Everybody knows that stories have structure. They start with ‘Once upon a time….’ and end with ‘happily ever after.’ And in between the beginning and the end, comes the middle. In Western culture, most novels, plays and films tend to follow a simple 3 act structure, with each act playing a particular role in driving…
So you’ve identified what it is that you do brilliantly, or at least well enough to offer you real specialist status in your potential customers’ eyes. This is not as difficult as it seems. One of my specialist areas of work is presentation skills and nearly everyone who has ever got up to speak to…
I know it might sound glib but it just came to me sitting here. Focus is about all of those things that I mentioned yesterday, and here’s why: If you concentrate on doing things that you really enjoy then the chances are that you’ll also be really good at them. I know this flies in…
Now, the best part is that, even if you’re just a little bit better than the average presenter, you’ll stand out. If you can set out a topic that’s relevant to the people there; if you can take an audience through a step-by-step explanation; make a recommendation based on fact, experience or principle and then…
Whenever you get up to speak you will make an impression on every member of your audience, you can’t not make an impression, even though you may not mean to. You’ll always leave some trace or memory of you with them, because while you think your presentation is about the content, the audience thinks that…
1. Get people to take themselves and their presentations more seriously · Get people to do fewer but better presentations · Get people to prepare as if their reputations depended on it 2. Show how you can gain a real competitive edge in business by simply being a bit better than the kind of presenter…
I have come to the conclusion that it’s so because, 1- Most of us set pretty low levels of performance for ourselves along the lines of- “Another presentation, let’s just get it over with”, and, 2- Those of us that have more experience don’t really care about most presentations that we are involved in. We’ll…
You’ve probably sat through hundreds of them in your time. Hours of PowerPoint type talking, gigabytes of bullet-pointed slides and a few charts that carefully combine the unintelligible and incoherent. If you’ve worked in corporate life over the past few years, you’ll have seen it all. Dull content gingered up by the occasional use of,…