Deliver Powerful Virtual Presentations
Published March 20, 2012 | 
As our workforce increasing becomes global and virtual, the need to master the art of virtual presentations has increased. Regardless of which provider you use (e.g., GoToMeeting and WebEx) the issue is clear: is your audience getting the message you intend, so they will take the desired action.
In the early days of PowerPoint, many people thought that they could simply transfer typing skills to produce effective presentations. The results produced overly text-based images, and the common experience of “Death by PowerPoint”.
Similarly, material designed for face-to-face presentations may not work using virtual media, and must be adapted. Remember that in virtual presentations: The audience is not captive, as they might be in a group setting where speaker and audience share eye-contact. At their desks, participants often are multi-tasking. Reduced attention makes it more difficult to “fill in the blanks” when things aren’t 100% clear. Therefore:
- Greater attention needs to go into the structure
- Outline the material so the audience sees the road map
- Summarize long sections
- Provide concrete conclusions and action steps
- Be succinct – attention spans are brief. No section should go longer than the time between TV commercials (5-7 minutes)
- Use text sparingly. No-one wants to read 1000 words. Use active and engaging text (e.g., sales skyrocketed (not increased) No-one wants to sit and read a slide full of text
- Use powerful graphics to grab attention and describe complex ideas
- Integrate logic and emotions into a compelling argument. In a close argument, people make decisions because of their emotional reaction – Do they trust the speaker? Will the benefits of action outweigh the risks? – and then they use the logic to rationalize the decision.
- Involve the audience – pose questions, even rhetorical ones, thereby encouraging the person to stay curious
- Enunciate and vary your tempo and pace. It’s your slides and your speech that are going to keep the audience glued to your presentation
In a face-to-face presentation, some people ask questions out of politeness. This norm doesn’t occur in virtual presentations; therefore, your presentation should raise “next step” issues that the audience may want to resolve before leaving. That leads to a great Q&A session, which allows you to truly demonstrate your expertise. Conclude with contact information, so the audience can follow-up with you.
Finally, control your setting so you are as comfortable as you can be. test the equipment and the provider’s platform; rehearse delivering the presentation. Keep water available. Sit upright (not too comfortable) or even stand a you present to generate them most energy. Remember, you’re selling the audience on an idea – so you need to transfer your enthusiasm!
The Power of Story
Published March 4, 2012 | Imagine you’re selling a product, service or stock in a public company. You present your logical argument: these are the features and benefits; and you support them with impressive statistics. But when you look at the audience, you realize that they’re still not ready to act. So you add a supportive story – and then you see the smile on your audience’s face. Why did the story make it a compelling argument?
Stories added the necessary emotional ingredient. They allow the listener to visualize the central character and identify with his/her feelings … thus energizing the listener to do something.
Here’s an example. A new CEO discovers that there organization has highly bureaucratic. Telling people that simple requisitions that could be processed in days are taking months, doesn’t motivate anyone. They all experienced similar frustrations. Then he adds a story about how the system produced a lack of supplies, which forced the department to lay off people temporarily; how one such mother, who was the sole support of her family, now was skimping on food and other essentials to survive; how her daughter Emily was falling behind in school because of the impact on her. Suddenly, everyone is energized to do something – and action follows.
The story – whether it’s the employee suffering, customer elated by an experience or investor taking a risk – engages the audience at an emotional level that demands closure. And that produces the decision to buy/sell, etc.
So, to produce compelling presentations, include stories about the relevant experiences of your customers, clients, investors, employees, strategic partners, etc. Help your audience feel their pains and pleasures, and you’ll find the emotional link will accelerate the closing of the deal.
It’s Time for Business Leaders to Step in When Government Fails.
Published November 20, 2011 | Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks, has it right. Government officials are digging their heels into their antagonistic positions and blaming each other for not enabling workable solutions and a consensus to implement them. He proposed that people boycott making election donations to politicians who seem to be using the money to attack their competition, rather than generate new solutions.
If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. With government effectively frozen for the next 12 months until the 2012 election, he recently announced the “Create Jobs for America” program; he’s leveraging the power of Starbucks to reach 60 million people and enable them to contribute money ($5.00 or more) to be used to help create jobs by donating it to the Opportunity Financial Network which lends money to small businesses. His goal is to engage other businesses in this worthy enterprise.
But the real goal has to be larger. It’s time for business leaders throughout America to step in and create new solutions when government fails. These leaders constantly confront challenges that affect stakeholder’s lives – employees, community residents, investors, etc. They look for tried-and-true approaches as well as creative new ones, and then apply them to resolve the situation. When they succeed, everyone benefits.
Mr. Shultz re-assumed the helm of Starbucks after the company stopped growing due to
overexpansion, the economic recession and other causes. He challenged the status quo,
adopted new approaches and turned the company around. And now with the company
back on track for growth, he’s taking this no-nonsense problem-solving approach and
applying it to societal problems.
We need more leaders to do this. As Chairman of a local CEO group for Vistage International (www.vistagenewyork.com), I have the opportunity to watch these business leaders confront challenges with creative approaches and produce impressive results. Imagine unleashing the potential problem solving skills not just of the 14,500 Vistage CEOs, but millions of other business leaders throughout the USA to take the initiative and develop creative solutions to the challenges people face, without being dragged into party politics. It’s what we need to do.
Enabling leaders to realize their ability to confront business challenges creatively is the first step toward engaging them to step outside the business realm and address societal challenges. That’s one of the two driving forces behind the newest venture that I’ve co-founded, LeaderSolutions.TV. It provides a forum through which business leaders can share how they confronted challenges creatively, and allow others to learn from their experiences. Listening to the many varied stories will undoubtedly inspire one another.
As leaders increasingly recognize their abilities to creatively attack their company problems, I hope they increasingly will step outside their businesses, and apply their drive, insights and energy to address societal challenges – just as Howard Schultz has done. I chose to gain psychological, legal and management skills many years ago to work within the government sector to make this world a better place. Yet, after a few years, I felt I could better use my creative skills to create new solutions within the private sector and inspiring young people by teaching in universities to do the same.
However, today, with government frozen, and time to solve our economic, energy and other challenges slipping away very quickly, I believe business leaders need to take the initiative in developing solutions to the societal problems and gaining consensus to implement them. While government is the problem, business leaders need to drive the solutions.
Compelling Case + Irresistible Influence = Success
Published October 2, 2011 | Recently, a colleague asked for some help to sell a bureaucracy on making a change for him. Complicating matters was the fact that several other people had made similar requests before and all had been refused, in part because change would have meant promoting customer needs over the needs of his staff. We developed our presentation/negotiating approach, executed it and succeeded. He then suggested we share the process we took with everyone, so others can do the same. Great idea… so here goes.
- ADAP: Adopt the Audience-Driven, Authentic Presentation philosophy. The audience is a senior executive who has three main concerns: Promoting the excellence of his brand, protecting his staff and pleasing customers. Therefore, the presentation must address these concerns, in that order! Second, to help him resolve the conflict between customer and staff needs, we need to bring both the logical and emotional issues to bear.
- Create a Bond: People buy from people they like, people with whom they identify. You do that by demonstrating that you share similar values, background or history. In this case, I began the conversation by demonstrating my personal interest in his area of specialization and commonalities about our backgrounds.
- Create Trust: Knowing that he has to make a tough decision, I shared with the buyer my understanding of the conflicting values he must weigh, and made sure to focus on the super ordinate goal – that in order to promote the excellence of his brand, pleasing the customer was more important than ruffling the feathers of some staff members. Building a bond and trust, enables you to create irresistible influence – the emotional element in decision-making.
- Compelling Case: Since we like to make decisions based on logic, the key is to present a persuasive fact-pattern. As a leader, his #1 responsibility is to promote it, authentically. Choosing to protect his staff rather than the brand’s values would undermine the brand. In this case, excellence in education means creating an atmosphere in which we encourage people to invest time, creativity and energy learning the subject; ultimately, the goal is to inspire people to want to learn more. Anything less diminishes brand value. The leader needed to remember these were his authentic values and that only one course of action would promote them.
- Feel like a Hero: We all want to feel we make good decisions, which is why we should end with a positive conclusion that eliminates the possibility of “buyer’s remorse”. Knowing that the client might experience some negative feedback from staff, we concluded by addressing his emotional need that he made a good decision. With this decision, he would promote his brand value to customers and reinforce his self-image as an authentic leader who does the right thing.
In sum, we combined the power of Irresistible Influence and Compelling Case to succeed:
- Feel like a Hero: We all want to feel we make good decisions, which is why we should end with a positive conclusion that eliminates the possibility of “buyer’s remorse”. Knowing that the client might experience some negative feedback from staff, we concluded by addressing his emotional need that he made a good decision. With this decision, he would promote his brand value to customers and reinforce his self-image as an authentic leader who does the right thing.
- Irresistible Influence: Creation of a bond and trust for the emotional framework for the buying decision we wanted, and
- Compelling Case – A logical argument to take one course of action really promotes brand value in this case.
In your future presentations and negotiations, use the both of them to succeed!
To Help Others Develop, Start With Yourself
Published July 22, 2011 | I’m often asked “Why did you agree to chair a group of 8-16 CEOs for Vistage?”
Follow my career and you’ll see that my passion is helping good people unleash their potential. I’ve studied human psychology, strategy and organizational systems in order to facilitate efforts by good people to be consistent winners.
Vistage is for leaders who want more for themselves and their companies. They agree with Jim Collins’ insight that Good is the Enemy of Excellent. They understand that one of the best ways to encourage leadership development by their team is by openly developing themselves.
Marshall Goldsmith commented about this, after hearing General Mills’ CEO Steve Sanger talk about his development to 90 of his colleagues. Dr. Goldsmith noted that twenty years ago, few CEOs received feedback from their colleagues. Today, many of the world’s most respected chief executives are setting a positive example by opening up, striving continually to develop themselves as leaders. In fact, organizations that do the best job of cranking out leaders tend to have CEOs like Steve Sanger who are directly and actively involved in leadership development.
Michael Dell is a perfect example. As one of the most successful leaders in business history, he could easily have an attitude that says, “I am Michael Dell and you aren’t! I don’t really need to work on developing myself.” But he, has taken the opposite approach: sincerely discussing his personal challenges with other leaders.
Vistage New York isn’t for everyone. It’s for leaders at all levels who are committed to improvement by being open to new ideas and perspectives, willing to make public commitments to peer advisors and being held accountable by them and an expert coach. The CEO Game Changers, as our CEOs call themselves, proudly announce that they want to be the best they can be and will change when appropriate.
If you haven’t yet applied to be part of Vistage New York, think about how you and your team and your family spend their days, and ask: “Is that all there is? Could it be better? Am I prepared to find out?” If you want more, let’s meet and see if you qualify for one of our groups.”