I just spent two days with a private equity firm preparing the executives of a portfolio company for a sale to another financial buyer.

As you may know, the practice is standard:  Potential buyers meet with company executives to perform due diligence on the past performance, future opportunities, and to get a feel for the executives themselves.

In this case, an investment bank had prepared the slides.  The first order of business at the meeting where the current owners, the company executives, and the investment bankers gathered was to go through the deck, page by page, and attempt to agree on what should be said on each slide.

It was not pretty.  The executives were seeing the deck for the first time.  They knew their business inside and out, but they were not accustomed to seeing it presented as the bankers did.

A long day of haggling and nit-picking ensued.  Some executives were tongue-tied and frustrated trying to deliver the content as the bankers had drawn it up, and scripting by committee continued into the wee hours.

The prospect of a slide deck making the executives look less than professional and knowledgeable began to loom over the group. And the subsequent reduction in the perceived value of the enterprise also flitted through the collective consciousness in the room.

While there are many lessons here, the simplest take-away is to let the speaker find his own way into the vast terrain of his knowledge.  A deck prepared by outsiders sends him into his own head from a point he’s unlikely to have encountered before.  As a result, he feels lost—a stranger to his own experience.

Don’t start with the slides, unless they ignite your passion and curiosity about the subject.  Start instead from a place that seems right to you, the speaker. 

Some of us prefer a wide angle shot of the topic, a broad overview supported by a deep dive into the underlying information.

And others prefer quite the opposite—a close-up view of one telling detail followed by an explanation as to why that granularity is representative of the whole.

Still others want to speak of their own experience, why they love the topic, or simply give a clear outline of the points they will make.

In fact, there are as many ways of organizing a talk as there are people.  But the way should be suited to the person, not to the third party that wrote it for hire. 

The speaker must find the thread that leads his own mind into the dense fabric of his expertise, and allows him to weave for the listeners a vision of his knowledge.

Once he’s got that, he can prepare the slides.  Without it, he will stumble around in a web of information, with no grasp of a through-line, and create at best a patchy image of the thing he’s trying to describe.

Don’t start with the slides.  Start with what you want to say, and say it the way that makes it yours.

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.

Empathy is our ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others.  It makes us more successful in our personal lives and in our careers because it makes us able to connect with those around us. 

Leaders and managers need empathy to build a bond with their direct reports one-on-one.  But perhaps even more important to their rapport with others is the ability to display their empathy as public speakers.

It is at such high-stakes moments that listeners develop in their hearts and minds a snapshot of the speaker’s character—an image that they carry with them.  If a speaker lacks empathy—that is, if she demonstrates a lack of understanding of their view of the issues under discussion and their feelings—her audience will disengage from her.

One way to demonstrate empathy with an audience is to talk about them.  Make your content listener-centric. 

For instance, if you are presenting a new product to a sales force, it would be best to begin by demonstrating that you understand the challenges the reps are currently facing in the marketplace.

If presenting the same product to a new customer, begin by demonstrating that you are familiar with the difficulties of their business.

Only after you have shown an understanding of their situation should you introduce your product as a solution to their needs.

As you elaborate on your product (or service) you will be continuously linking its features and functions to the needs of your audience.

The actual content of your presentation will be all about how cool your product or service is, but you will have framed it around their experience

This may seem manipulative, but it’s not.  Remember, empathy is not the same as sympathy.  Sympathy implies that you feel the same as the other person.  Empathy only means that you understand how they think and feel.

By using your powers of empathy, you are more able to get and hold their attention by making your ideas more relevant to their frame of experience.

If you are truly trying to help them, your skill is not manipulative.  It is caring and constructive.

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.

If you are present in a conversation or a meeting, you demonstrate your engagement by listening, responding, and then paying attention to how the other person receives your response. 

I have found a technique called Motivational Listening (ML) to be helpful in sales conversations and in talks with clients I am coaching.  The technique comes out of psychotherapy, and is designed to help the other person think about their thinking. 

ML techniques are represented by an acronym:  OARS

O stands for Open-ended Questions, questions that cannot be answered with a “Yes,” or “No.”  For example, “Why do you say that?” or “Can you tell me what you mean when you say ‘concerned’?”  Caveat:  don’t ask more than two or three questions in a row: It makes the other person feel interrogated.

A stands for Affirm.  Affirm the feelings that are either overtly expressed or implied.  For instance, “You seem proud of that accomplishment,” or, “I hear your frustration.”

R stands for Reflect.  This means you simply repeat the words back to the speaker.  For instance, if my prospect says, “I need to have leadership presence,” I could say right back to him, “You NEED to have leadership presence,” and then stop talking.   He will most likely jump right back in and say, “Yes, that’s what I want, and what my boss wants me to do.”

S stands for Summarize. When you get to a point in the conversation where things seem to be wrapping up, you do your listener a huge service by summarizing the gist of what he’s said.  For instance, “So your boss is concerned about your presentations.  You think you did well at the sales meeting, and you are frustrated that he keeps insisting that you need to develop more leadership presence.”  And then be quiet, and let the other person respond.

One of the deepest needs we have is to be heard.  When somebody “gets” that they have been “gotten,” they feel good. 

Using this technique, you are present in the conversation, not as the subject of the discussion, or as an equal participant, but as a witness for the other guy as he sorts through his thinking.

Read other blogs in this series:  Presentation Skills:  Stay Tuned for a Month of Presence, and Presence of Mind.

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 think there are all kinds of voices that work for the audience, as long as they feel real and communicate enough emotional energy to engage the interest.

A few vocal things that can get in the way are:

1. Uptalk. Rising intonations at the ends of sentences, making the speaker sound like a goofy teenager.

2. Glottal fry. Gargling your words. Grinding your vocal chords to make the sounds at the ends of words. That bubbling splashing frying sound that comes (mostly) from young women.

3. Mumbling. Failure to shape the consonants in your speech, and failure to project belief in what you’re saying. It’s both a mechanical and a psychological problem.

4. Speaking too fast. Not good when you’re speaking to senior leaders–makes you look nervous. Studies show you and your point of view are more likely to be “derogated” if you speak too quickly, although listeners tend to rate fast talkers as more “extroverted.”

5. Speaking too slowly. A much rarer problem. Makes you sound like you just fell off the back of a pumpkin truck. Kind of a country bumpkin pumpkin. Plus, you’re a stark contrast to all the fast talkers around you.

All of these things can be addressed and corrected with some basic voice training.

We have been helping speakers for over twenty years increase the persuasive impact of what they say and how they say it.

The voice may not demand the same intellectual resources as strategic messaging, but like it or not, it is required equipment if you want to move the mountain of corporate opinion.

We are judged by how we speak, write, and think…in that order.

And people will long remember what you sound like after they’ve forgotten what you said.

(Unless you happen to be like the speaker in the picture, in which case they will remember what you said and how you sounded.)

Ford Harding has lifted his pen to engage with me on a subject of profound importance to sales professionals, leaders, and anyone who seeks to influence others. That subject is the emotional sea on which all decisions float.

FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is one current in that sea. It drives most of us away from the shoals of risk, hardship, pain and loss.

GOG (greed, opportunity, and glory) is another current in the sea. Its siren song calls us to risk our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor in pursuit of objectives that may or may not work out.

I will address Ford’s recent comments in this posting, but first I must clarify my position and then I must make the case for the role of emotion in business decision making. I think Ford and I are using a kind of shorthand in discussing this topic, and some readers might be concerned about the difference between logical persuasion and emotional persuasion.

My position: I am not the champion of FUD and the enemy of GOG. I strive to be the wise master of both. However, I am of the opinion that mankind is more motivated by the fear of loss than the hope of gain. What gets our attention, on a daily basis, are problems. Most people and organizations will not change until the pain of change becomes less than the pain of the status quo. Alcoholics don’t stop drinking until they hit rock bottom. They do not get sober because they suddenly decide to be good little boys and girls. They get sober because they are avoiding the dire consequences of their drinking.

In his book, Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert writes the following:

“One of the most annoying songs in the often annoying history of popular music begins with this line: “Feelings, nothing more than feelings.” I wince when I hear it because it always strikes me as roughly equivalent to starting a hymn with “Jesus, nothing more than Jesus.” Nothing more than feelings? What could be more important than feelings? Sure, war and peace may come to mind, but are war and peace important for any reason other than the feelings they produce? If war didn’t cause pain and anguish, if peace didn’t provide for delights both transcendental and carnal, would either of them matter to us at all? War, peace, art, money, marriage, birth, death, disease, religion—these are just a few of the Really Big topics over which oceans of blood and ink have been spilled, but they are really big topics for one reason alone: Each is a powerful source of human emotion. If they didn’t make us feel uplifted, desperate, thankful, and hopeless, we would keep all that ink and blood to ourselves. As Plato asked, “Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?” Indeed, feelings don’t just matter—they are what mattering means. We would expect any creature that feels pain when burned and pleasure when fed to call burning and eating bad and good respectively, just as we would expect an asbestos creature with no digestive tract to find such designations arbitrary. Moral philosophers have tried for centuries to find some other way to define good and bad, but none has ever convinced the rest (or me). We cannot say that something is good unless we can say what it is good for, and if we examine all the many objects and experiences that our species calls good and ask what they are good for, the answer is clear: By and large, they are good for making us feel happy.”

_____

Ford, I take this to mean that our careful reasoning and efforts to be logical about any important decision –from making an investment, to building a bridge, to figuring out how to land a new client–is ultimately floating on a sea of feelings and emotions, and that we are constantly striving to minimize our FUD (negative emotions) and maximize our GOG (feelings of pleasure.)

If we are sales professionals, leaders, or public speakers, we need to consider all the tools of persuasion at our disposal. This consideration of tools and techniques makes us rhetoricians practicing the art of rhetoric. We are obliged to use the tools of rhetoric when considering a decision for which there is no clear answer–a decision about which reasonable men can disagree.

FUD and GOG are rhetorical tactics which we can use to persuade an audience. You write that fear tactics are despicable, and then wisely mention that GOG tactics can be equally deceptive. Let me remind you that the techniques of persuasion, like many other technologies, are neither inherently good nor evil. They can be used to advance noble or pernicious purposes. “What makes a man a sophist is not his faculty but his moral purpose.”

As for your Venn diagram example, in which you describe the two overlapping circles of FUD and GOG, and argue that where downside risk is high, the use of only FUD is appropriate, and where the upside is larger, it is only appropriate to use GOG, and only in the middle, where they both overlap, is it appropriate to use both, I have to disagree. All upsides have risk, and all downsides have solutions.

It seems to me that Plato, quoted above, is saying that we undertake projects in our lives to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. In other words, to get rid of FUD and grab hold of GOG.

Furthermore, if we are successful business leaders, as soon as we make a decision to pursue GOG (greed, opportunity and glory), we have a whole new set of FUD calculations to make, such as, “What if I’m wrong? What if the future is not like the past? What if, what if, what if?”

It is up to the speaker, the salesman, and the leader to explore these what ifs, and thereby help his audience to the best decision for them. Reasoning and logic will play their parts in the drama, but FUD and GOG will always be the co-stars.

FUD is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.  I first heard the term when consulting at Gartner.  I was working with the analysts in preparing for a Gartner Symposium, and several of them used FUD at the start of their talks to engage the listeners on an emotional level.

For instance, they might have said, “While e-mail may be the killer-app of first generation internet programs, it could very well become the mass murderer of the second generation as it hurls armies of hackers, worms, viruses and spam against the the gates of your corporate security infrastructure.”

I made that up.  But something like that.

Fear-based arguments are common and valid, in my experience.  Our lives are built around the fear of pain and the hope of gain.  Every story we have ever enjoyed in novel, play, film, or ballad is about a person who had a problem (and had FUD) and struggled to make it go away.

In fact, FUD is what makes drama dramatic.  If we don’t have FUD when the pretty young thing all alone in the house on a dark and stormy night hears a sound downstairs and gets out of bed in her nightgown to see what’s happening, then the story doesn’t work.

We have to care about the girl, and we have to be afraid that something might jump out of the closet, hatchet raised.

What if a CIO heard a noise in the middle of the night, and it was her phone, and she heard that a hacker had broken through her security system at work, the one she touted and convinced the company to buy, and she had to get dressed and drive into headquarters and face the embarrassment of a crisis that higher-ups were likely to blame on her?

Those CIOs in the audience listening to the Gartner analysts are human beings motivated by the same things that everyone else is motivated by–the fear of loss, and the hope of gain.  I’m not a CIO, but if I were, I’d be worried about making bad decisions, not looking good when my systems aren’t successful, spending too much, spending too little, and taking too much time to get things done.

We know that humans are interested in their own problems.  We talk about our problems most of the time.  They’re  number one in the conversation hit parade.  If we talk to our listeners about their problems, they are much more likely to listen.  If we demonstrate a firm grasp of their problems, and the consequences for them if they don’t solve the problems, they are more likely to respect us and trust us.  So reminding them of their problems might not be a bad strategy.

There is evidence in social science that it is not wise to use FUD arguments on people who are already in a state of high anxiety.  But there is also evidence that we retain and value information when it is linked to our emotions–any emotions, positive or negative.

Consulting is based on problem solving (i.e., the removal of FUD.)  Philosophy is built around problem solving.   Politics likewise.  For the client, the voter, the audience, beyond the FUD is a vision of a new and better reality.  But our credibility as speakers depends largely on defining, in vivid and human terms, the problem that your content solves.

Let’s not be afraid of FUD.  Used appropriately, FUD can turn a dry information dump into a compelling story about a person, a product, a department, or a company that prevents disaster and saves the day.

“What do I do with my hands?” is one of the most frequent questions I get from people striving to improve their public speaking skills. The answer is more complicated than you’d think.

First of all, why is it important? It’s important because your hands speak quite loudly to the emotional radar of the audience. They can speak of your confidence and your delight in the topic, or of your anxiety and self-doubt.

A little anxiety is a good thing, because it tells your listeners that you care about doing a good job, and that you are a real person–like them.

But too much anxiety, demonstrated by wringing of hands, or fingernail cleaning, or spit-balling (rolling an imaginary spit ball between thumb and fore-finger), will undermine your credibility.

To do a good job, you need to let your hands talk, for two reasons. First, using your hands enables you to find the right word more efficiently, and second, your gestures enable the audience to better understand your meaning.

Please visit Science Daily to read more.

Here is a description of Vincent Scully, a Sterling Professor at Yale, giving a lecture on Classical Greek columns, insisting that “they rise like jets of water.” He is considered by many to be the best lecturer that Yale has ever seen.

“You can make that shape with a paddle in the water,” he says, of the scrolls on the capital. “It’s geometric. It’s hydraulic.”

…his hands reach out, turning and undulating, as if he means to conjure the image to life on the stage.

When he shows [a slide of] the huge choir window behind the altar at Chartres, he remarks that you have to climb uphill to the cathedral, and still seem to be climbing once inside.

“You get the feeling there’s a great tide coming. If you’ve ever rowed, and the tide changes…” Here he reaches out with both hands for imaginary oars and lays his back into it, as if toward the heavenly light behind the altar.

You may be thinking that your subject matter, your venue, or your temperament, prevent you from such theatricality. Doubtless there are moderating circumstances. But that does not negate the value of physical expression in front of an audience.

Hitler was a great speaker (not a great man.) He studied body language with some of the great actors of the German theater. He rehearsed, and had himself photographed. He made his passion and conviction visible and psychologically vivid for his audience. He used his gestures to help bring his message to life.

So my counsel to those who ask, “What should I do with my hands?” is, “Let them help you talk.”

And if they have trouble with that, I will ask them to do what Robert Lloyd, a great English actor, once asked me to do: wave them around while rehearsing. Don’t worry if they (your gestures) make sense. Break the habits of a lifetime with a sense of play. And, while playing, don’t allow your hands to touch your body. Keep them at arms length, making big gestures.

And then comes the final question. “What do I do with my hands when I’m not using them?”

If you’re the Prince of Wales, you hold them behind your back. If you’re Jesse Jackson, you press your fingertips together with isometric instensity. If you’re toasting at the country club, you may hold a glass of wine in one hand and have the other parked in the garage of your blazer’s pocket.

But ideally, I would like to see your body full of intention. You are there to get your point across. Your purpose is well-served if you bring yourself to life, not only intellectually, but emotionally, vocally, and physically as well.

And since your hands are such strong allies (and therefore, dangerous enemies if they go against you) I would keep them gainfully employed much of the time.

And when they need a rest from their labors, let them hang at your sides at the ends of your arms. They’re like bats–your hands. They like to sleep upside down. When their flying days are over, hang ‘em in the bat cave, down by your hips, at the side of your body, (and not in your pockets.)

I once had a colleague who said that everyone is in two businesses: their own, and show biz. He didn’t go far enough. Every business is show business. Business would be impossible without acting skills. Theater artists have the talent to believe in the imaginary circumstances of the script and act so as to induce the audience to believe in the characters and the story. A business communicator must also believe in her product, idea, or service—and speak so as to create belief in others.

As a business speaker you have a better chance of making others believe in your idea, product, or service if you believe in them yourself.  If you don’t believe in your product, you’ve got to scratch and claw your way into belief. How? How do you hoist yourself into contagious belief? The simplest way is to rehearse.

Find the reasoning. Find the words. Find the attitude. Find the gestures that make you feel connected with yourself and the subject. If you’re not turning yourself on when you talk you’re turning the audience off.

Which is more convincing: a speaker’s conviction or her reasoning? Isn’t that the same as asking which blade in a pair of scissors does the cutting? You need both. Intelligent people will dismiss conviction without clear thinking. And reasoning without an emotional investment by the speaker is busywork—boring, pedantic, and inconsequential to all. You need both—reasoning and conviction.

Reason makes them think.  Emotion makes them act.

Rehearsing aloud, you acquire both. And they feed each other. You find words that bring your thoughts to life, and when your thoughts are lively, you grasp them with greater conviction and infuse them with passion. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Eloquence is reason set on fire.” Rehearsal can help you find the reason and set it on fire.

So what are the standard excuses that the business presenter makes when she says she can’t or won’t rehearse?

No time! (He’s making slides five minutes before show time, making his performance slide.)
No need! (She’s done the same talk a thousand times; her suit could make it, and often does.)
No sense! (He thinks rehearsal makes him stale. Without it, he’s cooked.)
No standards! (Everybody in her company/industry is mediocre. Why should she be any different?)
No ego! (He doesn’t want to experience the awkwardness and vulnerability of finding his own voice, alone or in front of colleagues. Wimp!)
No show! (She thinks showmanship is unprofessional, which smacks of sour grapes. She’s probably afraid she doesn’t have the gene.)
No guts! (If he doesn’t rehearse, he’ll have an excuse when his talks flab out and fail.)

A good presentation can make a career. A bad one can leave you clinging to the suburbs of success for years to come. Actors get a month; we only get a few days. Let us remember that business without show business is no business. Rehearsal makes our thinking crisper, our language more vivid, and our passion a better ally. Without rehearsal, we have no show. If you have any sense, you’ll rehearse.

For more on what constitutes preparing for important presentations, see Ford Harding’s Blog.

Let’s take the word presenting. Let’s play with it.

Could it mean bringing ideas, and information into the present?

For instance, could we say that the job of a candidate for office is to make real the information about her past (her track record, how we got in this pickle), make palpable the dangers from overseas, and make vivid the picture of the future she wants to lead us toward?

None of these things are actually present at her speech. Her past is buried in her memory unless she tells the story well. The foreign threats are oceans away. The future is a bank of fog to be sculpted, mainly by random events. And yet her job is to make us feel the importance and power of each of these absences.

To make the absent present! That’s a good definition of presenting. Suppose you’re a pharma brand director selling your marketing plan to senior executives. Is your product present? Probably not, because more than likely your product is an idea–a molecule– and has been embodied by manufacturing. It’s everywhere and nowhere. It’s an idea!

Is your market present? No, it’s absent because it doesn’t actually exist. It too is an idea. We conceive of all that drives people to buy and sell and give that conception a name: the market. It too is everywhere and nowhere. It is also an idea.

And of course your plan is an idea–an idea that is developed based on an accumulation of information about the market. The only way to introduce your idea to your audience is through the skillful use of symbols–words and images.

Suppose you’re a manager of a Hedge Fund, and you want to raise assets under management. Does your product exist in the room in which you’re presenting? Well, yes, it does to a certain extent, because the product is you and your judgment, coupled with the judgment and expertise of others on your team.

But in the selling of investment management services, the product is value, and what that value means to the recipient. Is that value present? No, it’s not. The professional presents her idea for creating value, and if the prospect is convinced that the idea will work, he buys it.

It seems to me that presenting is a performance art designed to bring the past, the future, and the invisible into the present. The tools of the art are too numerous to name, but the main ones are words, pictures, stories, and logic–not to mention the intangible human traits of the speaker, and the speaker’s ability to connect her idea to the predispositions of her audience.

Because the human mind cannot hold many thoughts at once, the skilled presenter creates one present at a time. A film director does the same thing. He shows one scene at a time. The film director has many more tools, such as music, and moving images, and environmental sound. But the presenter only has her voice, her skilled use of language, and her ability to paint pictures with story telling or visual aids.

The driving force of presenting is imagination, and the verbal skills required to make the absent present.

I believe one of the best models for presenting skills is the act of giving directions to someone who has stopped her car, leaned out the window, and said, “How do I get to Bloomfield Avenue?”

If you’re standing in front of your house, and you know how to get to the desired location (your own version of Bloomfield Avenue) you immediately envision the route you would take. In the millisecond before you speak, your brain flies over the road map in your head, your eyes may very well look in the direction of Bloomfield Avenue, and your arm involuntarily will rise up and point in the desired direction.

But then you encounter what Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Made to Stick, call the curse of knowledge.   Your curse is that you know the details of the terrain–the houses, trees, stop signs, traffic patterns, and where the dog is likely to run out and bark at your menacing tires.  You are inside the bottle of your own experience whereas your listener needs you to read the label.

That’s hard to do from inside the bottle.   You know the terrain, she needs a map abstracted from the terrain.  She needs something simple she can remember so she can accomplish her goal–which is to arrive at Bloomfield Avenue.   If you tell her everything you know about the terrain, she’ll get confused and lost.  You need to speak to her in the simplest way possible (but not too simple) so that she can extract value from your knowledge.

As the number of twists and turns–rights and lefts–that you pour into her nervous ear increases, the value of your information decreases, because she can’t remember too many turns.  When she reaches a saturation point, she stops listening.

If you are attentive to the look in her eyes, or her bitten lip,  you might ask her to repeat what you said, to see if she understands and remembers.  Or you could volunteer to write it down, or draw a picture.  Your initiative is necessary because most of the time when people are confused they are too embarrassed to admit it or unwilling to impose on your time even more.

(I get confused very quickly when listening to directions. I have to repeat them aloud, and even act them out for myself, moving my hands this way and that while I repeat what I’ve heard.)

Your degree of confidence also plays a big part in the value of your directions.  If you don’t seem confident, the listener sitting behind the wheel discounts what you’re saying, and only pretends to listen out of politeness while thinking to herself, “I’ve got to find another person to ask.  This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

In fact, it’s my experience that when I ask people for directions, a lot of them will make something up just so they can give the appearance of being an expert on the topography of their community (their area of expertise.)   I know this because if I’m listening to someone and don’t think he’s really confident in what he’s saying, and I drive away to ask another person, inevitably I get a completely different perspective.

Finally, judging from my own behavior, I believe we prefer to ask for directions from someone who looks well-dressed, which signals to us that he or she is a credible and trustworthy source of information.

Giving directions to a lost stranger has deep similarities to presenting in business.  Giving directions is helping your listener by solving a problem for her, being sure that you give her the right information and no more than she needs,  and giving her a chance to ask clarifying questions.

Sounds like presenting to me!

Here are the nine take-aways!

1. Know your material like the back of your hand.
2. Beware the curse of knowledge.  It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle. If you tell them everything, they remember nothing.
3. Keep it simple but not too simple.
4. Keep it interactive.  Keep an eye on them to see if their eyes are glazing over.
5. Ask them questions when you see signals.
6. Speak with confidence to inspire their confidence in you.
7. Allow your body to help you communicate.
8. Don’t make stuff up.  Say, “I don’t know.”  Humility is an underrated virtue.
9. Dress the part.  Look like a trustworthy source of information.