Welcome
In their infinite wisdom the British government have decided that
one way to kick start the economy is to give £500 to company directors,
to pay for their continuing professional development.
I'm sure that you have heard the Train to Gain advertisements
that claim that companies who invest in training are 2 and a half times
more likely to survive the recession.
If you are a director of a company with between 5 and 250
staff, I whole heartedly recommend that you take advantage of this
scheme and attend one of my Effective Presentation Skills courses. Not
only will you improve your presentation skills, enabling you to
better motivate, influence and entertain your audiences, you will be
helping to kick start this country's economy and put an end to the
recession.
Once you have claimed the first £500, they will even give you
another £500 to match any investment you make in training your staff.
If you are not a director but know someone who is, please forward
this message on to them. If you are not based in the UK, I'm sorry but
you can't take advantage of this offer.
Anyone who is a position to take advantage of this scheme but
chooses not to, is effectively forfeiting their right to whinge about
the recession.
For more information and how to apply
click here.
The A to Z of Effective Presentations article in this issue is
dedicated to the letter "U".
"U"
is for Understanding and Unanimous.
Yours
sincerely,
Graham Young
+44 1276 502257
Upcoming Courses
Upcoming
Executive Business Presentations courses include:
15th April -
Bath Road, Slough
12th May -
Cathedral Hill, Guildford
(NB date has changed!)
15th May -
Thames Valley Park, Reading
26th May -
Stockley Park, Near Heathrow
3rd June -
Chineham, Basingstoke
17th June -
Oxford Business Park, Oxford
As always courses are limited to 6 people, so you may need to be quick
to ensure your place.
For more
information or to book click on your preferred location above.
Please feel free to
forward this on to your friends and colleagues. If you have
received this second hand and would like your own personal copy of
future issues, please click here.
Paperback now Available
I'm very
pleased and proud to announce that a paperback version of my book "The
A to Z of Effective Business Presentations" is now
available from Amazon and "all good bookshops".
Click here to see it on Amazon.
The 10 digit ISBN is 1849231133 and it costs only £5.99
The A to Z of Effective Presentations
In
previous newsletters, which you can access
here,
I have covered A to T , so now it is the letter "U". In this issue "U"
stands for Understanding, and Unanimous.
U is
for Understanding
The
objective for most business presentations to is educate, influence and
motivate people, while at the same time providing some entertainment to
keep them interested.
To achieve
this, the audience must understand what you are saying. There are three
aspects to understanding what someone is saying:
The standard percentages that are often quoted in relation to
public speaking, are that 7% of the information is conveyed verbally,
38% vocally, and 55% visually.
These percentages are not only misleading, they are wrong. The
origins of these figures are two separate studies, one conducted by
Albert Mehrabian and Susan Ferris (1967) which compared vocal tone to
facial cues, and the other by Mehrabian and Wiener (1967) which compared
vocal tones to single words.
Mehrabian himself says 'My findings are often misquoted.
Clearly, it is absurd to imply or suggest that the verbal portion of all
communication constitutes only 7% of the message'
However, that said, the way you say something has a tremendous
affect on the way the words are received and the visual stimuli have yet
another affect. What you want to aim for is all three communication
mechanisms, verbal, vocal and visual to be in line with each other and
to re-enforce each other.
Verbally
Are the words that you are using easily understood by your
audience? Try to avoid jargon and slang. Follow the KISS principle,
decide what your main message should be and stick to it. Do not confuse
the issue with a number of smaller less imported side issues, which do
not support your main theme. They may be interesting points but if they
are tangential to the rest of your presentation, they are best avoided.
Vocally
Can your audience hear you? Are you talking loudly enough? Are
you talking too loudly?
Talking too loudly can be as frustrating for the audience as
someone who talks too quietly. I remember one sales training
presentation I attended where the speaker felt he had to shout to make
his points. The first couple of times he shouted everyone paid
attention, the next couple of items people started to become irritated
and from then on, everybody switched off and did not listen to a thing
he was saying.
As well as the volume, try to enunciate clearly and do not
mumble. Put some feeling into your voice rather than just reciting
information in a monotone. By varying the pitch, tone and volume of our
voice, you will capture people's attention and they will understand you
better.
Practise by reading young children stories from their books, if
you are unsure of how to put that sort of feeling into your voice. Most
people become more animated when reading children's stories aloud.
Visually
What the audience sees has to reinforce what they are being told,
and how they are being told it. If you were told by the managing
director that the company was doing really well and was destined to
break all its targets, while he was slouching about with a face as long
as a wet weekend. Would you believe him?
Do your slides remind you what to say or do they help put your
message across by creating strong mental images that reinforce the words
you are saying? One of the biggest failings I see is people relying on
their slides to remind them what to say. What they don't realise is that
by doing this their audience also know in advance what the person is
about to say, which means they don't have to listen.
U is for Unanimous
While it would be lovely to have unanimous approval for every
presentation that you give, you cannot please all of the people all of
the time. Do not become upset or lose your confidence just because of
some poor feedback from one or two members of your audience. Some
people like to find fault in others, it is their way of elevating their
own standing.
Take any criticism that is offered and consider it
dispassionately the next day. What can you learn from it? What could
you do differently next time you present?
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