Business Skills 360, the podcast that looks at the other side of business English.
Hello, I'm Tim Simmons and you're listening to Business Skills 360.
We're going to kick off the new year with an insanely great show on presentations.
But first, I want to wish all of you an awesome 2011.
Hopefully the coming year is unbelievably wonderful for you.
I know it will be for me.
Now, let's get to all that awesomeness.
Okay, forget everything I just said.
I'm not Steve Jobs, and I don't have a shiny new gizmo to show you.
If I keep using words like awesome, you're going to get sick of me really fast.
You might have heard that Steve Jobs gives great presentations.
Well, he can wow a crowd of people who already love Apple.
But should we really try to copy him?
His style and his adjectives don't really work when English is not your first language.
And they fall flat when you are an HR manager presenting a new compensation plan or an engineer reporting change orders on a big project.
So, exactly how can you make an impact?
How can you tighten up your presentation so that it connects to your audience?
I'm sure all of you have heard of the mnemonic device KISS. short for keep it short and simple.
This is excellent advice for all types of business communication, and I completely agree with it.
But KISS misses a couple of key points that you also need to consider.
So I've added these and now like to use KISSER, which stands for keep it short simple, engaging and real.
Let's look at the first term short.
Many bad presentations have too much repetition or unnecessary information.
People want what is important and relevant, and that's what you should give them.
Try this after you prepare your presentation go through and cut out thirty percent.
You should be able to do that without damaging your central message.
What remains will have much more impact because it's not surrounded by fluff.
This applies to PowerPoint slides, charts, and diagrams as well.
As a general rule, try to limit slides to one per minute.
And if your boss gives you ten minutes to speak, make sure you can do it in just five.
Next is simple.
Simple means organized and clear.
Start with the purpose of your presentation, which you should be able to summarize in one sentence, something like make people understand that expenses are too high from that purpose.
Organize your ideas into three or four points.
If you want, you can frame these points as questions like this
What expenses can we reduce?
What expenses can we eliminate?
And what are the long-term savings?
And tell your audience what the outline is at the start.
If your questions are good ones, they'll want to figure out the answers.
Simple also applies to your language and visuals.
Don't try to impress people with technical lingo it won't work.
And keep powerpoint slides simple.
No confusing charts or graphs, only the essential information in simple form.
The text on your slides should not be too hard to see, no smaller than a thirty point font.
This will force you to keep the text simple.
I promise you, people will appreciate that.
Okay, now we come to engaging.
You need to catch and hold people's attention.
You want them to be interested.
And how do we do that?
In terms of what you say.
There are a lot of great techniques that we'll cover in our upcoming podcast series on impact presentations.
They include repetition, rhetorical questions, metaphors and visualizing facts and figures.
One thing that is not engaging is information overload.
Don't overwhelm your audience.
Use pictures and other visual aids to illustrate your points.
If you're doing a PowerPoint, don't put two informational slides right after each other.
Mix it up.
Give some information, then use a picture to help people understand what you're saying.
Then give more information.
Being engaging also means being interactive.
Ask questions, look at people, ask for input, get people to do something besides just listen to you talk.
Lastly, you need to keep it real.
If you start talking about things that nobody can understand, nobody can relate to or nobody cares about, then you will lose your audience guaranteed.
Try using an anecdote or story, a story that everyone can connect with, something that everyone experiences.
Tell them why your topic matters.
Tell them how it affects them, their jobs, and their lives.
Connect yourself with the people and connect the people with the topic.
Another part of keeping it real is working within your abilities.
If you're not comfortable telling a joke in English, don't tell a joke.
If you have to keep the words simple, keep them simple.
Presentations are hard enough as it is.
Don't try to push yourself too far outside your normal communication style.
Write.
Keep it short, simple, engaging, and real.
If those words can describe your presentation, you'll do great.
You don't need to use the word awesome.
You can be awesome without it.
When you're in front of all those people.
So long, and see you again soon.
