I’ve worked with dozens of companies preparing team presentations, sometimes for thought leadership presentations and often for bid presentations. Over the years, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t for team presentations. Here are my must dos for team presentations to be successful. 3 Steps Professionals MUST DO for Team Presentations Brainstorm Together – I’ve stated before that you don’t want someone else to write your presentation because it isn’t in your voice, not your expertise, and you don’t prepare for it the same way. This advice extends to team presentations as well. Some teams will assign one person to create a PowerPoint and have that person email it to the team a few days before the presentation for review. This old school tactic doesn’t work because audiences want more than canned presentations with little thought put into them. Audiences want to get to know the team and they want to
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I love blowing people’s minds with something so simple. You see, I’ve coached hundreds of presentations including keynotes, thought leadership, and high-stakes bid presentations as well as done thousands of presentations myself, so I’ve made observations about presentations including a simple technique for presentations with multiple presenters — step forward when speaking. Let me explain the importance of this subtle, yet powerfully simple technique. Whether you have two, three, or five presenters, the presenters need to come across as a unified team so you need to do some things alike, but not everything. When one member is talking, that person needs to be the expert and be the focus so the audience keeps their eyes on that presenter. (That speaker should step away from the lectern too–last week’s post.) Regardless the size of the stage or area you’re working with, you need to add some subtle spacing between the person
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Presentations occur for many different reasons including bid presentations, educational presentations for thought leadership and content marketing, and informal presentations within the office. Most presenters feel thrown into speaking, and many do not realize the value presentations have on their personal brand. Regardless if you volunteered or were volunteered, your presentation means you are representing both yourself and the company where you work. Presentations are a demonstration of your brand; it’s the first impression of your brand and demonstrates your expertise. People now recognize the term brand, but they generally associate brands only with companies and products. People are brands too, including you and you need to know what is involved in the presenter’s brand. Let’s start with what is a brand. A brand is what people perceive of a company or product. It is a collection of experiences with that company, product, or person that creates these perceptions. People use their
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I am always researching and polling, and, therefore, listening to the answers people and other presentation coaches give about all things related to presentations. I am always interested to hear how people interpret the industry in a million different ways, and since there are no regulations, it’s all open to interpretation. I have done extensive research and written past articles about the Rule of 3 and its importance. Studies have proven that the human mind can only remember three to four chunks of information at a time. Three is also sticky; allowing the information to remain in the listeners’ minds far after the speaking engagement has ended. The critical error is that business professionals and public speaking coaches view the Rule of 3 as equivalent to simplification. In the process of narrowing your talking points down to a minimum of three, many others will tell you that you have simplified
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Many business professionals today have trouble communicating with prospects and clients because they feel like they need to over-explain themselves; otherwise known as rambling. When you ramble, your result is the opposite of your over-explanation; it repels the attention away from the message. The question is why do business professionals feel the need to over-explain themselves? Not rambling is one of those basic presentation skills that many presenters just don’t have down pat. Rambling happens agnostically across every industry, but is more obvious in the technical fields. Technical professionals work is complicated, and when you have been in the industry for any length of time, you get accustomed to talking with colleagues. When the need arises to explain your work to family, friends, prospects, or clients, suddenly the explanation of what you do for a living is more complicated than it should be so do not ramble. Once again, any line
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When I meet someone for the first time and say that I’m a presentation coach, usually their response is flattering, and they talk how needed a public speaking coach is for businesses because they’ve seen a lot of bad, boring presentations. Almost always, they then ask, “How much does a presentation coach cost?” The answer really varies by market and based on the presentation coach’s experience; however, you’re usually looking at $2,000-10,000. I know that is a broad range and the price also varies depending on the scope of work. Some coaches charge per day, others by the presentation, and some charge a monthly rate. It is not uncommon to see a public speaking consultant charge $2,500 for a half-day session, plus travel costs. Regions like the Northeast United States and in major metro areas like San Francisco and Chicago, things cost more for coaching. In those areas, you probably
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Different types of presentations obviously have different requirements. The majority of presentations go better when they are delivered standing up, but there are presentations that require a presenter to sit or would be received better when the presenter sits, such as a webinar. Sitting presentations have their benefits and drawbacks, but if the need to sit for presentation arises, here are 8 great tips: 1) Know Your Situation – Choose your seat wisely because where you sit can subtly effect your effectiveness. A seated presenter is generally seen by the audience as an equal or part of the team, not the leader of the team or the expert. Different situations require different strategies when it comes to sitting presentations. For example, a client update would be weird if the client were sitting and you were towering above them. The head of the table is generally viewed as the figurehead while sitting in
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Hopefully, you have taken advice from my previous blog posts about bid presentations (What Selection Committees Really Want and Engagement Requires Being Audience-Centric) that you must reserve time to think about, prepare, and practice your upcoming client interview presentation. Without the proper steps being taken, success is less likely. But once you get past the presentation part, there is still the Questions & Answers session, or Q&A for short, to get through. Q&A sessions always tend to be the less feared portion for some. In fact, some presenters look forward to. It all depends on the types of questions that are asked and how well prepared you are for them. If you have been getting questions to clarify what you said during your bid presentations, then you aren’t explaining the information simply enough. If you have been getting zero questions, then that’s not necessarily good either because the audience might
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Business presentations, as well as client and project interviews, are conducted every day and many of them have the same things in common. Routinely, a presentation team has thrown something together and thinks that they can pull it off smoothly, but they just end up repeating everything that was submitted in the paper proposal. These presentation teams might as well be talking to a brick wall because this kills their chances of being selected by the selection committee. Losing makes you wonder what selection committees really want. If you put yourself in their shoes, you’ll understand why repeating the proposal is useless. The selection committee already read more proposals than they care to and they’ve determined that your company is qualified. The purpose of the project interview is to get to know you, not to determine if you’re qualified because that is done. Every presentation that repeats the corresponding proposal sounds like
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Simple Does Not Mean Dumb! That is my rant because many speakers misunderstand “simplification” as “dumbing it down”, but that is simply not true. People avoid simplification because they think it weakens their message, in fact, it does the opposite. Thinking that you’re dumbing down your message so your audience can understand you is the wrong mindset and it is derogatory because your audience isn’t dumb. So I repeat myself, simple does not mean dumb! Sometimes this confusion about the purpose of simplification is why I do not work with some presenters. One prospective client told me, “I have to talk that way [at a higher level] because if I don’t, the prospect will doubt my expertise.” Studies about sales and understanding prove my experiences right. Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow, that person uses words and concepts that I don’t understand, he/she must be so smart that I must
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