Archive for the ‘public speaking courses’ Category

How Will You be Different for Your Clients in 2010?

January 11th, 2010 |1 comment

With 2010 promising more than 2009 ever could, how will you be different for your clients? Will your sales team visit them and offer the same products in the same old way, just hoping that they will need your products this time?

Or will you enable them to be different. Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Break the mould: Give staff permission to vary the traditional sales presentation. If the client sees the 2010 sales presentation as 2009 extended, why would they pay attention? They have seen it before!
  2. Then jump on the bits of the mould: Encourage your staff to try something different. Just because your staff have permission to try something new in the sales presentation side does not mean that they will. Actively encourage them to be different.
  3. Equip them: Give them the tools to be different. This includes training, support material and maybe even pricing structures (though this is not as important). If you want things to change, how will they change unless you drive the changes with a new approach?
  4. Get ideas from industries not related to you. If you are in the superannuation game, look at what the food sector is doing to sell their product. You will be amazed at what you can learn. If you look at your own industry too much you will put the blinkers on to what is possible. Industry experts have their place, but keep your eyes open for someone who knows nothing about what you do. That is the person who will question the norm.

If 2010 is to be different to 2009, how will YOU make it different. As always, your thoughts are appreciated below….

Cheers,

Darren Fleming


PowerPoint and your Logo – an unhealthy relationship

October 21st, 2009 |no comments

Ever since PowerPoint invaded the world 10+ years ago, the marketing department has insisted that the company logo must be on ALL the slides. It’s now time to move on from that and here’s why:

1. Clients don’t really care about your logo. Let’s face it, do you care about another companies logo and want to see it all the time?
2. You don’t need your logo for branding during the presentation. If the audience cannot remember where you are from during your presentation you’ve got work to do and your logo wont fix it.
3. How excited are you to see Channel 7 put the Olympic logo up 12 months out from the Olympics – annoying isn’t it
4. More often than not, the logo will detract from pictures on the screen. The last thing you want is your logo standing out as something that doesn’t fit in.

Next time, Go Zen – less is more.

Cheers

Darren Fleming


How to Give World Class Business Presentations

June 4th, 2009 |1 comment

When you are speaking, you are selling.

You could be selling your latest widget to your next customer, your ideas to your staff, or selling yourself in your annual performance review. What ever it is, you are selling.

But the reality is the results that you achieve will be a direct result of how well you present your ideas, as opposed to how good your ideas are. The world is full of bad ideas that were sold correctly, while the good ideas die with their creator.

If you want to sell more products, if you want your staff to listen to you, or if you want to be able to get that pay rise, you need to be able to sell your ideas, and sell them well.

Recorded in front of a live audience, in this audio will give you the reasons why you need to:

  • Include stories in your next presentation
  • Control the room from the moment you enter it
  • Why you need to make your very first word interesting
  • Why PowerPoint fails more often than it succeeds…and

The one thing you must remember at the start of every presentation so your audience will listen to you

At just $15, this could just be the best investment you make in your next Business Presentation.

Get it now


How to Make Statistics Training Interesting!

March 24th, 2008 |3 comments

I recently had the opportunity to offer some presentation coaching with a client – Trina – who spent her day delivering statistical training. Her area of speciality was ‘imputation’, which looks at how you estimate certain numbers. As you could imagine, you could make the topic very dry and boring without even trying!

As I watched Trina deliver her training, I noticed that the people in the room were actually becoming involved and excited (well OK – Just involved) in what was being presented. Granted the participants were interested in the information, but lets face it, this was the fourth day of a full week of advanced statistical training! People were bound to be tired and over it. Why were these people so interested?

At the end of the training, Trina came up to me and apologised for all the things that she did wrong, and wished that she could do better. She said this was why she needed public speaking coaching. She apologised for holding her notes while she spoke, apologised for being nervous and apologised for being genuinely excited about the topic when no-one else was. What she did not realise was that her excitement for the topic was what made her so successful at her job.

Her enthusiasm for her topic was evident from the start. She told the participants that she was genuinely excited about the statistical Normal Curve, and what could be achieved by understanding it. She told stories of how her last employer ignored the normal curve, and how it cost them dearly. She showed the participants how they could follow the rules and avoid the same dire consequences. This is what involve the audience.

It was her enthusiasm for the subject that really entertained the audience. She was excited, and happy to be training and the carried her through and the audience through what was at times very tough and tedious learning

The fact that she held her notes, was no real distraction. The audience knew it was a technical presentation, and knew there was a lot of information to be presented, and understood that it would have been difficult to present off the top of your head. I gave her a few pointers on how to reduce the number of notes. She had several pages of the notes she was using. These were primarily be PowerPoint slides she was talking to. She could have made these notes more useful to her by reducing the amount that she wrote on them. Simple bullet points instead of full sentences would have helped her.

She also would have been better do not read the slides verbatim. Many public speaking articles have been written about how to use PowerPoint properly. They all suggest that you should not read what is on the slides as it simply distracts the audience. In fact, there is some research coming out of the University of New South Wales suggesting that reading the slides at the same time as people listening to you and reading them reduces the amount that they take in. This is due to cognitive overload. Our brain can only do so much at once and if we have to listen and read the same stuff, we will not taken as much information.

So yes it is possible to make statistics interesting! If Trina could make statistics interesting, can’t you make you all topic interesting? How do you do this? Follow Trina’s example: be excited about your topic; have stories relate to your topic; & show how the stories relate to your audience.

You can get more information about stories in public speaking by following this link to Executive Speaking.

Till later,

Cheers,

Darren

If you liked this, there are more great tips on making any speech interesting at Speak Motivate and Lead.
Australian Public Speaking courses
www.executivespeaking.com.au


Darren Fleming and Executive Speaking

February 10th, 2008 |1 comment

If you’re looking to improve your presentation and communication skills, you need someone who has spoken to large audiences, can show you how to use humour and can give you the skills to think on your feet.

Darren Fleming from Executive Speaking can teach you the skills that you are after.

Are you WOWing your Audience?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaSRNaLZT4o&rel=1]
Get these skills from

http://www.ExecutiveSpeaking.com.au


The Nuts and Bolts of Public Speaking: Book review

February 3rd, 2008 |3 comments

I have just finished a great book on public Speaking, The Nuts and Bolts of Public Speaking.  The author Craig Valentine is the 1999 World Champion of Public Speaking and a highly paid keynote speaker in the US.

What sets this book apart from others is that it focuses on the basics.  From speech structure to how to use the rule of three to gte your point across with more impact, this book has it all.

There is one fantastic section that I loved.  It was on finding the magical moments from your own life that will bring your speech alive.  These are the parts of your speech that the audience will hang off.  Despite what we think, we all have an enormous amount of stories that we can draw upon to help us illustrate our points.  This section is well worth the cost of the book alone.

If this book could be improved anywhere, it is that there is no index or detailed table of contents.  This is a great reference book, but the lack of an index makes it difficult to reference!

Over all, a great book, and you can order a copy from Craig here.  Just tell him I sent you.

‘Til next time.

Cheers

Darren Fleming

Australian Toastmasters Champion


Great Speakers are Great Persuaders.

February 3rd, 2008 |2 comments

If you have to persuade anyone, you will need this!

When a great speaker stand to speak, they have a whole arsenal of tools that they can use to persuade you to their message.  One that we can all use is the “Push and Pull” method.

Put simply, the “Push and Pull” refers to how you structure the features and benefits in your message.  (Understanding the difference between features and benefits is a basic sales technique.  For example, the feature of the car is that it has an air-conditioner; the benefit is that you can travel in cool comfort on hot days.  People will always buy the benefits over the features)

You can use the Push and Pull to deliver your benefits in different ways:

  • The Push – The air-conditioner is great because you can travel in comfort.
  • The Pull – The air-conditioner is great because you don’t want to be hot and sticky when you arrive at your destination.

Both the Push and Pull give the benefits of having an air-conditioner but they are worded differently.  The Push a positive approach while the Pull has a negative approach.

You can use these two techniques individually or together.  If you were to use them together you could say something like, “The air-conditioner is great because you can travel in comfort.  After all, who wants to arrive all hot and sticky?”

So how does this apply to today’s work place?  When structuring your message, look at how you can use the positive and negatively worded benefits in your message.  This can apply to anything from change management, the need to increase sales or even in training sessions.  Simply focus on your message and how it benefits your audience and use the “Push and Pull” to get your message across.

‘Til next time.

Cheers

Darren Fleming

Australian Toastmasters Champion


Marketing your Public Speaking skills

November 13th, 2007 |1 comment

This blog was not created to show people how to become wealthy public speakers. There are plenty of public speaking blogs out there that can do that.

However, I recently came across this piece of advice from Patricia Fripp, a San Francisco based public speaking coach. They points are great and should be spread. You can get more of Patricia Fripps insights here.

Everything in life is about marketing. Weather you are trying to sell an idea at work or your services as a speaker you need to understand what you have to offer others. Below are some points that will help.

Successful marketing means that you identify prospective clients and position yourself in the market so they choose you over your competition. When I sit down with clients who want to position their marketing, I seek the answers to four basic questions:

1. WHO IS YOUR POTENTIAL CLIENT?

Who wants to buy or could be stimulated to want to buy? Who is in a position to buy what you sell? What geographical and financial factors affect this ability? A good way to identify future clients is to listen
— really listen — to those you have now. Their comments, especially negative ones, will help you tailor both your product and your approach to other prospects.

2. WHY WILL THEY WANT TO BUY?

What emotional and physical factors will influence them? I just worked with an east coast psychiatrist who ran a practice with ten other psychiatrists and wanted to position herself. Our conversations quickly disclosed that her community was predominantly upwardly mobile professionals. Many of the women had delayed having children. Due to fertility drugs, a high percentage of families had twins, triplets, or more. We decided to focus her practice on these families, the first practice in the area to do that. How did we do this? First, we realized her potential audience was geographical, that is, in her community rather than regional, national or international. These prospects had distinctive demographics. By appealing to a unique aspect, we hit on her core group. She’s now hugely successful in her practice.

3. WHAT ANGLE SHOULD YOU TAKE? How is your product or service unique?

Why is it perfect for your target audience? How is it different from everyone else’s? How will it fulfill your core group’s needs in a way that no one else can? This is positioning yourself in the market.
(Remember how Avis advertised, “We try harder.”) As an example, when other advertising consultants do presentations, they talk about budgets, print versus TV, soft versus hard sell. I position myself by emphasizing that you start by targeting your audience, positioning your product, and creating distinctive selling propositions. Lots of mom-and-pop businesses, confronted by super stores, can’t compete or even survive unless they find a unique niche to fill.

4. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SELL IT?

We all know people with great ideas, products, and inventions. They spend a fortune developing this product, but it sits there because they have no idea what to do with it. Is there a system in place to put your product in the customers’ hands and return their money to you? Or do you need to create one?

Cheers

Darren Fleming
Australian Public Speaking courses


PowerPoint

September 24th, 2007 |no comments

These days it seems that every business presentation you go to has to have a PowerPoint slide show.  While PowerPoint is a great presentation aid for delivering a message, if you’re not careful it will smother what you have to say.  PowerPoint should improve your message, and not become your message.  PowerPoint is about making it easier for your audience to understand and accept your message.  It’s  not about showing off how clever you can be.  Below are a few points to keep in mind when you next need to use PowerPoint.

  1. Should you use PowerPoint?  Not every message should be put into a PowerPoint presentation.  if you are considering using PowerPoint ask yourself if it will help your audience understand your message.  If it wont help, be different and don’t use it! 
  2. Don’t let the PowerPoint presentation be a substitute for knowing your message:  Don’t fall for the trick of reading the slides to deliver your message.  If you simply read your slides, your audience will read them too. They will read ahead of you and blank out what you are saying.
  3. Minimise visual distractions:  Everytime your audience sees movement on the screen they will look at it. If they are paying attention to the screen, they are not paying attention to you. 
  4. Just because PowerPoint can, does not mean that you should:  PowerPoint is fun to play with and can do some amazing things, but that does not mean that your audience wants to see it.  After they have seen the first slide fly in from the right, the heading type itself out and the bullet points twirl in from the distance they will become tried of it.  If your doing it to keep them entertained, can I suggest that you should look more closely at your content.
  5. Use contrasting backgrounds:  Make your background 1 solid colour and choose a font colour that can be easily seen against it.  If your audience has to struggle to see the text they will have trouble reading it.  If you make regular presentations to clients consider getting a professional template made.  Standard Microsoft templates stand out!
  6. Know and use the ‘B’ key:  When you no longer want the audience to see what is on the screen simply press the ‘B’ key and this will turn the screen black.  When there is nothing to look at, they audience will pay attention to you.  This is what you want. When you want to move to the next slide, simply press the space bar or click as you normally would.  The ‘W’ key has the same affect and turns the screen white.
  7. If you are going to use a laser pointer, have a reason to use it:  The reason you have a laser pointer is to point out specific things.  If you are using a pointer to simply point to the words that you are saying, what message are you giving about your audience?
  8. Moving from slide to slide is easier than it looks!  There are many ways to move forward with slides.  Pressing the left button on the mouse is the most obvious.  But did you know that the left and right arrows will move you around the slides too, as will the space bar.  If you want to go to a specific slide, simply type the number in and press the enter key and you will go there.  You can get a ton of other tips by pressing the ‘F1″ key!
  9. Never skip a slide!  If there are slides in your presentation that you don’t want to use, hide them from your presentation before you get up to speak.  If you are standing in front of the audience and you skip 2 slides, the audience will wonder what was on those slides and wont pay attention to what you are saying.  This will brake your connection with the audience and ruin your credibility.
  10. Limit the number of slides:  For those old enough to remember your aunties slide show of her trip to Europe you will know why you have to minimise the number of slides you use.  If you weren’t around in the 70’s and don’t know what a slide show is consider yourself lucky!
  11. Get to the point:  As with any type of presentation, you need to get to the point ASAP.  After all, time is in short supply these days.

PowerPoint is a great tool that can help you deliver your message.  Just don’t let it become your message.

‘Til next time.

Cheers

Darren


The 7 commandments of Public Speaking

September 2nd, 2007 |1 comment

In order to communicate effectively with anyone, there are a number of rules and conventions that should be followed.  Although I generally don’t like to be prescriptive, the points below offer a quick checklist for speakers.

  1. Know your reason for speaking:  Know what message you want to convey during your talk.  This will make preparation much easier;
  2. Know who your audience is, and what they want:  By understanding your audience, you will be able to tailor your message to meet their needs;
  3. Give your audience a reason to listen:  Find out what is important to your audience and use this as part of your presentation.  By knowing this your audience will pay attention to you so you can get your message across.
  4. Only speak to one person: Although this sounds counter intuitive, speaking to one person will bring the audience into what you have to say.  Whilst you see many people that you are speaking too, your audience only sees 1 person speaking to them.  Therefore, from their point of view, you are in a one-to-one speaking situation.  Speak as though you are in a one-to-one situation and the audience will think that you are talking directly to them!
  5. Tell a story and make a point:  People do not want to hear just the facts; they want to now what the facts mean.  So give them the stories behind the facts;
  6. Always leave them wanting more.  Don’t give everything away in your speech.  Always leave them wanting more so they want to follow you up.


« Older Entries Newer Entries »

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

0422 670 659

call now!

Make an Enquiry

Please contact me to discus how you can help our team

Get This!