This blog has one purpose: to improve your presentation skills. It’s the culmination of nearly 25 years of designing and delivering presentations – and teaching others how to design and deliver their presentations better.
How can you Improve your Presentation Skills?
It’s really simple:
- Learn how and where to concentrate your preparation efforts.
- Learn the process of developing the content of your presentation, and turning it into an interesting story.
- Become great at designing your presentations.
- And find out how to act on the day to get you liked, and your presentation remembered.
Who am I?
My name is Jim Harvey and you’ll probably never have heard of me. I’m the MD of a consulting business, Allcow Communications Ltd, based in the UK. We’re small, we do great work with world-renowned clients, and we love what we do.
This blog is designed to help you to become the best presenter you can be. It’s for experienced presenters who’d like to add some flair to their style, and for relative newcomers to speaking and pitching, who’d like to get the basics right and build from there.
If you’re just starting out, here are some Top Tips to get you started. For the skilled speaker, here are some thoughts, dilemmas and opinions that will be interesting and useful for you.
Why the Focus on Presentation Skills?
(Find a transcript of the video here)
My Background in Presenting
I’ve been lucky enough to run my own businesses since the early 1990’s. Over those years we’ve made a profit every year, we’ve created hundreds of jobs, and paid a lot of tax. I’m a large (in the sense that I’m 6’2”), small business guy. I wanted to be clear about who I am as it might help you to understand why I think like I do.
I started to build businesses when I was forced into it at the age of 25 (by redundancy when the firm I worked for killed itself carelessly in the late 80’s recession in the UK). I found out that I liked the process of creating a business from ‘scratch’ to sale so much so that I’ve done it three times in 20 years. Each time I and my teams have created enduring value without spending a single penny on advertising. We’ve built our businesses through networking effectively and pitching our ideas brilliantly whenever we’ve had the opportunity. Our ‘hit’ rate of wins to losses over those 20 years is around 80% .
Of the 70 or so pitches we’ve lost, I blew half of them with no help from anybody else, and 20 of them we should never have agreed to present. The remaining pitches we were beaten by a firm with a better offering, a better pitch or a better relationship with the client. Well beaten. But we win 8 times out of 10 and I’m realtively happy with that.
I never set out with the idea of being an entrepreneur, I just kind of happened into it, and I’ve learned a lot through the process. I have particularly enjoyed finding out that even when you’ve no brand, corporation or budget to help you, you can win against even the biggest and best if you know what you’re doing, and what your clients want. You won’t win every time, but you can win often enough to be a real nuisance for the ‘big boys’, as they’re almost never called these days.
If you’re just a bit better than the other team, and it’s not difficult, more in-tune with the client and their needs and drivers; more succinct; more clear at explaining how what you’ll do will help them be more successful against their criteria; then you’ll tend to win, much more than you’ll lose.
If you want to know more about our approach to pitching for business and presentations then email us here. Or subscribe for updates in your inbox here. I’d love to hear from you.
Jim Harvey