Breaking down these 4 key points:

Persuasive
• Present a compelling case
• Present with emotion, justify with logic
• Be quickly and easily understood
• Demonstrate the benefits that motivate your audience
• Build on the NEED to buy
• Present with clarity

Relevant
• Focus on your client – be customer centric
• Listen, really listen to your clients needs
• Make the whole presentation applicable to your audience
• Demonstrate that you have understood their needs

Entertaining
• Be engaging, pleasant and easy to listen to
• Maintain your energy throughout
• Utilise all their senses
• Appeal to a wide audience
• If the subject matter is dry and even boring, you don’t have to be
• Keep the audience engaged with appropriate stories, anecdotes, metaphors
• Be impactful

Structured
• Gives a roadmap for your audience
• This lets them understand why they should listen and what is going to happen
• Provides a framework, not a cage

Preparation in these areas allows you to show your client/audience that your presentation is well thought out and planned with them in mind.

The next time you are due to present to a new client, look at your presentation, and compare it to the points above.

Are you truly prepared?

Turn it on! Getting in the best possible state to present

Once prepared for the presentation, the next step is to get yourself in to the best possible state to present.

Time to turn it on!

Turning it on is about you being in the best possible state for making your presentation. Most of us get nervous before a presentation, regardless of whether it is to 2 people or 200 people. This is a perfectly natural reaction to what you are about to do, and in fact some people suggest that a few nerves make you perform better. 

So here are some things to think about when preparing for the physical presentation.

What you project is what is perceived: 

• Being in a state of relaxed confidence puts both you and your audience at ease
• If you feel worried or anxious people will also feel it
• If you feel confident, certain and excited then that’s the feeling your audience are most likely to have too

Confidence comes from:

• Being prepared (which you are!)
• Getting into a positive state (see below)
• Visualising success – mentally rehearse doing the perfect presentation
• Using positive affirmations – positive self talk
• Have a conversation with your audience – don’t preach, chat! You will instantly make your audience feel relaxed and connected with you

Getting into state:

This is a really interesting part of confidence preparation and there are a large number of techniques used by many presenters. One of the most common, however, is anchoring. An anchor is a stimulus which is linked to and triggers a physiological state. They work on the fact that emotional states have a powerful and pervasive influence on our thinking and behaviour. Examples of naturally occurring positive anchors include a favourite photograph, evocative smells, or a loved one’s special expression. Even reading this you will notice how imagining these things can bring a smile to your face, and you feel positive and happy. For example, a piece of music used to bring back a positive memory will evoke those feelings each time you hear it. And, every time it does that it strengthens the association. 

If we can take ourselves back to a previous positive state, and trigger it whenever we want, we can use this to help prepare us to perform at our best.

This is done in two stages.

First, we choose the emotional state you want to reproduce, and then second, associate this with an anchor (or stimulus) so that you can bring it to mind whenever you want it. Politicians, sportsmen and women, those in the arts, all use anchoring and positive visualisation before performing. Choose an experience such as a time when you had just won something, were promoted, overcame something you didn’t think you could, it’s that feeling you are looking to reproduce. 

The next step is to build and reinforce the anchor. You must use an anchor that is unique, and not a part of your natural behaviour. It needs to be distinctive so that it doesn’t get associated with other states and behaviours and discrete, something you can do without being conspicuous. A good example is pressing your finger and thumb together, or squeezing an earlobe. Or, if you prefer use an auditory anchor, a word or phrase that you say to yourself internally.

Practice makes perfect

Try this out, it takes some practice to get right, but when you have it mastered, it is incredibly effective. Especially as we all live very busy lives, and before a presentation we need something that will clear our minds and focus us on the task at hand.

Once you are in the very best state to present your audience will be able to be lead by you into the same state. Here are some ideas of how to elicit states in others: 

• tell a story that evoked that state
• use your voice tone
• do something that evokes that state naturally
• ask them to move or use their bodies to create the state
• create an imaginary context
• describe a personal example

Get Connected with your audience

We are well prepared, we are in the best possible state to present. Next step: Connecting with our audience.
It’s not what you say….
Whilst we start to think about how to connect with our audience, here are a few points to consider first:
• You cannot give to others what you have not got yourself
• Feelings, not facts, move people into action
• People buy with emotion, and justify with logic
• The emotional state you are in whilst talking to your audience will influence them more than anything you say!

Get Connected!

We all know of great presentations that we really identified with. We enjoyed the content and the presenter really connected with us. Steve Jobs is very good at this. 

Or, think perhaps of one of the raft of excellent stand up comedians touring the country right now. I saw Dara O’Briain recently in Reading and his connection with the audience was exceptional. He spoke just to me (and the hundred or so others there too), but it felt like it could have been just me. 

So what do they do to make you feel like that? It is certainly no trick, it is a well practiced skills and its easy….

1. Be yourself 

Sounds easy doesn’t it? And, it really is. There are just a few simple things to think about:
• Play to your strengths
• Use a conversational style of speaking
• Keep yourself accessible to your audience
• Having a conversation is easier than doing a presentation

2. Influence using both sides of the brain 

• Left Brain – Language, Logic, Facts
• Right Brain - Creativity, Imagination, Rhythm, Rhyme

You must appeal to both sides of the brain and your presentation must include a metaphor.

3. Use multisensory communication 

This is where the language you use will require some real thought to get right. We learn through our senses and especially through the senses of seeing, feeling and hearing. When you deliver a presentation that uses all of these, it will be far more powerful and effective.
Here are some examples:

Words and phrases that people use in VISUAL mode 

• I see what you mean
• I can picture that
• Vision
• We see eye to eye
• Show me what you mean
• I am looking closely at the idea

Words and phrases that people use in HEARING mode 

• I like the sound of that
• In a manner of speaking
• Lets discuss
• Calling the tune
• Listen to
• Loud and clear
• Rings a bell
• On the same wavelength

Words and phrases that people use when in FEELING mode 

• I can’t grasp that
• I feel good about that
• That’s rough
• I don’t like the feel of that
• I’ll keep in touch
• That’s a concrete idea

Charismatic speakers move through these modes from feeling to auditory to visual. Think about the whole range of people in the audience. If you want to get rapport with them all, you need to be sure to accommodate each personal preference.

Make an Impact!

We are well prepared, we are in the best possible state to present, we are connected with our audience. Next step: Make an impact!

Be memorable 

What use is making a presentation if at the end no one remembers you or it? If you do nothing else, you must leave the audience knowing who you are and what the key thing is that you wanted to tell them.

I have seen so many people speak in all sorts of different contexts, and only a few have stuck with me. Sure, I can remember bits and pieces of all of them, but that’s all. 

What are the tricks used by the best? How do you create IMPACT?

Here are a few things to consider when making your next presentation: 

• Use influencing language
• Use metaphors
• Tell a story (the presentation should have a beginning, middle and end)
• Elicit states in the audience
• Use varied language styles – volume, speed, tone, emphasis, pauses

And whatever you do – Do something that stands out! It doesn’t matter what this is, just do it! 

Presentations can be great fun, and if you follow the above advice, you will start to enjoy them too. Before you make your next presentation, plan ahead, and think about how you will put this learning to good use.


For more on developing yourself, your staff and improving the profitability of your business, please do get in touch. You can email me at james@jamesnathan.com, use the contact page on my website www.jamesnathan.com or call me on 07736 831151.