30th November, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
We just came back from working with a team of 15 people, each of whom swore that the majority of presentations they gave were, “just updates.” As such, they argued, there was no responsibility to change the audience. “All they want is a straight update. There is no way to empower them.” Not so fast, » Read More
16th October, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
We love when our clients are smarter than we are. So, kudos to Alex C. If we didn’t have a firm policy of not identifying individual clients by name, we’d want you to know exactly who to thank for the following insight. We were talking about how the job of the speaker is to change » Read More
6th June, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
Sometimes speakers have a topic about which they feel genuinely excited. They want the audience to feel the same excitement, so they blast “excitement” all over the room. You’ve seen this a dozen times this year alone — if you are in sales, you may have seen it a dozen times this week. This speaker » Read More
5th April, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
How do you decide how much time to invest in your presentations? Most people weigh the time allotted to the talk (say, 20 minutes) and the number of slides they can plow through in that time. We do the math a different way. If you have 20 minutes on an agenda, and you are the » Read More
14th March, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
Check out these sentences: “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t agree.” “I hear what you’re saying, and I see another option.” “The marketing budget is smaller than we’d like, but we can still so something with it.” The marketing budget is smaller than we’d like, and we can still do something with it.” » Read More
21st February, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
Here is a TED Talk we keep returning to, again and again. It’s by David McCandless, and it shows intriguing ways to visualize data. He’s talking about some very dense data sets here. But he’s not showing us the typical bar graphs and pie charts that populate the slide decks of most business presentations. McCandless » Read More
18th February, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
“Ugh! I HATE the Q and A part of the presentation!” The guy we were working with practically threw his head on the table, bemoaning this mandated segment of his presentation. It’s pretty common that business presenters end a presentation with time for “Q&A.” The impulse is good: allow the audience to engage with your » Read More
4th February, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
Imagine giving your presentation to your CEO, or your Executive Director, or to the busiest, best-connected person you know. Specifically, imagine how you would start the talk. We bet that your first words won’t be, “So, how’s everybody doing?” And you probably wouldn’t spend time thanking the speaker before you for that great introduction, or » Read More
25th January, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
Just came from a client’s office, where I watched several people rehearse a pretty high stakes presentation. Three of them were looking at imaginary people around the room… presumably the people who would, tomorrow, be in the room. These speakers completely ignored the dozen of us sitting there actually watching, in favor of pretending the » Read More
17th January, 2011 - Posted by janebeard
Here’s the thing. By the time you finish talking, your audience is guaranteed to be different than they were before they heard you speak. We may be bored, or we may be excited. We may be more confused than when we arrived, or we may see a clearer path to a goal. But we will » Read More
