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Persuasive Presentation Skills
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Some years ago I met with leaders of a financial services firm. They were interested in hiring me to improve the persuasive presentations that their client-facing team developed and delivered to prospects.
We sat across a polished mahogany table and had a conversation about what I could do for them, and how I would do it.
He asked how much it would cost and I told him.
“That’s too much,” said the co-founder of the firm. Luckily I was armed with a response.
I said, “Look, if even one of your presenters persuades a new client to invest with you this year, you will have paid for my fee ten, maybe one-hundred times over.”
He looked at me and said, “Well, I can’t argue with that. When can we start?”
Obviously, this doesn’t happen all the time, but it happened then because I had done my homework. I knew who I was talking to. They had billions of assets under management, they were growing in leaps and bounds, and my fees would be considered a rounding error.
I had prepared a simple persuasive presentation based on my research, but the co-founder was a straight shooter. He knew what I said was true.
So the first thing to know about persuasion is the oldest thing in the book. If you’re going to give a persuasive presentation, start where they are, not where you are.
In order to start where an audience is, your persuasive presentation should demonstrate that you know something about them. Their familiarity with the subject, their current attitudes toward it, past views on similar subjects, what makes them anxious, what keeps them up at night, what are their values and beliefs, and their personal and corporate goals. What frightens them, what and what pisses them off.
All that can be called their “position.”
The more precisely your persuasive presentation demonstrates your grasp of their position, the more likely your success. We humans tend to trust those who show that they understand us and our situation.
Send out messages tuned to the feelings of the audience and they will almost quiver with response.
The greater the sympathy and understanding we show, the greater the trust we will risk, because trust is fundamentally risk in its most noble appearance.
Whether the audience is one or a thousand, your persuasive presentation must always be given from the viewpoint–the position–of the needs and characteristics of the people in the audience.
But there are other elements that are powerful tools that you can put into your persuasive persuasion.
Stories are Persuasive
After students at Stanford University listened to 8 one minute speeches, and then a few minutes later were asked to recall what they heard, 63% remembered the stories. Only 5% remembered any individual statistic.
In the case of the Stanford University students, stories were more than 12.6 times more persuasive than data.
Stories are persuasive because they stir emotions, create tension, anxiety, excitement, curiosity, fear, regret and a multitude of other sentiments, including laughter and joy.
It is a very good idea to tell a short, relevant personal story at the start of a talk. It helps people connect with you.
And if your story is funny, unpredictable, or it arouses emotion, whether positive or negative, you will have captured the attention of the audience, which is the first job of an effective presenter.
Get them ready to listen to you, take you seriously…trust and respect you.
Solving Problems is Persuasive
Answer this question…
What do the Geico gecko, the AFLEC duck, and Mr Whipple, the man who squeezes toilet paper, have in common?
That’s right, they are all mascots. But dig a little deeper, what do they do?
Bingo! They solve problems for people. These well-loved characters are highly effective because they are problem solvers..
The Gecko saves you 15% on your car insurance. The duck provides rare supplemental insurance, and Mr Whipple saves your gluteus maximus.
If you do your homework and learn what your audience’s problems are, you too may be installed in the pantheon of cute, heroic mascots.
In a sense, persuasive presentations are problem-solving devices. Persuasion is necessary when there is uncertainty, and he who has the best persuasive presentation generally wins.
Listening is Persuasive
Neil Rackham is the author of Spin Selling. Spin Selling was validated by a study of 35,000 persuasive sales presentations.
He learned that the four big mistakes of sales people are:
They talk too much
They don’t don’t ask enough questions
When they do ask questions they don’t listen to the answers
And they are too quick to push the sale
All four of these mistakes are caused by the same error: NOT LISTENING, which is similar to not interested, not caring, not being curious and not starting where they are.
The Love Doctor, Dr. John Gottman, the guru of what makes or breaks a marriage, says the same thing in a different way. If your spouse is upset, and if you give advice at the start, you lose. You have to sit with your spouse and listen.
Gottman says, “You have to let your partner know that you fully understand and empathize … before you suggest a solution. You have to be sure that they get that you get them.”
In other words, they have to understand that you have understood their problem . And if they understand that you have understood their problem, you have a better chance of keeping your marriage on the sunny side of the street.
It works in marriage and in business. If you listen (for problems) rather than throwing mountains of information at people, you will be rewarded.
Thomas Friedman, New York Times Pulitzer Prize Winner says:
“People often ask me how I, an American Jew, have been able to operate in the Arab/Muslim world for 20 years, and my answer to them is always the same. The secret is to be a good listener. It has never failed me…
“Indeed, the most important part of listening is that it is a sign of respect. It’s not just what you hear by listening that is important. It is what you say by listening that is important…
“Never underestimate how much people want to be heard; once you have given them that chance, they will hear you.”
If you start your persuasive presentation where your audience is, and not where you are, you are on the right path.
If your persuasive presentation tells a relevant, believable and surprising story, you will have their attention.
If you’ve done enough work to marble your persuasive presentation with solutions to your audience’s problems, they will be grateful.
Our own divided electorate is not a new phenomenon. Teddy Roosevelt argued that a “very large part of the rancor of political and social strife springs from the fact that different classes or sections are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other’s passions, prejudices and point of view.”
Most people think persuasion is all about gathering evidence, facts, data and proving a point, which it largely is in the professional world.
But it is also a human transaction that relies on the character of people who listen to and respect one another.
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