because people love humor it can help your audience stay focused on your message. Studies show that when humor is used to convey a message the audience retains the information longer. Having said this, there is a big difference in adding humor and telling jokes. The wrong kind of humor can take your presentation south in a hurry and really decrease your credibility.

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10 Common Mistakes Presenters Make

3/4/2015

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We’ve all seen and heard incredibly dull and confusing presentations. While business topics can often be dry, they don’t need to be boring. We all dream of being entertaining, informative, empowering and inspiring speakers. While some may be more riveting than others, it is possible to come very close to achieving the mark if you’re careful not to fall into certain traps. There are 10 common mistakes that people make when presenting that if corrected can amp up your presentation skills significantly. Let’s take a look at some of the most common mistakes presenters make.

1. Failing to Prepare Properly and Rehearse Enough
Failing to prepare really is preparing to fail. This is probably the most common mistake I see and yet so easy to overcome. Steve Jobs was a master at making his presentations look easy and relaxed. The reason they looked this way is because he took weeks to prepare and rehearse them. You can never be too prepared. The more prepared you are, the more relaxed, spontaneous and conversational you’ll appear. Being properly prepared is one of the ways you ease nervous tension as well. Albert Mehrabian did a study and found that when two strangers meet, the one who was the most relaxed was perceived by both parties as being the one with the higher stature. It is imperative to be relaxed when you are presenting. Being prepared will help you know your material inside and out and will help you in the relaxation arena. Fill out the form below to download a copy of our Persuasive Model Outline so that you can be better prepared.