From all the responses I have received on what are the ingredients to a great elevator speech, I will conclude this series by highlighting two resources that in my opinion is worth looking into.

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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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Every story has three parts, a beginning, a middle and an end.  We can thank Aristotle for that concept.  As children we loved stories at bedtime and by the camp fire.  As adults, that love affair has not dwindled.  We love stories and it is an effective way of communication since humans have been using stories as a way of communicating for thousands of years.  Many people say that they can not tell good stories let alone write them.  This series of blogs on writing a script will be based on Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points” book which I use with my work and think it is a very valuable tool for anyone who is serious about improving their presentation performance and effectiveness.  I strongly suggest you purchase the book and keep it close by as a reference tool. I will spend the next series of blog entries talking about the first part of the story telling process, the beginning.   The story script template can be found on Cliff’s blog.

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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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So you have been asked to make a presentation.  That’s great!  Who cares?  You may think your audience should care.  Do you know who your audience is?  Do you know them well enough to know their present pain?  The reality is nobody cares about your company, your product or your service.  The reality is nobody really cares about YOU!  Hearing that and facing that truth is rather painful. 

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