Category Archives: Presentations

Mar 12 2014
Presentations, Solutions

Circles and Lines

As Shakespeare’s Hamlet said “Words, words, words.”  It’s all talk without some context or structure.

When trying to solve a problem, when trying to convey the relationships of a business process or information flow through a system, when trying to communicate with a customer, nothing works so well as a diagram* to help get the point across.

In a recent customer engagement, a speaker’s sixty slides spread conversational confusion like kudzu, spawning discussion and debate down a number of different branches.**  As the next presenter up, I started with a blank screen and a drawing tool, then drew some circles and lines to anchor us all in the reality.  The conversation was brief, understood and agreed by all, and led to a meaningful, focused, and brief demonstration to prove out the diagram.

There’s a reason the back of the envelope exists- problems are solved there; multimillion dollar ideas are born there.  And it may be all your audience can consume in one session.

Getting them aligned with one idea is a great success for any meeting.

*As a geeky fan boy, episodes of Star Trek always drove me nuts.  Plots essentially revolved around figuring out some kind of logic puzzle, and Kirk and Spock or Picard and Data would bandy about with the Tom Tom-voiced Computer trying to come to resolution.  I’d scream at the television “would you just get out a sheet of paper and write something down!?!”
** Triple alliteration score!
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Mar 10 2014
Creativity, Humor, Presentations

Stand Up

A few months ago I found myself putting in a lot of windshield time getting from one customer engagement to another.  Lacking scheduled conference calls and a little bored with the radio, I wondered… “Can I punch ‘Bill Cosby’ into Pandora?”

Why yes, I could!

Spend some time listening to stand up comedians. Their livelihood depends on their skills for storytelling, use of humor (obviously), writing and preparation, and, perhaps most important, their sense of timing.* So do ours.  The more you listen, the more you’ll be able to pick out the good from the mediocre; the crafted message from the cheap laugh, and the writing conventions they use to expand on a topic, move from one to the next, and touch back to a point or theme introduced earlier in the act.  Dylan Brody is an excellent example as a “purveyor of fine words and phrases.”

 *The Smothers Brothers are masters of timing, from the pregnant pause to the unexpected interjection.  Dick’s ‘little brother’ Tommy is the devilish mastermind of the duo.  From interviews I’ve seen, he intentionally pulls his brother’s strings on stage, which makes the experience all the more genuine.
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Feb 28 2014
Presentations, Professionalism, Selling

Overheard

Imagine the following phrases uttered in a customer engagement:

“Most companies I see…”

“Jump in! This is for you!”

(While snapping fingers) “Very, very quick.”

“Everyone loves the mobility.  It’s fantastic.”

Customer: “Our biggest issue has always been data gathering.”  Response, without missing a beat, “Well, let’s talk about that then.”

“This is something new and cool.”

“When our customers have needs, we move quickly.”

“I want to tell you a secret.  Can I tell you a secret?”

When you get the opportunity to watch a peer present, take it.  And take notes.  All of these gems* were dug up in a single morning’s demo.

*Regardless of solution-space or industry, phrases like this are examples of the highest level of professionalism in any demonstration of technology.  What customer (or sales rep, our other audience) wouldn’t be thrilled to conduct a conversation in this manner?
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Feb 18 2014
Learning, Presentations, Professionalism

Second Person Narrative

You arrive at the customer site twenty minutes early.  Your sales rep and your client chat about the meeting ahead as you set up.  But something’s wrong. You can’t get onto the network, the projector isn’t cooperating with your tablet, and your sales rep starts talking about areas of the solution you aren’t prepared to cover.

I arrive at the customer site twenty minutes early.  My sales rep and my client chat about the meeting ahead as I set up.  But something’s wrong. I can’t get onto the network, the projector isn’t cooperating with my tablet, and my sales rep starts talking about areas of the solution I’m not prepared to cover.

Much is said about “I-talk” and “you-talk,” the idea that you should phrase your demo clicks in the first person or the second person.

Which of the two examples above had you more involved?  When it was happening to you* or when it was happening to me?  If you want to better involve your customers in your presentations, go with your gut.

* I was delighted to realize, upon review, that most of my posts here are in the second person narrative.
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Jul 23 2013
Learning, Presentations, Professionalism, Selling

Earn a firmer handshake

One way to judge the value of your meeting is through the quality of the handshake you get on the way out the door.

If you’ve inspired someone, made them think, or incited some action, you’ll probably get a firmer and more sincere handshake on the way out the door.  If you get the dreaded “we’ll be in touch,” you can bet they won’t.

Earn a firmer handshake.

Jun 11 2013
Presentations, Professionalism

One Sentence at a Time

In a recent presentation skills course,* participants were coached to address individual audience members one sentence at a time.  Here’s the gist of the technique: Your interaction with the audience will be a verbal paragraph, so as you speak, look at someone, speak one whole sentence, look to the next, speak the next sentence, look again, and complete the thought.  Bonus points if you can complete the thought with the same audience member you started with.

Magic happened.

“Um,” “And,” and “So” crutches disappeared from speech patterns.  Credibility and authority suddenly appeared.  Voices were lower and steady.  The presenters had, well, time to think on their feet.  One sentence at a time.

My penmanship has become atrocious through the years, especially when capturing ideas in customer discovery sessions.  I’ve been writing this off as some kind of mystical kinetic absorption of content- if my hand is moving, the ideas are somehow seeping into my brain and I’ll retain it better.

Balderdash.  When I look at my notes, I can’t read them and no, I can’t recall the details.

This week, I’ve applied the one sentence at a time principle to my note taking on calls, forcibly slowing my hand down and putting legible words to paper.  The magic works here as well.  My understanding was insightful and my conversations suddenly carried more weight and  credibility.  There was no rush, just measured confidence in making my points and pursuing the next topic.

One sentence at a time.

*More than presentation skills, it was a session focused on exuding executive presence.  Created and conducted by Roz Usheroff, whose web presence can be found at remarkableleader.wordpress.com , and whose books can be found here and here.
May 15 2013
Creativity, Presentations, Selling, Solutions, Technology, Uncategorized

Communication, understanding, problem-solving, relationship-building

When you get your hair cut, there’s usually a big mess on the floor when you’re done.  The same applies when you’re solving business problems with customers:

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Feb 11 2013
Presentations, Professionalism, Uncategorized

Inner Monologue

Experience has taught me to listen to my experience.

When faced with different situations, my inner monologue* kicks in and starts feeding me nuggets of advice:

  • You’ve done this before
  • Don’t stress- you can’t know what’s going to happen in this meeting
  • Trust in your teammates in the room
  • Qualify that question, don’t answer it right away
  • Pounce! Now!  Close it!
  • Step in and save this
  • You know more about this one than they do
  • They know more about this one than you do
  • I never thought of it that way
  • It’s okay to be wrong on this one
  • You’re giving them a lot of information, building on credibility
  • It’s not about you

Listen to the advice your inner monologue feeds you.  You’ve spent years developing it.

*It’s not a dialogue- I don’t converse with it, I listen to it.

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Jan 16 2013
Creativity, Positioning, Presentations

Themes emerge

We’ve all been to a meeting or an event where a bit of corporate culture was born.  Meeting catch-phrases and events take on a humorous life of their own and become a relationship link among the participants, becoming the stuff of legends. Konica Minolta’s commercials and The Office series are chock full of examples of this.

Though we try to boil down our messaging into catchy themes and analogies, there’s no guarantee they’ll resonate.  So work with the audience to find what does stick.  Corporate-culture themes can emerge in the midst of a presentation if you’re listening for them.

If an audience member volunteers it, maybe as a wisecrack, a comment on bullet point, or a strong opinion, positive or negative, of what you’re saying or showing, all the better.  You’ve got something you can work with.  Hold on to it.  Play it up.  Repeat it in a different context and in a humorous, self-deprecating way.  If another audience member joins in the fun, you’re set, you’re immortal, you have been crowned a legend.

Two years down the road, when you bump into someone who was there, they won’t remember your name, they won’t even remember what you were showing, but when they say the secret catch-phrase, you’ll have a good laugh and an even better bond.

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Aug 20 2012
Creativity, Presentations, Professionalism, Tools

Tip: Culling Presentations down to size

It’s easier to edit than to create.

It’s also pretty clear that our peers in Marketing, Product Management, and Engineering have time on their hands to create, judging from the long, detailed, generic presentations they provide us.  Let’s take advantage  of all this raw material.  If we know what we specifically want to say to our audience, we can start pruning.

Here’s a tip:

Open up your 127 slide master deck and grab a pen and paper.  As you scroll through the presentation, jot down the slide numbers you find relevant. 3, 5, 7-10, 22, 30-34, etc. Create a new, customer-specific deck, and start copying over those slides.

The next hour or so can be spent adjusting (improving?) the grammar and phrasing of the copied slides to your needs.  I’ve found that removing  half the words improves clarity.  Less is more.

Yes, there’s a completely separate debate about PowerPoints:  Why not Prezi? Why slides with bullets? You don’t read presentations, they’re a backdrop; just use pictures.  All that is fine, but sometimes a PowerPoint is a PowerPoint.

Let’s bang them out efficiently, shall we?

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