In this chapter

• Summary of each chapter
• 30-point checklist to mark your progress
• How to get a free spoken summary of this book

Here’s a quick reminder of the essential points made in each chapter. It will serve as a quick revision whenever you have a presentation to make, and will also help you to locate any topic that you wish to re-read.

The 30-point checklist from Chapter 2 is also repeated here, to enable you to monitor your own progress. You may find it useful to run through it before each of the next two presentations you make, marking those elements that you feel certain are now in your own repertoire of skills, and leaving blank those that need more work.

Overcoming nervousness is always a major concern, and you’ll find a seven-point plan to cope with that in Chapter 8.

Chapter summaries

Chapter 1 Successful presentations

• Get emotional buy-in. You have to get your audience wanting what you have to offer. Often a demonstration works well. It removes the risk of trial and can prove the benefit of your offering more strongly than a description can.
• Aim to make change. Plan to make some specific change in the thinking, attitude or behaviour of your audience. If there’s to be no change, what’s the point of the presentation?
• Try to redefine your company’s offering in terms that relate to the business of the prospect. Do not describe what your offering is, but rather what it does . . . for the customer.
• Successful presentations get action. The best way to measure the effectiveness of a presentation is to see what people do as a result. If they do something new, your presentation has succeeded. So make it easy for them to take action, and tell them what they should do to benefit from your offering. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he spoke.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let’s march!’
• What ‘demonstration’ can you use? If there is any way in which you can demonstrate your product or service in use, that would be a very powerful addition to your presentation.

Chapter 2 Why presentations fail

• Check yourself against the 30-point checklist. The checklist in Chapter 2 is to establish your present level against 30 essential components of successful presenting. The checklist will identify where you are at risk of falling short of your expectations. Later in this chapter the checklist is shown again, to enable you to mark your progress towards covering all the essentials.
• Print out your answers and get help where indicated. After completing the checklist in Chapter 2, you will know where you might need help from a trainer or coach, who can then develop a programme specific to your needs.
• Decide what you are selling. If you think about a demonstration of your offering, it could focus your mind more clearly on the real benefit, i.e. how it helps the customer.
• Calculate the cost of the presentation. Do a rough calculation of the cost of researching, preparing and delivering the presentation, then add the cost of the time spent by all the people who attend. It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? That’s why you have to deliver good value, and expect a substantial return.
• Refresh your memory of the 12 reasons why presentations fail. This chapter lists the Dirty Dozen reasons for the failure of presentations. They fall within the three categories of content, style and delivery and include too much material, poor slides and being boring.

Chapter 3 Getting started

• Develop an Elevator Speech. It will help your confidence as well as your focus if you are clear about your own role and what you bring to the table. The Elevator Speech is your 15-second statement of who you are and what you do, sufficient for someone to say, ‘Tell me more.’
• Decide on the change you want to bring about. Resist the temptation to start by listing all the attributes of your offering. Shift your attention to your audience and decide what you’d like to see changed as a result of your presentation. What action will you ask your audience to take to demonstrate that they have accepted your proposition?
• Follow the 4 Ps of customer-focused marketing: Principles, Purpose, Planning and Pre-qualifying, and the rules for how to fact-find.
• Answer the five questions for focus. You need to have the answers to five questions on the tip of your tongue before you present: Why are you there? Why should the audience listen to you? What can you offer that they cannot get elsewhere? What do you want at the end? What’s the least you will settle for?
• Find out about your audience. What are their concerns, their background, their status in the company, their role in the decision-making process, their expectations. One way or another, find out all you can about them beforehand. It’s not safe to present blind. If your presentation is pitched at the wrong level, you could be wasting time.

Chapter 4 Deciding on what to say

• Start with the PAT formula. Purpose, Audience and Topic. You need to get all your ducks in a line, to ensure that your objective is consistent with the concerns of the people in your audience.
• Different types of presentations. Entertaining, Informative, Analytical, Problem Solving and Persuasive. In a sense, all of them need to be persuasive, because your basic requirement must be to get your listeners to accept what you are saying.
• Know what you know. People want to hear your take on the subject, not stuff they can get elsewhere. But they also want you to tell them something they already know, and how to use whatever new information or ideas you give them.
• Decide on the problems you can solve. List all the points you want to make and answer ‘So what?’ about each of those points.
• The negative elements of your presentation would be the Situation at present, its Weaknesses, and the Effect (SWE). The positive elements would be your Proposition, Reinforcement and the Action (PRA) you propose.
• Project your brand. What do you do for others through your product or service, what is the pain you remove, and do you keep the right company? Above all, know the one defining benefit of your brand – the one thing that identifies your business, and which makes people think of you when they encounter it.

Chapter 5 Drafting your presentation

• Following a structure. It keeps you on track and makes it easy for your audience to follow you. There should be an overall structure, such as the approach, body and conclusion, and also a three-part structure for the development of your case in the body of the presentation.
• Structure helps impromptu speaking. The same three-part structures (e.g. Past/Present/Future) would serve when you are asked to ‘say a few words’ or in Q&A.
• Headlines for focus. Write a headline or two as though you were promoting your presentation as a public event. Notice the difference between a title and a headline. Is there a compelling benefit in the headline that will persuade people they need to attend?
• Blank page to first draft. This is the technique that not only gets you out of trouble when you have an imminent deadline, it works as a first draft even when you have lots of time. It can enable you to arrive at a workable first draft in 15 to 20 minutes, if you know your topic.
• Talk about what you know. Look within yourself for the message to impart. What is it that you really want others to hear from you and act upon? Can you solve a problem or remove a pain? Remember to promote your brand values at all times – the differences that distinguish you from your competitors and define your company.

Chapter 6 Being persuasive

• The seven essentials of persuasion. Understand that persuasion is a process, and requires you to connect on the other person’s level. The seven essentials are Listening, Relevance, Alternative, Meeting Expectations, Trust, AIDA and Commitment.
• Check that your draft follows the AIDA sequence of Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. The graph on p. 85 explains the sequence and why you have to take the audience beyond the buying level.
• Standard patterns. Even similar nations like the UK and USA have quite different expectations of the way a presentation should go, and different attention spans.
• Building trust. Building on the four pillars: Reliability, Capability, Honesty and Empathy. In addition, Likeability.

Chapter 7 Visual aids

• Which aids? Decide on whether to use slides only or slides, flip chart and props, and arrange in advance to have them in position. Arrive early enough to check that they are available and working.
• Slides. Minimise content of all slides, and the number of slides. Work to no more than one per minute. Use sans serif fonts, in large sizes, and follow the 5×5 rule (lines/words per line), and pictures whenever possible. Have a numbered printout of slides, blank the screen with the letter B. Minimise transitions, fonts and gimmicks.
• Video. If using film or video, embed it into a slide and practise using it. Keep it short and professionally produced, topped and tailed. Convert all video clips to WMV format and have a sound-track.
• Flip chart. If using a flip chart, write or draw in pencil in advance. Always use letters at least 5cm (2in) in height, and write with broad nib (chisel tip) pens. Do not use if there are more than 30 people present. The same applies to white boards.
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Chapter 8 Connecting with the audience

• Nervousness. Overcoming the fear of public speaking is top of most people’s agendas. Here you will find a seven-point strategy to cope with performance anxiety.
• Listening. Audiences trend to drift in and out of paying attention. To help them catch up, add looping back transitions to your draft, to remind them of where you have been and where you are going next.
• Test your draft on someone not familiar with your subject, to see if you are easy to understand. Remember that different cultures have different reasoning styles, but all audiences could contain some who are hostile, some passive, and others who want value.
• Association and conditioning. Take account of the way people have been conditioned to listen or watch, and use colour and images to aid understanding and recall.
• Group dynamics. When presenting to a group, be aware of how audiences process information, and indulge in collective behaviour, either for or against you.
• Facts. Pass all your facts through your personal filter to make them your Wisdom. Ask yourself, are you delivering the words or the message?
• Record two three-minute talks on camera, one impromptu, one scripted. Listen for the level of conviction in your voice.

Chapter 9 Delivering your presentation

• Power in delivery. Avoid building up the expectation of a confrontation. Focus, instead, on how the listeners do business, and offer to support that. It makes you a powerful ally rather than an opponent.
• Appearance and charisma. Your ‘stage presence’ depends on the way you look, your comportment and your personal authority. You will be judged within the first ten seconds of rising to speak.
• Trust. Make a commitment to helping the audience solve their problems and do better business. You are expecting them to trust you on a single hearing. Focus on them.
• Voice. The way you sound can make or break a presentation. Think of your own reaction to broadcasters, for example. You can change the way you sound and improve your resonance. There’s a simple exercise that you can do.
• Microphone. Nine essential microphone techniques and using them to reach every member of the audience.
• Platform skills. Take charge of your space, and move with a purpose. Choose the right pitch, vary your pace, use pauses. Practise with a voice recorder.
• Pitch, pace and pauses. How to add variety to the way you speak from the platform.
• Gestures and movement. Use expressive gestures that enhance your meaning, and be aware of how you are being perceived. Body language should be confident and approachable.
• Presentation essentials. A 15-point summary of all you need to know about delivering a presentation that will make an impact and get results.

Chapter 10 Advanced

• Presentation wheel. On a photocopy of the wheel, mark the scores you would give these ten elements in a presentation, and see how they differ from a colleague’s scores. Check again after several presentations, to see if your opinion has changed.
• HAMO IS DEAF, which stands for Hook, Audience, 3Ms, Objective, Interest Building, Structure, Delivery, Emotion, Action Call, Facts and Figures. List them in order of importance, and see if your opinion changes after a few presentations.
• Advanced types of presentations. These have different objectives and follow different rules, but all need to be persuasive. They are New business, Persuasive, Motivational, Entertaining, Ceremonial and Instructional.
• Language. The language you use will determine how well your message is understood. Abstract terms are hard to visualise, and there is no picture for ‘Don’t’.
• Oratory. How top speakers use linguistic devices and parts of speech to dramatise, build to a climax and stimulate emotional responses. Skilful orators like Obama use them.
• Emotional journey. Draw a diagram to represent the imaginary journey of your presentation. Is it a congruent one, or will you lose your listeners along the way? When you have mastered this process, above all, you will be an advanced presenter.

Checking your progress

Before the next two presentations you make, run through this checklist again and see how many of the items you can tick. Leave blank those that you have yet to master. They will remind you of the work you have still to do in developing your presentation skills.

30-point checklist

Spoken summary

You can download a free ten-track spoken summary of this book, and burn it onto a CD to play in your car or elsewhere. Go to www.pkpcommunicators.com/presentationbook, and use the code 250956 as the password.