Pay Attention To Your Shampoo

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Have you ever wondered why they feel the need to put that on every bottle of shampoo? Everybody knows how to wash their hair, right? The reason is simple marketing - the shampoo companies have convinced all of their consumers that the only way to get clean hair is to wash it twice. How did they manage that? They did it with a very simple and to the point message. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Your presentations can be just as effective. Just Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Lather - The "soap" of your presentation is your content. Make it pointed, make it precise, make it relevant. This means you need to take some time and learn about your topic. Your presentation will be much more effective if you can make its lather be and do what your audience is expecting.

Rinse - Once you finish your presentation, you need to rinse it. Get a fresh set of eyes to look at it. Rinsing your hair gets all the loose bits out, the same thing happens with your presentation, often times the fresh eyes will see something that you missed. Once they finish you can go through and make any necessary changes.

Repeat - Another word for this is, wait for it..... practice. We all know it, but many times we fail to do it. Practice really does make perfect! The more you practice the better you will be able to make your presentation natural and convincing.

So you see? All it takes is listening to your shampoo. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Oh, and unless you want people to stare, don't hold the shampoo up to your ear in the store!)

Photo: iStock

ROI: What the heck does that have to do with presenting?

Any MBA worth his (or her) salt could go on at great and eloquent lengths about ROI. Return On Investment. I'm not an MBA so I'd like to give you a real world example of how ROI works and why its important for presentations.

I am constantly drumming in to my students' heads the importance of turning in their work. You'd be amazed at how many 12 year olds don't understand that failing to turn something in will result in a poor grade! You would be even more amazed to find out that many of these students have actually done their work and then just didn't turn it in!

What does this situation, which is incredibly frustrating for a teacher, have to do with preparing and giving a presentation? Well, the answer to that question comes with the question I ask those students. I ask, "Why even do the work if you are not going to turn it in?"

Now that might sound a little harsh, but stop and think about it for a minute. Have you ever had a presentation where you just "phoned it in", or one where you just couldn't bring yourself to commit totally? If you've ever done that then you are doing the same thing to your success as my 7th graders are doing to their grade.

Ok, so back to ROI. If you want to get a positive return on your presentation then you need to invest the time and create one that will make you shine. If you don't, not only will you not succeed, you will earn a zero return on investment. A zero ROI is just like the 7th grader who does the work and then doesn't turn it in. Don't do that to yourself, make sure you get the biggest possible ROI you can.

Photo: iStock

Upcoming Posts

Stay tuned for:

• ROI: Business term. How does it apply to presenting?
  
• Complacency: Dangerous no matter what you do for a living.
  
• Speaker or the slides?: A return to a favorite topic of mine.
  
• slide:ology - A book review
  
• Presenting to younger audiences: How do you get important info to children without losing their interest?
  

How to keep your audience interested!

We've all seen it... the boring, seemingly endless presentation.

The challenge is to avoid being the person who is known as the audience killer. How do you accomplish that? There are many ways to keep your audience alive, I'm going to touch on just a few here.

Some of these may seem obvious, some may not.

1. Have interesting content: While this may seem like a "duh" kind of item, you'd be surprised how many presenters are bored with their topic. As a presenter it is your responsibility to make your presentation as effective as possible. So, even if you are assigned a subject that you personally have little interest in, it is incumbent upon you to make it as interesting as you possibly can. If you are interested and enthusiastic then the likelihood that your audience will be is increased.
   
2. Be coherent: It doesn't matter if you have the most earth shattering life changing information to present if you can't get your message across. If your presentation has no logical structure, if it bounces from topic to topic and back and forth then your audience, besides getting whiplash, will not get a thing out of it. They will be spending all of their time just trying to catch up. So prepare beforhand, go through your presentation and make sure it flows.
   
3. Know your content: This goes hand in hand with the previous two suggestions. You MUST be the expert, you must know your material forwards and backwards. I've written on this before (The Slides are Great, but...). It is essential to success to be prepared.
   
4. Quality visuals: Avoid bullets if at all possible! Use high quality photos or images. Since a large part of any presentation is the visuals it is very important that you take some time and ensure that they match the tone of your topic, and that they enhance your speaking. It is also important to make sure that your slides have a consistent look and feel throughout your entire presentation.
   
5. Get your audience involved: An active audience is an interested audience. Get your audience moving (particularly useful with younger ones). Now, if you are presenting to a bunch of business people in suits you obviously can’t have them running and jumping around, but you can have them get up and work with others on answering questions or discussing a topic you have put forward. Physical activity is not the only way to get an audience involved, mental activity is just as effective. Brain activities, such as brainstorming, or simple thought exercises, are a very important tool to learn and use, take some time and examine your presentations to see if there are opportunities within them to add any interactivity.
   

It all boils down to one simple point. Keeping your audience alive and interested is one of your most important tasks as a presenter. It is vital that you do everything you can to make sure that you don't become known as the audience killer!

How to be Creative

In a previous post (Find Your Story) I talked about how you can keep your audience interested by finding your story. But what do you do when you are feeling absolutely no creative spark what so ever? -Kind of like I was when I was trying to figure what to write today...

I found the answer (or at least one answer) in a recent article by the really cool guys over at LifeHack. The author talks about four tools to get your creative juices flowing. Some of the tools are a little pricey but if they work then it's money well spent.

I haven't had a chance to try any of the tools yet but they all look amazingly simple to use.

Check them out and get creative!

Use Some Verve!

I just returned from a week long trip with forty eight 7th graders. We went to Catalina Island and attended Catalina Island Marine Institute, a camp run by Guided Discoveries. (Unsolicited endorsement.... this is an absolutely amazing learning experience for kids and if at all possible you should find a way to get your child's school to take a field trip there.)

What's the point of my telling you this? Simple, during this trip my students did not attend one single formal, lecture type presentation. They did, however, attend somewhere between 15 to 20 highly effective informal presentations. The point is, even though the instructors were not formally trained presenters and did not have high tech presentation materials, they did not even use Powerpoint or Keynote, they were effective for one simple reason. Enthusiasm!

Enthusiasm for your material can make or break a presentation. As I wrote about earlier (The Slides are Great, but...) the presenter is an integral part of an effective presentation. Here's an example from my trip. The students I was with live in the desert and many of them had never even seen the ocean, much less swum in it. The enthusiasm of the instructors enabled every one of the students to not only swim in cold 57 degree water, it even had them reluctant to get out! I would call that an effective presentation!

What can you do to use enthusiasm to make your presentations better? Here's some simple tips:

• Get excited about your material: Now, I don't mean get stupid excited, what I mean is that even the most dry topic can be made more interesting with the addition of some enthusiasm. Add a funny anecdote, use some self deprecating humor, anything that will cause your listeners to perk up their ears is a good thing.
  
• Be careful: Your energy and enthusiasm has to be genuine. If its not your audience will notice and that will make your job that much harder.
  
• Watch your language: No, you shouldn't sprinkle in a few swear words. What you do need to be aware of is how your verbal language and your non-verbal (body) language affect your listeners. Saying you're excited with slumped shoulders says more than you probably want your audience to hear. Try to avoid overtly negative statements, if you are trying to sell your product, highlighting its pluses is much more effective than only highlighting your competitor's flaws.
  

The bottom line is this: Your job as a presenter is to "sell" your topic. Being genuinely enthusiastic and realistically excited about your material are key to your presentation being "Perfect."

A Book Review

Trent at The Simple Dollar has posted a fairly in depth review of Presentation Zen. Go read it.

If you read the book pick the tips that work for you and add them to your repertoire.