Your Presentation Best

MY Life Just Got Sooooo Much Better! This kid is thinking about all the cool stuff he's gonna make with all those chmicals. He's thinking about how this product just changed his Life...for the better. Remember, whenever you're presenting, your selling something. Don't sell a product, service or idea.   Sell a better life. What exactly are you offering to improve the life of your audience? Take a look at these two examples: "Our company is a premier developer of intelligent semiconductor intellectual property solutions software that dramatically accelerate complex system-on-a-chip designs while minimizing risk.” “Our company creates software that is used to build the chips inside many of the smart phones in your pockets.  As those chips get smaller and cheaper, your phones will get smaller, last longer on a single charge, and play your favorite music and videos, all thanks to our technology working behind the scenes.” They both talk abou

No Time for Presentations?  It's Your Choice. No, really. It is. People often say to me:  "I Know presentation is important, but I just don't have the time to prepare it like I should." I always say, "Well, it's your choice.  But if the presentation is important enough to do, it's important enough to do right." ( Not all presentations are necessary.  If there is a more efficient or effective way to share your information, then use it.) Often times, we don't have enough time because we let our time be stolen by non-core stuff or poeple. If you think of your typical work day, how much time do you spend doing non-core stuff  or meeting with non-core people?  Useless meetings or e-mails, etc. seem to be common problems at all of the organisations where I work.  And we're talking about world-class organisations.   That this problem is so common means that it is a human problem.   But the solution is staightforward:  spend your time

Your World and Their World Once upon a time, journalists from all over the world were asked to write a story  about the elephant. The Frenchman wrote:  L’éléphant et l’amour .  The American wrote:  Thirty-seven Miracle Diets and the Modern Working Elephant.   And the German wrote:  The Socio-Dynamic Nature and Fundamental Psychological Constitution of the Elephant: Volume I, The Burmese Ceremonial Elephant,  Chapter 1, "From Karl the Great to the Present". The take-away:  Every audience is different.    Know your audience and what turns them on. Remember, the best presentations bring together what the presenter can offer with what the audience needs.

The PowerPoint Slide from Hell Wanna Kill Your Audience?  Make Your Slides Complex Almost every time I do a presentation workshop or one-to-one coaching, I am amazed how stressed-out presenting complex and/or very detailed PowerPoint slides make my clients. Actually, I'm not really amazed, because complex and/or very detailed slides would make just about any presenter stressed-out.  What amazes me is how often presenters use PowerPoint in a way that makes it basically impossible to use in an easy, comfortable way--for themselves and the audience. The more stuff you have on your slides, the more difficult and stressful it is to present.   The less stuff on your slide, the easier and less stressful. It's that simple. Keep in mind, you can and should give your audience a Long Pack working document slide deck with all the text and details.   But use a simple and visual Short Pack for the presentation. So, the take-away is:  if you want to lower your presentation stress,

Death By PowerPoint :   Are you part of the solution...or part of the problem ?

Be a Black Sheep Presenter Get Angry and Break the Status Quo. One of the most challenging aspects of corporate presentations  is to stand out from the crowd. Corporate identity templates, managers trying to control their teams content so it conforms to the no-risk-because-it-looks-like-everyone-else's-slides, and just the overuse of "standard" PowerPoint slides  makes it almost impossible to tell one slide deck from another. If you want your message lost in the crowd, do what everyone else is doing.  Be a white sheep. If you want to stand out, be creative and innovative with your slides and story telling. The only requirement is that both are concretely linked to your message and your audience's needs. Dare to stand out.  Be a  Black Sheep Presenter .

Einstein Is Right   KISSS  (Keep It Short, Sweet, and Sexy) Enough said.