Guide to Persuasive Presentations

Guide to Persuasive Presentations NetworkiNg writiNg résumés AciNg iNterviews BusiNess writiNg Guide to Persuasive Presentations 2 The Basic Presentation Checklist 5 How to Make Your Case in 30 Seconds or Less by Nick Wreden 8 Coping with Stagefright by John Daly and Isa Engleberg 12 Presentations 101 by John Clayton 15 Easy on the Eyes by Kirsten D. Sandberg 19 Plan for Visuals 22 Why the Best Presentations Are Good Conversations by Roly Grimshaw 25 Connect with Your Audience by Nick Morgan 28 Presence: How to Get It, How to Use It 32 Are Your Presentations Inspiring? 35 The Twentieth Century’s Greatest Speech—What Made It So Powerful? Preparing an important presentation? Whether your audience is a small group of colleagues or a larger gathering of clients, this guide will give you the practical advice you need to master public speaking. You’ll learn how to: Shape your information to specifically address your audience’s needs ■■■■■■ Prepare visual aids that develop, rather than distract from, your points■■■■■■ Overcome stage fright■■■■■■ Grab your listeners’ attention and hold it■■■■■■ Co py rig ht © 2 01 0 H ar va rd B us in es s Sc ho ol P ub lis hi ng C or po ra tio n. A ll rig ht s re se rv ed . page 2 www.hbr.org The Basic Presentation Checklist Here’s how to prepare and deliver that next speech effectively h a r va r d m a n a g e m e n t c o m m u n i c at i o n l e t t e r In a perfect world, you would have learned about the presentation months ago. Your personal assistant would have spent weeks researching startling factoids about the topic. And you’d be sitting down well in advance of the event with hours to spend preparing your presentation. Instead, the reality usually is last-minute. You’re pulling together material on the fly from a number of old talks and hoping no one will notice that the whole hasn’t really been thought through. But you can improve that all-too-typical experience with this basic checklist of the necessary steps for a successful presentation. Following these steps won’t give you a less hectic schedule, but they can ensure that you don’t miss something obvious the next time you have to talk in public. 1. Develop the elevator speech. The first step is the most important and the most often ignored. Here’s how it works. You’re on the elevator riding down from your room to the mezzanine floor where the conference is going on. The person standing next to you sees your name badge and says, “Oh, I was thinking of attending your talk. What’s it about?” You’ve got less than 30 seconds to tell her. What do you say? You need to craft one sentence that answers that question. The answer should clearly contain the benefit that the listener will derive from the speech. For example, President Kennedy might have said, “My inaugural address is about how we can strengthen America and defeat world communism by working together on behalf of freedom at home and abroad.” The thought process will often be difficult, but it will help you focus your thinking about what you want to say. Harvard Business Review Guide to Persuasive Presentations page 3 The Basic Presentation Checklist 2. Figure out the question to which your information is the answer. At the heart of your presentation is a body of information that you and you alone have. That’s why you’ve been invited to speak. But you can’t begin by simply dumping that data on your audience. Listeners come to a presentation asking, “Why are we here?” That’s the question you need to answer first. So reason backwards. Look at what you want to say—the information you have—and figure out what question the audience would have to have in mind in order to make that information a fascinating, provocative answer. You need to spend approximately the first third of your speech asking that question—more if the question is not well understood by the audience, less if it is. You may have to do some research. Here’s where you reveal to the audience the startling facts and interesting trends that will establish you as someone in the know and create a need for your listeners to hear your answer. In Kennedy’s case, he had to spend some time at the beginning of the address establishing the threat of world communism in order for his response—a strong national defense and the Peace Corps—to be interesting to his listeners. Because the threat was already widely subscribed to by the American people in 1961, Kennedy could deal with it quickly. 3. Create the opener. Now you need to develop the opening story or anecdote—or question or factoid or statistic—that will establish the topic of your talk and grab the listeners’ interest in a very few words. This section of the talk should take no more than a couple of minutes. Think of it as the speech in brief. You don’t want to give away your whole talk, but you do want to both orient and tease your listeners so that they have some idea of what’s coming and want to hear more. Pointed, carefully crafted personal anecdotes work best when they don’t contain any irrelevant information. Jokes are usually not a good idea—you’re at your most nervous moment in the presentation, and punch lines are always hard to deliver well. The opportunities for screwing up are legion. An exception to that rule—justifiable perhaps because the speaker was a humorist—comes from the brilliant opening of Art Buchwald’s graduation speech to Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in 1977. It’s actually a personal anecdote and a joke. “I am no stranger to the bar. I first became interested in the law when I was working in Paris for the Herald Tribune, and I covered a trial which had to do with a couple caught in a very compromising situation in a Volkswagen. Now, everyone in France was interested in the case because it had to do with such a small car. The defense lawyer argued it was impossible to do what the couple had been accused of doing in a Volkswagen. The judge said he didn’t know if this was true or not, so he appointed a commission to study it. It took them six months to render their verdict, and they said ‘it was possible but very difficult.’’’ Confident that he had captured his audience’s attention, Buchwald went on to deliver his speech. 4. Craft the ending. You’re almost done. Now you need to create an ending for the speech that is not a summary—that’s boring—but rather gives the audience something to do with the information you’ve imparted. To return to Kennedy, he asked his listeners to join the Peace Corps or work on behalf of freedom around the world in the famous phrase, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Few of us get the chance to ask our audiences to do something that exciting, but we do owe them our best efforts toward real action, because audiences tend to remember what comes last in a presentation. The point is to match the need that the audience has to act on its new knowledge with some specific suggestions about what to do. The device also helps cement the memory of what the speech was about. Mere summaries cause listeners to tune out. 5. Put it all together and eliminate the extraneous. Now you’re ready to take the pieces and assemble them into a compelling whole. Put the opener, the question section, the answer section, and the ending together, and use the elevator speech to eliminate everything that doesn’t pertain to the topic. Most presentations try to cover too much rather than too little, and end up boring and overwhelming listeners with extraneous material. Be ruthless. No one ever protested because a presentation ended a little early. 6. Rehearse, preferably in the room. Nothing beats a dress rehearsal. You’ll find out where the holes are, and what doesn’t make sense. Invite a few colleagues to listen if the presentation is an important one, so that you can get the sense of what it’s like to perform in front of an audience. Match the need that the audience has to act on its new knowledge with some specific suggestions about what to do. page 4 www.hbr.org Ask them not to interrupt, but rather save their questions and comments until you’re done, so that you can get a sense of timing and pacing. 7. Check the location and the technology. Just before the event, get into the room where the talk will be held if you haven’t already, and see how things look from the speaker’s stand. Test your technology out, and ask someone to stand in the back of the room to see how well you can be heard. If there is bright lighting, get a feel for how that affects your ability to see your notes. The more familiar you are with the surroundings, the less you will be thrown off stride when the actual moment comes. 8. When the time comes, be ready. Shortly before you start, check your appearance in a mirror. If you’re the nervous type, spend the time until you’re “on” giving yourself a pep talk. Tell yourself that you’ve prepared thoroughly, that the material is good, and that the audience wants you to succeed. Re-label physical symptoms of nervousness, which everyone has, as the adrenaline necessary to help you succeed with sufficient energy. Don’t allow yourself to get trapped in the vicious cycle of thinking, “I’m nervous because I’m going to fail because I’m nervous.…” This thought progression is self- fulfilling and self-defeating. Instead, look at the audience face by face, and tell yourself, “that person looks friendly. I could talk to her. That one reminds me of my uncle, and he always liked me.” When the moment finally arrives, take a deep breath, smile, and have fun. This article originally appeared in Harvard Management Communication Letter (product #C0010B). To order, visit hbr.org. The Basic Presentation Checklist Co py rig ht © 2 01 0 H ar va rd B us in es s Sc ho ol P ub lis hi ng C or po ra tio n. A ll rig ht s re se rv ed . Harvard Business Review Guide to Persuasive Presentations page 5 How to Make Your Case in 30 Seconds or Less An elevator pitch can help capture an investor’s attention, open the door to a job, or win vital support for a new project. by Nick Wreden Nick Wreden is the author of Fusion Branding: Strategic Branding for the Customer Economy. He can be reached at hmcl@hbsp.harvard.edu. h a r va r d m a n a g e m e n t c o m m u n i c at i o n l e t t e r In 1994, Barnett Helzberg, Jr. was walking by The Plaza Hotel in New York City when he heard a woman hail Warren Buffett. Helzberg approached the legendary investor and said, “Hi, Mr. Buffett. I’m a shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway and a great admirer of yours. I believe that my company matches your criteria for investment.” “Send me more details,” Buffett replied. A year later, Helzberg sold his chain of 143 diamond stores to Buffett. Helzberg’s story is a classic example of a powerful elevator pitch. An elevator pitch gets its name from the 30-second opportunity to tell—and sell—your story during a three- or four-story elevator ride. The 30-second parameter is based on the typical attention span, according to the book How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less (Pocket Books, 1990) by Milo O. Frank. It’s one reason why the standard commercial or television “sound bite” lasts 30 seconds. While elevator pitches are often associated with funding requests, they can be valuable every day. Job interviews, networking events, public relations opportunities, presentations to executives, and sales all demand the ability to successfully deliver a quick and concise explanation of your case. A 30-second elevator speech quickly demonstrates that you know your business and can communicate it effectively. Yes, a lot of important facts may be left out, but today everyone is skilled at judging relevancy and making decisions with incomplete data. In fact, 15 seconds can be more powerful page 6 www.hbr.org How to Make Your Case in 30 Seconds or Less than 30 seconds. “The more succinct you are, the more successful you will be,” says Dr. Alan Weiss, president of Summit Consulting Group in East Greenwich, R.I. The secret of strong elevator pitches consists of grabbing the attention of listeners, convincing them with the promise of mutual benefit, and setting the stage for follow-up. Speak in terms your audience can relate to. And communicate with the passion that comes from knowing that this opportunity may never come again. How often do you see Warren Buffett on the street? Key tips include: Know the goal. The goal of an elevator pitch is not to get funding, a job, or project sign-off. It’s to get approval to proceed to the next step, whether it’s accepting a phone call, a referral to the right person, or a chance to send additional information. Says Ken Yancey, the CEO of SCORE, an SBA resource partner made up of retired and active volunteers who help small businesses: “Rarely are you closing a sale. Instead, you are opening the door to the next step.” Whatever the goal is, follow through. Know the subject. Do you know your topic well enough to describe it in a single sentence? It’s harder than it sounds. As Mark Twain pointed out, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” Knowing your subject well also gives you the ability to stand out from others who might be doing something similar. The issue, as always, is less what you do, and more what you can do for somebody. “I’m a real estate agent” is not as powerful as saying “I am a real estate agent who specializes in helping first-time buyers like you buy great homes in this town.” Know the audience. “The worst pitches come from those who don’t know my organization or how we operate. Pitching me on something that just isn’t possible wastes both my time and theirs,” says Yancey. Before going to a conference, he identifies and does research on the individuals he wants to meet. Then he tailors his elevator pitch to match his audience’s requirements. “If people don’t hear a benefit for them, they won’t listen to you,” says Yancey. Organize the pitch. “Some people are blessed with charisma and persuasiveness,” says Dave Power, a marketing partner at Charles River Ventures, a venture capital firm in Waltham, Mass. “We all aren’t that lucky. But you can still be very effective by focusing on what is meaningful. You have to organize the flow of information to make it as easy as possible for the brain to digest.” Typically, elevator pitches start with an introduction, move into a description of the problem, outline potential benefits for the listener, and conclude with a request for permission to proceed to the next step in the relationship. Hook them from the opening. You have to make an immediate connection with the audience. This connection signals that it’s worth investing valuable time to hear what you have to say. Weiss suggests starting with a provocative, contrarian, or counterintuitive statement that will rev pulses. One example: “Quality doesn’t matter.” Plug into the connection. Once you have the attention of your audience, deliver your message. Clarity is more powerful than jargon. Use analogies the audience can relate to. Power once had to explain a new technology called “strong authentication.” He held up an ATM card. “Every time you use this card with a PIN code, you are using strong authentication,” he said. The audience instantly understood that strong authentication involved multiple levels of security. Personalize your message by relating your solution to audience needs. Emotional appeals are also powerful. Presentation matters. It’s natural to want to speak at an auctioneer’s tempo. But rapid- fire delivery rarely conveys confidence and command. In fact, a timely pause is an effective attention-getter. “It gives emphasis to what you’re saying. It gives you time to think. It gives your listener an opportunity to hear, absorb, and retain what you’re saying,” writes Frank. Have Two—or Ten—Minutes? Elevator pitches can also form the building blocks of longer presentations. Milo O. Frank, author of How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less, suggests looking at each of the points in an extended presentation as individual 30-second messages. “During the two, three, five, or ten minutes that your speech lasts, you’ll have an opportunity to ask—and answer—several provocative questions, paint more than one picture, use more than one personal anecdote or experience. The strategies that kept your listener alert and interested in your 30-second message will achieve the same effect in a longer speech,” says Frank. Harvard Business Review Guide to Persuasive Presentations page 7 How to Make Your Case in 30 Seconds or Less Incorporate feedback. Use video to evaluate your own performance. Give the pitch to someone unfamiliar with your project. If she gets lost in jargon or fails to see the potential benefit, chances are that your target audience will stumble, too. The benefits of elevator pitches extend beyond persuading your audience. They can help focus your thinking and writing. They can ultimately increase your productivity, allowing you to communicate your message to more people. Employees shouldn’t stumble when asked, “what does your company do?” or “how can we help?” An effective elevator pitch can outline win-win objectives, and establish a launch pad for a deeper relationship—converting a chance meeting into an opportunity. This article originally appeared in Harvard Management Communication Letter (product #C0201E). To order, visit hbr.org. Co py rig ht © 2 01 0 H ar va rd B us in es s Sc ho ol P ub lis hi ng C or po ra tio n. A ll rig ht s re se rv ed . page 8 www.hbr.org Coping with Stagefright How to turn terror into dynamic speaking by John Daly and Isa Engleberg h a r va r d m a n a g e m e n t c o m m u n i c at i o n l e t t e r You’re about to make an important presentation. People are streaming into the room. Your boss is sitting up front. Important clients are sitting in the second row. Your boss stands to introduce you and you walk toward the stage. As you approach the front of the room your confidence wanes. Your stomach starts doing somersaults, your palms are sweating, and your mouth feels parched. You pick up your notes and your hands are shaking. Thank goodness, you say to yourself, for the lectern. As you start to speak you hear your voice quiver and you feel your skin beginning to blush. Welcome to the world of stagefright! You are not alone if you have had this experience. Almost everyone has. Even people who regularly appear in front of large audiences experience stagefright. The great American actress Helen Hayes was known for throwing up in her dressing room before every single performance during a career of more than 50 years. Luckily, researchers in communication and psychology have identified several strategies that can help you overcome your nervousness. Preparation is critical Know your audience and setting. Successful speakers know it is critical to acquaint themselves with both the audience and the setting before making a presentation. Talk to a few people who will be in the audience. Ask who else will be attending and what interests them. Find out what audience Harvard Business Review Guide to Persuasive Presentations page 9 Coping with Stagefright members know about the topic. Discover ways this audience is similar to, and different from, other groups you have addressed. Just as important, look over the setting before your presentation. Find out where you will be speaking and get there early. Check