3 Rules for Great Presentations

by Daria Steigman on May 14, 2012

All the World's a StageAnyone who has sat through a bad presentation knows what can go wrong. Maybe the speaker rambled on, or he spoke in a monotone. Maybe he read slide after slide. Or he punctuated every third word with an “er” an “um” or a “like.”

When your presentation sucks, it is about you. Make it about your story instead.

At an IABC/Washington meeting last week, John Gundlach said that most presentations fall flat because people spend all their time preparing and almost no time practicing. His rule of thumb: 60 percent preparation, 40 percent practice. In other words, if you are giving a speech (or drafting a presentation for your boss, a colleague, or someone else to give), you need to schedule in plenty of time for rehearsals.

Gundlach discussed the three principles of great presentations:

1. Preparation–Good presentations are about both the content and how you tell the story (which is also where “practice, practice, practice” comes in).

2. Performance–The most important element of any presentation is the presenter, so it’s important that you “engage the audience, be real, act confidently, and be in the moment.” Gundlach cited statistics to back up his point: the audience pays only minor attention to your words (7 percent); the bulk of the focus is on tone (38 percent) and your visual look (55 percent).

3. Persuasion–A presentation is a transfer of emotion, so it’s important that you bring your passion in order to engage your audience. Gundlach suggested that it’s useful to network beforehand so that you’re formed  personal bonds before you take the stage. (It also makes you human and approachable, which is certainly something I appreciate in a speaker.)

What have you learned from sitting through good (and bad) presentations?

Photo by Jon-Eric Melsaeter (Flickr).

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , ,

{ 4 comments }

Have You Ever Had a Deadbeat Client?

by Daria Steigman on May 7, 2012

Color Me Fierce coloring bookHave you ever been stiffed by a client (i.e., failed utterly in all attempts to collect payment)?

It has never happened to me.

Maybe I’ve been lucky. I’ve definitely been smart.

Some of it has to do with selecting clients with care, building in payment phases for large projects, and heeding red flags (and turning down the wrong work). Collecting on invoices has also, at times, required patient, perseverance, and “having a friend in the accounting department” (as Karen Swim so aptly put it on a recent #solopr Twitter chat).

Occasionally, it’s also been about making it clear you’re not the person (or company) to mess with.

For example, I worked as a subcontractor to “Company ABC” for many years. While their payment processing time some years stretched out to 45 or 60 days, they always paid up. The final year was different, and I completed the last couple of projects only because of my commitments to clients.

I did get payment on my last two invoices–because I told the CEO that my clients had paid him with the expectation that I would be paid. In other words, I know what you’re doing and now so do my clients.

While I was prying loose payments at irregular intervals, Company ABC also had a core group of subcontractors working on a separate line of business. They had not been paid for months. Yet for some reason they kept working. When they complained, the company threatened never to pay them if they didn’t keep working. So they kept working. (Really, I’m not making this up.)

I suspect they never got paid.

I raise this issue today because I was reading that the Freelancers Union is trying to draw awareness to the plight of stiffed workers. It’s World’s Longest Invoice project has tallied over $15 million in unpaid invoices–and I suspect they’re nowhere near done.

I applaud the organization for its campaign. But I wish that, instead of focusing so much attention on deadbeat clients, they would educate their members about how to mitigate that risk. Because, as business owners, it’s also our responsibility to be wise about who, where, and how we do business.

Please chime in with your comments below.

Photo by Libby Rosof (Flickr).

 

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , ,

{ 4 comments }

Kellogg, Kashi, and What Customers Want

by Daria Steigman on April 30, 2012

SoybeansSaying you’ve done nothing wrong when your customers are angry may not be the smartest response. Calling customers “confused”–really?

My friend Zane Safrit pointed me to this story about Kellogg’s Kashi brand. Apparently some of the soy used in its cereals comes from genetically modified soybeans. So the use of the term “natural” strikes some consumers as misleading–even if Kashi’s general manager says the company has done nothing wrong.

Legally, he is correct. But it’s a soundproof room argument.

Perception is another matter. And while Kashi has committed to have “at least 70 percent organic ingredients by 2015,” that doesn’t make some customers feel less duped today. Not to mention that the Kashi brand is marketed as though it were an independent health-focused company, not part of the same big business responsible for Rice Krispies and Pop Tarts.

Authenticity is not about “all-natural ingredients” and “nothing artificial.” It’s about being the same when the covers come off as you are when you’re all wrapped up for show.

Photo by Brendan C.

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , , , , , , , ,

{ 2 comments }

Don’t Cheap Yourself Out of a Customer

by Daria Steigman on April 23, 2012

One More (5-cent) Check to Solve a Tacky Brand ProblemI’ve been trying to get “free” checks from PNC Bank for six weeks. Free, apparently, is a very relative term.

PNC Bank has lost a lot.

Here’s a brief chronology of what happened:

1. Mid-March: Call 800 number to order more checks. On hold, on hold, on hold, automated information, more automated info, more automated info, transferred to a person. Person’s job is to try to get me to pay for expedited shipping (no thanks), shipping with tracking (no thanks). Warns me that checks might get lost.

2. Hang up phone. Figure I’ll never see checks.

3. Mid-April: Hmm… checks never arrive.

4.  Mid-April: Local branch manager puts hold on all the checks that were “lost” and reorders checks–jumping numbers.

5. Mid-April: Receive automated letter from PNC Bank saying they won’t send me new checks until I have one more check processed. Seriously, they wrote:

“Based on your current check usage, we estimate that a check reorder will be placed for you once 1 [sic] more checks are processed from this account from the time this letter was mailed to you.”

6. I immediately write a check for cash for $0.05–and go online to look at moving my accounts to USAA.

PNC Bank does one thing very right (and it’s not corporate communications). It invests in its employees.

So I’m in my local bank branch asking them to pry loose my new checks and getting ready to cash my $0.05 check.

They get it. The branch manager isn’t in yet, but her colleague whom I’ve dealt with before completely understands my frustration–from the upsell effort the first time to the auto-generated letter that has me shopping around for a new bank. (And he mentions his own bang-head-on-desk problem with a mobile company.) He looks at my account, and guess what? Apparently my checks are in the mail this time. We’ll see.

The banker realizes I’m a valuable customer. I just wish his bank did.

That PNC Bank invests in its employees might just have saved them a customer. But my feeling about the brand has changed completely. This “free checks” saga has cost me time (which equals money) and a lot of hassle. But it’s cost PNC Bank a valued customer. I may stay (undecided), but I don’t like them anymore.

Every touch point is part of your brand experience. Don’t devalue that by spending a lot of time, money, and effort to be cheap.

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , , , ,

{ 3 comments }

The Truth About Being a Selling Success

by Daria Steigman on April 16, 2012

Stones in a Row: Why Concise is a Business AssetMy father makes his students write one-page briefing memos for the Secretary of State. He also dings them for typos.

Being concise (and accurate) is a business asset. And it can be the difference between selling your idea (or initiative, or product, or service) and sitting on the sidelines.

I was thinking about this as I listened to a pair of CEOs talk about how to grab their attention. One talked specifically about “telling me what I need to know.” His point was that he was best able to make decisions when someone broke down the strategy and put the information into chunks.

A couple more takeaways from the CEOs’ conversation are worth noting, if for no other reason than the fact that they were raised in the first place (yes, more duh moments):

  • Don’t act like a lemming. One of the CEOs, a Swedish national, said that Americans tend to say yes to everything, while Swedish employees are more apt to ask questions and challenge the assumptions on the table. Feedback is critical, so which kind of employees do you want?
  • Know your boss’ temperament. The second CEO pointed out that social intelligence is huge, and you have to know the right (and wrong) times to approach your boss. I wrote about one aspect of this here.

There might have been more takeaways, but the moderator dominated the conversation. So much for concise.

Photo by Olof Senestam (Flickr).

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Tagged as: , , ,

{ 2 comments }

← Previous Entries