Meghan called.  She was a high school senior, my daughter’s friend and highschool classmate.  She had a summer job selling for the CutCo Knife Company, and wanted to make a presentation to us in our home. 

I said, “Yes,” although my wife was uncomfortable that she might have to say, “No,” to Meghan.  So she arranged to be out of the house when Meghan arrived.

On the appointed evening, Meghan carried her hefty sales case through the front door and set up on the dining room table.   While she was unpacking her wares, she asked me if I would please get her a glass of water.  I did, and when I returned to the dining room and sat down, she asked me to get the knives we currently used and bring them in.

I went back to the kitchen and returned with the knives.  When she was all set up, she asked me, “How would you describe your current knives?”

“Old, dull and inadequate,” I said.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.  I described how hard it was to keep them sharp, how some of the blades were so old they were worn thin, and how some of the blades wobbled in their handles.

 She pulled a length of rope from her case, and asked me to cut it with my sharpest knife.

“My sharpest?  That’s not saying much,” I said, taking my grandfathers old carving knife that was probably a good 70 years old.  It had a hardwood handle.

Meghan held the rope down on a cutting board that she pulled from her bag.  “Count the movements back and forth,” she said. 

 I began to saw.  It took fourteen saws.

“Now hold it down for me,” she said.  She picked up one of her new knives from a wooden block.  I grabbed one of the lengths and held it down.  “You’re stronger than I am, but count the saws it takes me with this knife,” she said.

 It took her four.

“Let me try that,” I teased her, as if she had done something slick.  I took the knife from her while she held the rope down on the cutting board.  Expecting it to be difficult, I pressed hard with the new knife and sawed through the rope in two strokes.

 I was impressed.

Meghan asked me to bring my best pair of kitchen scissors to the table.  They were also old, and could not make a dent on the rope.  She got out her CutCo scissors, and not only cut through the rope with ease, she also cut a penny in half.

I was pretty much sold.  She gave me information about the steel and the handles.  She showed me the different sets I could buy.  My wife came home and I called her in to the dining room.  She sat down reluctantly, and I asked Meghan to do the rope trick.  She had my wife count the strokes, etc. etc. and I saw my wife change from skeptic to true believer in a matter of seconds.

“Do the scissor trick,” I said.  Meghan cut the rope and the penny.  I saw Sharon’s eyes wander over to the full set of kitchen knives displayed on the table in a butcher block case.

We ended up buying all the kitchen knives and a set of 12 steak knives.  They remain in their butcher block on the kitchen counter seven years later.
                                                         ______

Selling by telling is what most of us do.  But selling by doing is more powerful because it’s active and experiential.  You could say that conversation is also experiential (in that we experience it) but words are more likely to get caught in the filters of the mind and not reach the muscles.  

I know of one law firm that goes to major corporations who are shopping for a new legal advisor, and begins by saying, “We can do the March of a Thousand Slides, or we can have a discussion about your issues so you can get a feel for what it’s like to work with us.” 

More often than not, the clients look at each other and choose to have the discussion.   

An active audience is more likely to be moved than a passive.  Hitler knew this, unfortunately, and had his followers do their “Sieg heils,” throughout his speeches. 

Meghan was trained by a very successful company.  She got me to do things—bring water, bring knives.  She got me to say things, “Old, dull and inadequate.”  She had me cut rope, and compare the old with the new.  It was sensational—literally sensational—in that it gave me a sensation, like driving a new car after you’ve been driving your old one for 10 years.

Plus, she was Meghan, my daughter’s friend, and the daughter of my friend Merrill.  She was in a strong position to win my business. 

According to Robert Cialdini and others, there are at least 25 proven Principles of Persuasion.  Meghan may have invoked 7 in her brief visit to our dining room. 

What can we as business speakers, and as sales professionals, learn from this exchange?  Stay tuned for more. 

Needle in a haystack

The audience will be drinking data from a firehose.  The savvy presenter recognizes this peril as an opportunity.

To capture attention—do something that stands out from the environment.  The opposite of getting attention is camouflage. Being attention-getting is not a quality; it is a contrast.

Trying too hard

Lots of people will be trying to stand out, and they’ll make the mistake of telling jokes, displaying cartoons on the screen, or trying to connect with the audience by telling stories about themselves.

Don’t do it.  The audience is content driven, results oriented, and time pressed.  They have limited space in short term memory.  Eliminate all extraneous information.

Not setting the scene

In an effort to get to the point, many speakers will forget to remind the audience of the back story—the space in which their molecule competes, and what the unmet medical needs are.

Your drug is the hero of a story.  It is stepping onto a stage to overcome important obstacles and bring health to sick people.  Set the scene so your drug looks like it has an important job to do.

Offending the experts

Analysts and other savvy investors may curl their toes in agony if you spend too much time on the big picture.

Set the scene quickly, then summarize in a fair and balanced way the achievements of your compound before you walk them through the data.

Using the word, “Robust”

The term “robust” has become a meaningless buzzword, especially in a scientific context.  Be the first presenter to dispense with using it.

Instead, make a statement that is meaningful, such as, “The data are promising,” or, “The data suggest…”

Going down rabbit holes

If you leave information on your slides that you don’t plan to talk about, you are inviting savvy listeners to drag you down into the weeds, which will choke your message with irrelevancies.

Unless there is an ethical reason that the audience needs to know it, keep it off the slide if it does not support your argument.

Not making an argument

There are some presenters who believe their job is to deliver information.  This approach leaves too much room for the audience to draw their own conclusions.

A good scientific presenter should make an argument for the quality of the study, the validity of the data, and the implications of his conclusions.

Blowing Q&A

It’s easier to make a slick presentation than it is to handle a room full of skeptical and insightful questions.

Brainstorm with colleagues to come up with all possible lines of inquiry, and practice responding to the most penetrating and damaging assaults.

Lack of conviction

Finally, your delivery stands guard over the material.  Great data poorly delivered at a high stakes venue is a huge waste of resources.

Rehearse, and where you falter, alter.

The arts of music, poetry, literature, and drama have been around so long that each of them has templates.  To dismiss templates is to ignore the wisdom of the ages.

To name a few, music has verses and choruses, poetry has sonnets and haiku, literature has novels and short stories, and drama has setting, character, plot, and resolution.

Templates exist for speeches and presentations too.  Past to present to future is one.  Cause and effect is another.  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis is yet a third. But by far the most useful in the business world is the situation, problem, solution template.

 In business, define the problem first, then argue for your solution.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

I attended my high school reunion over the weekend, where the organizers had asked each returning alumnus (we were an all-boys school) to prepare a short talk on our best and worst moments as students.

I had trouble with the assignment. My life in high school was a blur of memories, and the more I tried to remember, the more trivial my recollections became.

Pressing on, I remembered the times I cried in high school, and thought to myself, “Well that’s an honest approach. I’ll lose points for being serious, but I’ll be real.”

And so that’s what I did. I watched my classmates read prepared texts and generate laughter, until they demanded I take my turn. I spoke about the times I cried in school–tears of joy and sadness– and sat down.

I’ve been re-thinking it ever since, wishing I had done something different, or devising more clever ways I might have presented the same material.

What’s the best way to respond to post-speech remorse? I suggest (to myself and others):
1. Do a quick rewrite after you fantasize about what you might have said.
2. Ask a trusted ally who was in the audience what worked and what could have been better.
3. Make a promise to yourself not to wing it when you have the slightest chance to prepare.

As far as I’m concerned, presentations are never finished, only abandoned, and every effort can be improved and re-purposed for the next talk. 

If I had rehearsed and polished my talk, I would not have apologized for it.  Instead, I would have explained that memories attach to moments of emotion, and then told my stories as vividly as possible.

Here’s the scenario. A bio-tech company will fly to Paris to convince influential French physicians to use their compound-in-development in clinical trials. The company has invited the French doctors to a nice meeting room in a nice hotel and plans to tell the doctors all about the compound.

When asked, “What is the purpose of the presentation?” they say, “To tell them about the drug.” I say I see it differently. I say it’s to help the French doctors come to the conclusion that the bio-tech company would be a great company to partner with, and that the drug is a versatile powerhouse that will almost certainly make it to market and get their names in the best peer-reviewed journals in the world.

When I lay out this plan, they say it is not scientific enough. I am sensitive to that. I like and respect the traditions of science. But I say, “This is not a scientific presentation. This is a business presentation. Science plays a part, but the goal is a business goal. You need these people to believe in your company and your compound. Our job is to induce belief in them, and raise that belief to the level of action.”

We take the scientific and corporate information they already have and restructure it to make a strong argument for partnership. There is some resistance holding out in the recesses of their scientific hearts.

I persist. This is a “decisional” presentation, I say. The French doctors will say, “Yes, No or Maybe.” There are risks for them. They could miss out on a good thing if they say no. They could miss out on better opportunities if they say yes. There are rational calculations to make, including the fact that they have practices to run, assistants to pay, and time to manage.

There are also non-rational issues. They would love to get their names on an important study. They would hate to work for years on a trial of a compound that never gets to market. Should they say no? Should they say yes?

In reality, I would guess their decision will hinge on what the most influential physician in the group decides.

This was a lesson in knowing the audience–in targeting their rational and non-rational needs. The bio-tech firm was relying on the science to do the job. It seemed to me the calculation was broader than that. For the doctors, the decision would be psychological as well as scientific.

Stay tuned.

I just finished working with a client who had to prepare and deliver an after dinner talk to clients in a museum. Her firm planned to take the clients on a private tour of the museum, feed them dinner, and then she was to stand up and offer them a short talk on investment opportunities in the current turbulent markets.

We spent a few hours crafting the talk, and another couple of hours getting her to verbalize it. At the end of the rehearsal, it was still not right, but she had to go. It was Friday afternoon–the weekend called.

As we parted, I made a few suggestions.

1. Cut it. Your audience is primarily in their 60s and beyond. They will have been on their feet, drunk a few glasses of wine, and will be looking at their watches thinking of bed.
2. Say it aloud at least five times over the weekend (she was to speak on Monday night).
3. Don’t drink any wine until you’ve spoken.
4. Go to the museum tonight, or over the weekend, to see the room where the dinner will take place. Find out where you will stand, what the acoustics are like, and whether you need a microphone or a lectern.
5. Wear something red.
6. Keep it simple, upbeat, and story-like. Don’t drill down into an analysis of the investments.

A few days after the event, I called her. “How did you do?” I asked.

“I give myself a 7 out of 10,” she said.

“How come?” I asked.

“Well, it was too long, they couldn’t hear me, the room was horrible, I didn’t go to see the room over the weekend, I had to cut it on the fly, which made me nervous and look discombobulated.”

“Great!” I said. “Now you know. After dinner speaking is intense. It is intimate. Your audience is on top of you. The rooms are often not good for speakers. There’s noise in the room. The audience is tired and drunk. They want to be entertained–period. They want funny stories and they want them short.”

“It was intense,” she said.

“You’ve had an experience,” I said. And I quoted Mark Twain: “Good judgment comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Bad judgment!”

I told her not to be discouraged. Most people fail their way to success.

She said she was not discouraged, and looked forward to trying again.

She’s a trooper.

Effective speaking has many enemies. A partial list would include a speaker’s lack of experience, stage fright, lack of training, no clear point, too much information, and finally, no clear flow, or structure.

We could go on. But the items on the list are only those enemies that hide within the speaker himself. What about the external enemies–the environmental obstacles, including those that hide within the audience?

Certainly one of the most stubborn opponents you can face as a speaker is an audience that has endured a morning’s worth of presentations, escaped into a lunch of heavy food and sweet desserts, only to be herded back into their seats to listen to you!

This is a test that separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. Such an audience can be somnolent, indifferent, and murderously hard on your ego.

What should you do?

1. Throw a match on them. Light them on fire. Henry Ward Beecher, one of the greatest preachers in American history, once found himself on a hot day in a town in West Virginia known to be Death Valley for speakers. Sure enough, that afternoon, as he was being introduced, he saw that half the town was already dozing. He rose from his chair and, wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, strode to the front of the platform.

“It’s a God-damned hot day,” the clergyman began.

A thousand pairs of eyes opened wide. An electrical shock straightened the crowd erect. Beecher paused and then, raising a finger of solemn reproof, went on, “That’s what I heard a man say here this afternoon.”

He proceeded into a stirring condemnation of blasphemy–and took his audience with him.

2. Keep it interactive. Ask the audience questions. Ask them to discuss something in small groups for a few minutes. I’ve seen speakers ask the audience to shout in unison a product name whenever he mentioned the name in his speech. They got into it and listened carefully in order to be part of the chorus.

3. Keep it short and sweet. This is true always, but especially true after lunch. Don’t try to take the audience on a death march through your comprehensive analysis of photosynthesis in the genus papaver somniferum.

4. Speak and move with energy and verve. You are the leader, and your followers need to be inspired. Breathe some life into them.

5. Tell stories. The Golden Rule of after-dinner speaking is to make a simple point by telling a whimsical but relevant story. The same rule should apply to after-lunch speaking, even though your audience is not seated at their lunch table but back in the conference hall.

6. Know your enemy. Your enemy is the food in their stomachs that demands their attention, even as you demand their attention from the lectern. You must be more compelling than the food that drags them into the arms of Morpheus. Your talk must be flavorful, adequately salted and spicy with a variety of fascinating facts, insights, and bold opinions that are sprinkled with a dash of style, passion and humor.

In other words, you’ve got to be well-prepared, well-rehearsed, and well-seasoned to capture and keep their attention.

For other highly challenging speaking environments, go to How to Give Good Webinar

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

 

What should you do when the lights are so bright that you can’t see your audience?

1. Make sure you know where the audience is and look in that general direction with focus and confidence. The audience won’t know that you can’t see them. In other words, press on. (This seems obvious but see story below for details.)

2. Find something to focus on. Windows or EXIT signs have worked for me. Talk to the EXIT sign on the left, on the right, and then in the middle. The audience will think you’re looking at them.

3. Leave the lectern, if possible, and step to the front of the stage, where you will most likely be able to see those in the front row. Talk to them.

4. Look for another spot on the stage where the light will not be so bothersome and you can connect with your listeners.

5. Ask to have the lights lowered, especially if you have slides on display and the bright lights are washing out the images.

6. If none of the above works, follow the advice in recommendation #1. Focus your eyes for at least three-to-five seconds on the darkness in different quadrants of the hall–left, right, forward and back. You will feel like a deer in headlights, but you look more confident and persuasive when your eyes are focused. So, despite seeing nothing, you will be seen as authoritative. (This reminds me of Machiavelli saying, “All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”)

To elaborate on the first point–”look in the general direction of the audience,” I include an embarrassing story.

I once arrived late to speak at a large event. The host rushed me out onto a thrust stage, where I was immediately blinded by the light. I assumed the stage was surrounded by seating on three sides, as all thrust stages are. Bravely I positioned myself in the middle, then moved to my extreme right to address those who might have been seeing my profile, and then to the left edge to do the same for those seeing my left side. I continued to move in this way throughout my talk.

When it was over, polite applause came from the middle of the theater. The house lights came up, and I saw, to my chagrin, that the small audience was clustered in the middle section of the hall. Not a soul sat to the left or right of the stage. I had been talking to the vacant, interstellar spaces, and not one member of the small audience had spoken up.

I was blinded by the light, and they were silenced.

Derrick called and spoke a mile a minute. His boss, the founder of a new hedge fund and the primary money runner had to speak at a capital intro in a week. Could I come and help?

I asked if the boss knew what he wanted to say, and Derrick said yes, but the talk was not developed yet and he (the boss) wouldn’t have time to devote to it until the weekend.

I asked about the boss. Derrick said he was really smart but not all that experienced speaking to large groups and hard to pin down because he was so busy keeping his eye on the markets.

We set up two meetings. The first to hammer out what the message would be; the second to practice saying it. I asked for a general summary of what would be said. Derrick replied, “He’s going to talk about distressed securities.”

“Is he going to say something unusual about them, or is he going to say something predictable but try to say it well?” I asked.

“By that question, I can tell that you are going to be helpful,” said Derrick, assuring me that I would not see any drafts until I arrived.

When I walked in the door, the receptionist seemed to be expecting me. She jumped up and escorted me into a meeting room off the lobby.

Derrick arrived like clock-work. He handed me his business card, made from the thickest card stock I’ve ever felt. I enthused over the feel of his card. He seemed to enjoy that. It broke the ice.

He briefed me on the status of the script and slides (a work in progress) and then in came his boss, backing into the room as he spoke to an assistant down the hall.

Peter was small and intense, with long hair and granny glasses. If Derrick was natty and professional, Peter was rumpled and professorial. Derrick excused himself immediately and closed the door as he left.

Peter had a handful of wrinkled papers in his hand. They were his notes. He did not know how to connect his computer to the projector, or how to use PowerPoint well enough to re-sequence the slides.

However, his knowledge of distressed securities was encyclopedic and his speech was supersonic. He had so many thoughts stampeding from his mind to his mouth that they got stuck on his tongue and toppled over each other.

Hummingbirds beat their wings 15 to 80 times per second, depending on the species. If a hummingbird could speak, that’s how fast Peter talked.

When I asked questions about his meaning to help him clarify what he wanted to say and in what order, he was wonderfully patient with my modest understanding of his discipline, and used analogies and metaphors to explain his point—a sign, I think, of a good communicator.

In addition to speaking like a hummingbird, he did not look me in the eye, and did not relate what he said to the bar charts on the screen. But he spoke with visceral passion and emphatic verve about the coming crisis in corporate debt—and that made up for his other sins as a speaker. He could lift up his whole body and jump into a key word with both feet–giving it real meaning and significance.

When our rehearsal led him to a new thought, he leaned over the conference table, pawing through his wrinkled pages, and jotted  words on a spare corner of the paper.

He was trying to say that the imminent credit crunch would not be like past credit crunches, due to recent care-free lending practices. In fact, due to covenant-light loans, and CCC loans, he argued, we would not get early warning signs of trouble: we would be in the middle of the crisis all at once.

The challenge was to build the story so that the audience would think they were hearing a standard pitch about the potential attractive opportunities in distressed debt, and then yank the tablecloth out from under the meal spread before them to reveal something entirely new and terrifying.

After two meetings, we had cut the slides down to six and the timing down to less than ten minutes. He had no time to rehearse. He promised he would work on it in his hotel room when he arrived at the capital intro. I continued to e-mail suggestions to his Blackberry over the weekend.

I learned from Peter that he did not rehearse until he was on the plane, and then he stayed up most of the night in a panic working on it.

Two days after the event, he called to say it went well, and that my messages had helped. I called Derrick to get his assessment, who said it was a little short—much shorter than the presentations made by other speakers. I pointed out that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As Mrs. Hubert Humphrey said to her husband after a particularly long stem-winder, “Hubert, for a speech to be immortal, it need not be interminable.”

The question will be whether Peter can:
1. Get attention at capital intros.
2. Keep attention
3. Make a clear point in a memorable way
4. Stand out in a crowded field
5. Move people to come talk with him.

That’s it. He doesn’t have to sell the fund, or close the deal. His job is to generate trust and curiosity.

During the Clinton/Obama debate from California, Barack Obama seemed to get off to a good start, making his point (“I am the future, she is the past.”) at the end of his opening remarks. As I listened, I was made aware of the power of going first. I thought that Hillary Clinton would be at a disadvantage because she had to go second.

But then she began to speak, and I found myself even more deeply engaged than I had been listening to Senator Obama. She was confident, assertive, and crisp. But even more important, she was concrete. She used images that we could see in our mind’s eye. She made her point (“I have more experience”) better than Obama made his.

Let me illustrate this with passages from the transcript.

Senator Obama

After acknowledging the contributions of John Edwards to the political conversation in this election season, and announcing that he (Obama) has been and will be a friend to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama got down to his message:

“I believe we’re at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is at war; our planet is in peril. Families all across the country are struggling with everything from back-breaking health care costs to trying to stay in their homes. And at this moment, the question is: How do we take the country in a new direction? How do we get past the divisions that have prevented us from solving these problems year after year after year? I don’t think the choice is between black and white or it’s about gender or religion. I don’t think it’s about young or old. I think what is at stake right now is whether we are looking backwards or we are looking forwards. I think it is the past versus the future.”

In a nutshell, he’s saying this is an important election, we’ve got a host of problems to deal with, and I am the new guy with the new ideas, while Hillary is part of an old administration that caused deep divisions in the country and has already had her chance.

Senator Clinton

Hillary Clinton didn’t waste her opening moments when viewers would be most engaged: she got right into a story to illustrate her point, a story that enabled us to visualize the future. Here’s what she said.

“On January 20, 2009, the next president of the United States will be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol. I, as a Democrat, fervently hope you are looking at that next president. Either Barack or I will raise our hand and swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

And then, when the celebrations are over, the next president will walk into the Oval Office, and waiting there will be a stack of problems, problems inherited from a failed administration: a war to end in Iraq and a war to resolve in Afghanistan; an economy that is not working for the vast majority of Americans, but well for the wealthy and the well-connected; tens of millions of people either without health insurance at all or with insurance that doesn’t amount to much, because it won’t pay what your doctor or your hospital need…

… an energy crisis that we fail to act on at our peril; global warming, which the United States must lead in trying to contend with and reverse; and then all of the problems that we know about and the ones we can’t yet predict.

It is imperative that we have a president, starting on day one, who can begin to solve our problems, tackle these challenges, and seize the opportunities that I think await.

… there are still 37 million Americans who are living below the poverty line and many others barely hanging on above. So what we have to do tonight is to have a discussion about what each of us believes are the priorities and the goals for America. I think it’s imperative we have a problem-solver, that we roll up our sleeves.
I’m offering that kind of approach, because I think that Americans are ready once again to know that there isn’t anything we can’t do if we put our minds to it. So let’s have that conversation.”

In essence, she said “You want me walking into that room on January 9th, sitting down at that desk, rolling up my sleeves, and digging into that stack of problems. I am the practical, problem solving candidate, not the dreamer, the poet, or the guy whose never really run anything other than a social services agency.”

Much stronger than Obama, at least at that moment. Concrete, specific, story-like in structure.

I was impressed.