I recently had the pleasure of delivering a 3 hour seminar on presentation skills to a group of continuing education students at a local college.  They were studying web development and would be graduating in the following year.

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Watch Out When Using Excel Content!

I just read a blog post on Presentation Magazine where they asked several people for their best presentation tips.  There are 37 in total and number 25 is from Max McConnell, Division Director of Prompt Communications.   Max talks about embedding your excel spreadsheets into PowerPoint and the dangers of just cutting and pasting it.  Max suggests the following procedure.Edit->Paste Special and choose ‘Picture (Enhanced Metafile).  This places the excel data as a picture.  Failing to do this will transfer all the excel support files and you may be giving way too much information away.  It reminded me of a a true story. (more…)

Need an Elevator Speech . . . Going Up?

One of my recent posts, I discussed ways to use the introduction of the story format to be the basis for one’s elevator speech.  Being an member of LinkedIn, I thought I would pose the question, “In your opinion, what are the ingredients to a great elevator speech or 30 second info-mercial for a networking event?”

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This is an all-to-familiar scene in business today.  Mid level and upper management executives are being terminated.  Lets face it, it is not a pretty scenario out there.

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You make several presentations to your department and to people in other departments of your company.  These type of presentations are difficult to prepare for because your meetings and presentations are often frequent, you do not have many resources for the preparation of your presentation and handouts and you don’t have a lot of time.  With time, money and assistance not available, how can you provide handouts of your presentation that will re-enforce your message?

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Just as I thought I had nailed down all the reasons why one should not hand out their PowerPoint slide deck to their audience, I find another good reason.  Dave Paradi, author of  “The Visual Slide Revolution” runs a blog on PowerPoint.  Dave operates out of Mississauga, Ontario in Canada.  His recent post talks about cropping pictures and how the cropped part of the image can be regenerated if the PPT compression feature is not performed on the picture.

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You are making your sales pitch and everything is flowing smoothly.  You are getting great response from your client and they seem to be buying into your viewpoint.  THEN YOUR CLIENT THROWS AN OBJECTION AT YOU.  You stumble, your falter, you panic (just a bit).  You address the objection but the wind is now out of your sails.  Your concluding slides fail to carry the punch that you had hoped for.

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George Torok is an executive speech coach out of Burlington Ontario, Canada.  His most recent blog talks about an exercise one can use to calm themselves before making their next presentation.  This is a great little exercise that carries much weight in calming you down and getting you grounded.(or centered as he says.)

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Non-linear presentations are really a valuable tool for cold calls as discussed in Chapter 2.  However, what about the regular sales call to an existing client? 

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When is the only time you can sit through a performance and enjoy the luxury of not having to pay anything until you have seen the whole show and are satisfied with the performance?  It is the cold call or any sales call for that matter.  Think about it.  You pay big dollars up front to go to a movie and it could be a stinker.  You go to a concert, play, amusement park or any other entertainment venue and you have to pay up front. 

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