I’ve been introduced with fanfare, and I’ve been introduced with a kind of shrug in my general direction, as if to say, “Hey Sims.  You’re on.”

I like fanfare, pomp and circumstance.  But when it’s touting my resume and puffing me up to make me look important, I’m embarrassed.  I wonder if I’m going to live up to the inflated expectations being created.

I like speakers who are capable of disguising their preparedness with a cloak of informality and spontaneity. 

For instance, I just spoke to a guy who sells software to hospitals.  His favorite presentation happened a year ago, when he was alone with the entire C-suite of a major hospital chain—just him, a whiteboard, and the senior execs. 

He was drawing pictures, constructing diagrams, and modeling their IT infrastructure on the board, all the while answering questions and learning about their business.

It was a sales call, but it was really a chalk-talk. 

This guy is a National Sales Director, so he doesn’t need a PowerPoint deck or a pitch book.  His experience gives him the ability to make it look easy.  He knows his product, their business, and how to connect with them

A sense of ease is the mark of a pro.  Watch Tom Brady or Eli Manning in the midst of battle, and they look like they’re on a stroll with their grandma. 

I’m not saying that formality doesn’t have it’s place in presenting.  But a sense of ease that puts the audience at ease is also a powerful technique.

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 a family wedding last weekend, and the sister of the bride gave a great toast.

I heard her round up her brothers as the cake was being served, saying, “Now is the time. Somebody has to say something.” They looked glum and stricken, and left their wine glasses on the table as they followed her to the center of the tent.

I thought to myself, “This is going to be hard. There are a hundred people yammering and drinking. Music is playing. Some people are dancing.” But I was wrong.

Lizzy tapped a wine glass with a fork. The crowd came to a hush. Somebody turned the music off, and Lizzy said what was on her mind.

It wasn’t fancy, clever, prepared, or eloquent. Just real. Sincere. Simple. Felt. She was happy for her sister and happy that so many family members had come to witness and support the marriage.

She stood still. She projected her voice. She was able to think while she was speaking, and she seemed completely comfortable.

The brothers didn’t need to say a thing. Any more would have been overkill. We clapped. The music returned, and I went back to work on my piece of cake, impressed with Lizzie’s grace, her sentiment, and the fact that her remarks were brief and unadorned.

Michael Blechar is a smart and thoughtful guy (and a very good writer.)  Years ago he told me about a good way to organize a sales presentation.

Recently, we were swapping emails about one of my Presentation Pointers (the one called the Power of Words), when I remembered to ask him about his approach.  He said he was not its author, nor could he remember who taught it to him.

Here it is.

1) Identify. – “I spent most of my career as a programmer and I can tell you that I do not envy your having to deal with management’s misconceptions of what it takes to build and maintain applications”. Or “Are you like me and wonder if ANYONE in Washington cares about us taxpayers?”

2) Attack – This is the statement of the problem we all share, or which I had to address and overcome. “I was being asked to do more with less”. “I have/had my hands full just trying to keep the operational systems up and running and respond to emergency changes….how was/am I supposed to suddenly find the time or get the tools and training to change these applications to new service-oriented architectural designs to be more agile in response to changing business needs?”

3) Confess – Personal statement of what I thought or was able/unable to do. “Truth was, I wanted to get the next generation of technology on my resume. I wanted to break out of my paradigm and take on something new. But I was scared. Could I do it? What if I failed? Would I get fired? Would it require extra time at the cost of my family to get trained and become proficient while I kept the current environment running?”

4) Solution – What I did and how I succeeded. “I decided to work part-time on a pilot project using the new methods and tools. While it increased my workload by about 20%, I discovered that by building things in a reusable way, I could now go back in and make rapid changes. Maintenance time dropped by 40% and I was able to do the next set of applications 20% faster. Testing time for applications went down drastically as I reused proven components. And quality went up factorially. I found I actually had more time to spend with my family and was under much less stress as the applications were more stable. Within 18 months I received a substantial salary increase. And, to be honest, I’ve been approached by other firms who are looking for people with my new skills”.

In other words:

1) I’m like you
2) I have the same problems you do
3) I have the same concerns about change as you do
4) I was successful and since I’m just like you, you can be too.

There is something very personal about this approach.  Instead of going straight to a recitation of  features and benefits, it encourages you to reveal something about yourself, connect with your audience on an emotional level about a problem you share with the audience, and speak from your own experience.

All of which should make you a more confident and convincing presenter.

When I ask people to name three talks they can remember, they seem to have a brain hiccup. The most common response is to talk about the most recent one they’ve seen.

At this moment, if I asked myself the same question, I would say, “The Reverend Diana Clark, Dean Richard Brodhead, and illustrator and author Christopher Myers.”

Reverend Clark, an Episcopal priest, gave a three minute talk I will never forget. She told the story of her vacation. She got on a plane with her husband, and immediately opened a new book she had brought for the occasion.

She felt a tap on the shoulder and looked up. The flight attendant was asking her to put on her seat belt. She had been so engrossed in her book that she completely missed the instructions on getting ready for take-off.

She concluded her talk by very gently suggesting that we may often miss other important voices in our lives because of our preoccupations.

No PowerPoint! Just a story, an analogy, and a powerful point about listening–to ourselves and others (including those in high places.)

The presentation skill lies in the revelation of insight through story and analogy.
A powerful point without PowerPoint. The visuals are in the story, and therefore play repeatedly in the theater of the listener’s mind.

Presenting ideas is largely about getting and keeping attention.  Most of us are ambivalent about being the center of attention, but we have to be willing and able to focus many minds at once if we want to be convincing.

Here are a few techniques to capture and hold attention.

1. Say something unexpected.  Start with a bang, not a whimper.  Smokers like matches that light with the first strike, and listeners like presentations that ignite interest with the first sentence.
2. Start where they are, not where you are.  Put the audience in the role of the hero, the person who must slay the dragon in order to save the fair maiden.  For instance, speaking to pharmaceutical sales executives on the subject of Medicare Part D, you might say: “With the advent of Medicare Part D, many companies invested significantly in the potential of a large new market.  You led the charge on this initiative, launching marketing and sales training programs way before your competitors.  And yet you have not seen a return on your investment.  Formulary adoptions have not led to greater market share, and messaging has not changed to meet the needs of the target audience.  How did this happen, and what can you do to regain momentum?”  This is better than saying, “I have done some research into the results of efforts to capitalize on Medicare Part D.  Let me tell you how the research was conducted and then I will tell you some of the results.”  The first is dramatic, the second is boring, and you should strive to have carved into your tombstone the epitaph, “She bored them less!”
3. Keep it concrete.  In the old days, great speakers told stories, used analogies and metaphors to make the abstract more easy to grasp.  They gave examples.  For instance, Lincoln once made fun of an opponent’s argument by saying that his point of view had “as much substance as a soup made from the passing shadow of a starving crow.” Since most Americans at the time lived in the country on farms, and made soups, they knew just how insubstantial Lincoln’s opponent was.
4. Keep it moving.  Not just in terms of pace, but in terms of development.  Make sure that every new bit of information you provide builds on what came before.  We don’t like movies that stagnate, or novels that stop while the author describes a bucolic setting for two pages.  Your listeners are saying, “Okay, I got it.  Now what?”  Make sure there’s always something happening.
5. Shift back and forth between ideas and examples. Your listeners can’t survive in the thin atmosphere of abstraction and generalization.  Bring them down to brass tacks.  Physician speakers who are highly effective at influencing the prescribing habits of their peers are good at this.  They report the data from clinical trials, but they also tell stories about individual patients.  In other words, they use case studies to illustrate what the data means.
6. Get to the point.  Your audience is time-pressed, content-driven, and results-oriented.  A business-like approach adds to your credibility, without which you are sunk.  Credibility is the main currency of influence.  If your audience trusts you, they will pay attention the best they can.
7. Arouse emotion.  Humor is inherently persuasive.  It gives the speaker an unfair advantage.  Or reveal something personal about yourself that enables the audience to identify with you.  I had a client recently–a wonderful woman who works in the pharmaceutical industry–who said in a presentation that she had been an exotic dancer in order to pay for her college tuition.  The audience was shocked because she is a highly respected senior person in her company, and you can bet she made her point that we can all achieve our objectives if we are willing to step out of our comfort zones.
8. Finally, the voice of a person with intellectual conviction sparkles with change–changes of pitch, volume, and speed.  Your voice should be animatedly alpine.  And your body should be full of purpose.  From the patterned tips of your fingers, to the furrows in your forehead,  to the exquisite dance of your hands, you should say, with your words, voice, and body, that you are in love with the topic, and in love with the chance to engage the audience on it.