advance presentation skills

Elizabeth

When is he on auto-pilot and when is he truely engaging?

Notice also the speed of his delivery. He is slightly nervous at the beginning. But he gets into his rythym midway and the audience are left with the feeling that they have just witnessed a great presentation.

The sales person comes in, fires up powerpoint. Generally they are OKAY on the interpersonal skills (not great), well turned out, and professional. However, they then fire up powerpoint and take you through the same ridiculous process:

“we are company XYZ, here are the same slides I show everyone else (if I really want to look good, I add your logo or some of your webpages). We were established in xxxx (who cares?). We are the leading company in (service). We have lots of big clients (unrelated to your industry as you are just another company). Therefore we are great at what we do. Here’s, therefore, what we can do for you by listing our standard product range…basically the same thing as we did for all the rest.”

This goes on for ten minutes typically without any interaction from the client. At this point, one of the client’s management team strats to ask questions, often related to the lack of presentational relevance of their business. The salesperson is tired as its there third presentation that day, stressed, and annoyed that its obviously a different scenario from the list of unrelated clients that they have presented before them. But its accepted as the status que, so the client actually can feel awkward asking these obvious questions and the salesperson rightly aggrieved in their own mind.

I watched a video on Youtube recently which I now cannot find!!!! It was by an American business coach who hit the nail on the head when it comes to this scenario. She said “imagine the average sales pitch as a date”.

Now this really shows how lousy this approach is, and yet every sales person in the UK seems to follow it!

She asks us to imagine going out on a date, exchanging niceties and sitting through:

“I am great..,, I studied at X, joined X, I was promoted, founded a company, achieved x, y,z, turnover x million / billion, etc. Now because I did all of this, I would be really great for you, because you are like all the other women /men out there. Any questions now after ten minutes of talking about myself?”

The parallels between the two approaches are obvious and that is why most sales people, and most dates “convert” in the low single figure percentages, and especially in the average market where competition is strong.

Now imagine a sales pitch or dinner date which involves “the audience”. A good salesperson or “dater” will shown an interest in the other person. They do this by asking lots of relevant questions (not too deep to begin with!), verbally nodding, smiling, holding eye contact for a natural period of time, acting interested but not overbearing, etc. Imagine the impact of these basic skills on sales performance by keeping to these basics. On my sales and negotiation courses, I regularly stun experienced sales directors, executives, and managers by taking them back to basics. They do not realise what their own actions. They cannot believe the bad habits they have fallen into. Then I hit them with all the secret skills and techniques they never imagined to exist!

Why is distance important?

In the public zone, distance creates the feeling of safety. This is the same with gorillas as when another gorilla is at distance, there are no surprise attacks (or the chances of success are low!).

The social zone is closer and will allow basic communication to take place e.g. waving and saying hello to someone at a bus stop but with no intention of talking to them as you stand at the other end.

Now in the final zone; the intimate (threat) zone (Elizabeth has left out the personal zone for good reason, more later) you will basically be wanting to do one of two things:

1) You want to get intimate
2) You want them to feel threatenedand why you must avoid the intimate zone unless.

Business networking guru Elizabeth Clark shows how to successfully approach strangers and groups. Discover the 3 zones of business networking, and the critical one which you must master or avoid!

Well arrogance does tend to rub others the wrong way. But it also displays weakness to anyone with a little life experience. Swagger and aloofness are signs of insecurity. A confident person knows their own strengths but is always willing to add to them and will be open to learning. They also know and openly acknowledge their weaknesses and will defer to those who are more knowledgeable. Take a look at my confidence training advice and tips for more information on the art of confidence. So how do we start to practise being confident without being arrogant?

He stands right at the entrance to the door, pauses for a couple of seconds (so everyone gets to look at him), smiles at the middle of the room (as if he has seen someone he knows well) and eyebrow flash to anyone who makes eye contact as he moves to get a drink. Now this is a very brief, if detailed overview. For more specific how to information, I recommend these flirting products.

And like anything in life, the more you practise being a keynote speaker, the better you will get. In the next few days, I will reveal some more great tips that have continued to serve me well during my speaking career.