On January 9, 2006, Howard Stern debuted his new show on the Sirius Satellite Radio Network. It is easy for mainstream business or political figures to dismiss Stern as a mere prankster who panders to the lowest common denominator through an obsession with sex, bodily functions, bathroom humor and more sex. But many others have tried the same road Stern is on and most have failed. Millions of people love Howard Stern, and a lot of people love to hate him. Personally, I am neutral. I find him mildly amusing, but if I don’t listen to him for 14 months, and then listen to him again, I don’t feel like I’ve missed much.
But it is undeniable that Stern has become a major figure in American pop culture. The shock jock has the most zealous fans of any entertainer around. You can not deny Stern’s success. Stern is well on his way to joining the Oprah-Martha Steward Media Billionaires Club. But I believe there are secrets to Stern’s success that are transferable to others (without being obscene!). Here are the 10 key principles that I believe Stern has used as he built his media empire that can be duplicated by others who wish to be powerful communicators:
- Talk about what really interests you. (It’s not as if Stern has to fight a daily impulse to discuss the Federal Reserve)
- Make fun of yourself. (Stern always ridicules his own manhood)
- State your beliefs even at the risk of offending people. (In Stern’s case the FCC documents his numerous offenses)
- Be unique. (Through his dress, style, vocal tone and message, Stern has been different from his competitors for 30 years)
- Consistently communicate a consistent message. (Howard has been doing the same thing for 30 years—he doesn’t reinvent himself)
- Display passion (When Howard is angry or upset, he reveals all)
- Treat your audience like gold. (Howard treats his audience members like they are closer to him than his own family. He even has parties for them.)
- Treat all people equally. (Whether you are a poor person with a handicap or a rich Hollywood celebrity like Alec Baldwin, Stern gives everyone the same level of disrespect.)
- Reveal yourself. (When Howard was going through a divorce, he revealed all to his listeners)
- Work incredibly long and hard hours. (Howard has gotten up at 4:00 AM in the morning for decades and spent every waking moment coming up with new bits for his show)
Here are 10 quick tips to help you add polish at the podium, enjoy your public speaking experience and influence your listeners.
- Begin with the end in mind. Start planning your presentation by asking and answering this question: What do I want my audience to remember when they leave my presentation?
- Use a mind-map or other right-brain organizational tool to organize your presentation. Landscape beats portrait when it comes to presentation planning. Think, “map, direction, flow” rather than lists, paragraphs and text.
- Know the “story” your presentation tells. Refrain from data-dumping. The information you present has a story behind it. Your audience will understand the details better if they understand the big picture first.
- Do not apologize or put yourself down publicly. Even if you didn’t prepare, feel insecure, or have forgotten your slide show.
- Look at one person at a time rather than scanning the room. People feel your intention to include them individually if you speak directly to them. If it’s a large crowd, mentally divide the audience into a tic-tac-toe grid and target an individual to look at from each section. One-to-one eye contact creates connection differently from scanning the crowd.
Read full article via humancapitalleague.com
So how did President Bush do in his State of the Union Address? At the risk of being institutionalized against my will, I make the following assessment of this speech: George W Bush is arguably a better public speaker now than were Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and George H. W. Bush in their prime. Such a statement just a few short years ago would have been laughable, but not today.
Whether you love or loath George W. Bush, you can not deny that he has learned how to read a teleprompter. His smirks are gone. The squinting has disappeared. The nervous rushing trough a speech is a distant memory. Tics are non-existent. The first half of his speech was completely devoid of any stumbles whatsoever. Granted, he did stumble over 10 words in the second half, but none were disruptive.) Indeed, Bush was devoid of Bushisims.
Bush exuded confidence through his steady eye contact and his lack of head jerking. He conveyed emotion without seeming exasperated. For once, he seemed to have spent more hours rehearsing his speech in a week that at the gym.
Stylistically, Bush seemed sincere and was devoid of petty jabs at long-forgotten adversaries like Kerry and Gore. Unless you were a die-hard Bush hater, he didn’t seem smug or arrogant. Instead, his tone was conversational and relaxed.
Of Course, Bush isn’t perfect on technical grounds yet. He got thirsty and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth too often (in search of moisture?) during the second half of the speech. And it probably goes without saying that Bush still can’t pronounce the word “nuclear,” though in his defense, he is not a nuclear engineer (like some previous presidential mispronouncers of the word).
So how did Bush’s speech rate on political grounds? Since this President has the lowest poll ratings of anyone since Nixon at this state of a second term, Bush was in serious need of receiving a boost. Bush sounded the most non-partisan of his presidency. I predict he will receive a short-term boost in his polls from many independent voters who liked his stance on HIV/AIDS or on developing non-traditional forms of energy.
But conservatives must have been disappointed by the least red meat-filled speech of the Bush Presidency. The hard-fought Alito Supreme court victory barely got mentioned (at 3 minutes to 10:00 PM). Bush requesting congress to give him the line-item veto was as pathetically amusing as watching Linus hoping for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. Did Bush think this fantasy gimmick would fool conservatives into thinking he wasn’t the most fiscally irresponsible president in the history of the world?
Liberals are far beyond being impressed by Bush’s style. In their world, Bush is forever the inarticulate, bumbling, bungling idiot-son-in-chief. There is only one thing that would have impressed them. If Bush had admitted categorical failure in his plan to invade Iraq and then called for the complete elimination of troops from that country. Nothing else would impress Liberals.
Bush is an inspiration for all late-bloomers in life, but his new rhetorical
skills may have come too late to alter his 2nd term political landscape.
Most people feel nervous prior to giving a speech. This is human nature and indeed some degree of nerves is absolutely essential to remain alert and deliver the speech clearly. However nerves do become a problem if they are debilitating in any way. Thankfully, there are practical ways to overcome this which are outlined below.
Rationalize your nerves
First of all, silently and in advance of your speech, rationalise your thoughts. What are nerves? Nerves are simply a fight or flight response to danger. If you anticipate something you fear adrenaline will pump around your body causing you to feel anxiety. Although it may feel uncomfortable, nothing bad will happen to you. In fact look at your nerves as a positive thing as they will give you the energy to deliver your speech in an emotive, engaging and passionate way.
Prepare and Practice
The more familiar you are with something, the less uncomfortable it makes you feel. Think about your first day at work and think about how you feel at work now? The anxiety levels will have undoubtedly reduced the more familiar you are with your role, surroundings, colleagues etc. Apply this principle to your speech. First of all, know the subject of your speech inside out. Write the speech in the format it is to be delivered i.e. on PowerPoint or acetates. Prepare speaker notes that give you prompts on the title of the slide and its contents. If there are any names or statistics that you might find difficult to remember, include them on your speaker notes. These notes are not designed to be read from, but are designed to be held by the speaker and glanced at every so often to prompt the speaker and facilitate the flow of the presentation from beginning to end. They should be produced on small, discrete cards that can be hand held.
Of all the advice I give to my media training clients when it comes to how to answer questions during a media interview, the hardest piece for people to grasp is the need to communicate all three of your message points in every answer (that’s EVERY answer). When I tell people this, they think I am kidding, or they think that I meant to say “all three message points during the course of the interview.”
That’s not what I am saying. I urge people to try to say all three of their message points in every single answer.
“But TJ,” you cry. “I’ll sound insane! Reporters will run away from me.”
No, they won’t. The trick is that you don’t want to sound like a computer or a broken record. You want to hit all three of your message points in each answer, but do it in a different order, using different examples, and using different words.
If you aim for all three message points and you only get to one or two before the reporter cuts you off or interrupts you, well then you at least hit one or two—not bad.
The mistake many novices make is that they deliver all three of their message points exactly once, near the beginning of the interview. Then, they proceed to answer questions in a totally reactive way for the next thirty minutes. At the end of the interview, the reporter looks down at his or her notes and sees 57 separate message pointes, each delivered exactly once—therefore none stand out.
The reporter then chooses to include a random couple of points from your 57 points.
If you are happy with a 3-57 chance of success, then continue to use this strategy. If you want to increase the odds that the message you care about actually ends up in the story, then you must be more proactive, specifically by trying to interject all three of your message points in each answer.
Al Gore has taken enough heat about his flat and wooden speaking style over the years to raise the Earth’s temperature several degrees (some of it from me), but you have to give him credit for one thing he does well: the man knows how to use his PowerPoint slides.
Long before Al Gore was turned into a movie star (“an Inconvenient Truth”), he toured the country giving a PowerPoint presentation on the dangers of global warming. I’ll let others debate the merits of the science or Al Gore, but I will critique his style. I saw Gore give his presentation in 2004 here in Manhattan (his critics took great comfort that Gore spoke on global warming on the coldest day in decades in New York).
But the thing I still remember years later about his presentation was this: no text. Gore used NO TEXT in his PowerPoint presentation. Gore correctly used slides that contained images of the earth, glaciers, ice caps, and the sea to make his points. His visuals enhanced his presentation; they didn’t detract and they didn’t bore.
So if even Al Gore can use PowerPoint in a non-boring manner, what’s your excuse? If you are going to use PowerPoint slides, don’t fill them up with text. Instead, use images, photos and graphs, whether you are trying to save the planet or your number one aluminum siding account.
Public figures get in trouble all of the time and are then forced to apologize. Whether it is TV preachers who claim to know why God strikes some people down or Olympic athletes who brag about skiing while drunk, big shots are often forced into the role of the contrite. Few pull it off well, because they don’t seem to be sincere and they don’t seem to grasp why what they said or did it offended anyone.
Oprah Winfrey, once again, is in a class by herself. Not only is she only the world’s greatest talk show host, but she is a world class apologizer too. Winfrey suffered a rare ding to her public image when she promoted James Frey’s phony memoir “A Million Little Pieces.” She made matters much worse for herself when she defended Frey after he was exposed as a fraud. Winfrey called to defend him on the Larry King Show, saying the controversy was “much ado about nothing.”
What happened next was not the usual treatment for media darling Oprah. She was roundly denounced by columnists, pundits, editors and talk show hosts around the globe for essentially saying that “the truth doesn’t matter anymore.”
Oprah countered several days later on her show when she brought back disgraced author Frey and his publisher Nan Talese. Regarding Oprah’s call to King defending Frey, she said “I regret that phone call. I made a mistake and I left the impression that the truth does not matter and I am deeply sorry about that. That is not what I believe.”
Additionally, Winfrey said that she felt “duped” by Frey and she used the platform of her own TV show to rake Fry and his editor over the coals repeatedly.
So why was Oprah’s apology effective whereas as most politicians and public officials fail in their own apologies?
1. She said she was sorry and that she made a mistake. She didn’t sugar coat things or claim that she had “misspoken.” She didn’t apologize just for having offended people. She apologized because she had made a serious mistake.
2. Oprah didn’t try to minimize her sins. She showed she really understood why people were upset. She spelled out that her mistake was giving people the impression she didn’t care about the truth.
3. She seemed sincere. By spending so much time on her blunder and by giving airtime to her critics, Oprah seemed genuinely troubled by the course of events and sincerely sorry.
4. Oprah tried to take actions to correct the problems. She practically chopped off the fingers of Frey and his editor in order to keep them from writing and publishing again. This shows she takes the issue seriously and isn’t just doing a quick PR spin.
5. By apologizing to her viewers, admitting that her critics were right, and offering no defense for her actions, Oprah revealed herself emotionally to her fans and the world. She also left no other rational reason for anyone to be angry with her or to criticize her. Thus, the only logical reaction left from her audience was to give Oprah forgiveness.
That is a successful apology and that is yet another reason why Oprah is the queen of all media.
Very few people actually think of themselves a as a crashing bore, but a very high percentage of people temporarily become huge bores when they give a speech.
And everyone always has a good reason.
“But it’s a lot of technical information I have to get out.”
“For legal reasons I have to say things in a straightforward way.”
“My boss wants me to stick to the script.”
“My audience is highly sophisticated and they really want me to drill deep into the details and all the numbers.”
“I’d like to show my personality, but the PowerPoint scripts have me handcuffed.”
What’s the one thing all of these excuses have in common? Your audience doesn’t buy any of them and will tune you out!
A lot of speakers waste hours and hours fretting over color schemes on their PowerPoint slides and what tie to wear. Those details have some minor importance, but they are almost entirely irrelevant if what you are trying to say is boring. There are thousands of little details that go into the style and substance of every speech that can have a minor impact and that, collectively, have a big impact. But there are just a handful of things that can have a deciding impact on your speech’s reception by your audience.
And one of those is whether or not your speech is boring. If you are boring, you can have great eye contact, a perfect suit and flawless slides—none of this will matter. No one will remember what you said.
If you actually say something interesting to the audience and you do it in an engaging manner, then you can break most other rules on saying “um,” using lousy PowerPoint slides and having your shirt tail sticking out—you will still be seen as a great speaker.
So it’s OK to make mistakes as a speaker, just make sure that being boring isn’t one of them.
Far too many speakers attempt to look and sound smart by drowning their audience members in a sea of facts. “More is More” is their philosophy. The problem is that no matter how quickly you speak during a 20-30 minute speech, there is no way you can get your audience to know as much as you do on your area of expertise.
The other reality is that your audience can already get all of the facts on your subject from the internet. People are not suffering from a lack of information or facts. There are more than 100,000 books published every year and, seemingly, another 100,000 blogs run by self-appointed pundits published every hour.
The world does not need more information. Your audience doesn’t really want more information.
Instead, your audience is looking for someone (you) who can sift through all the info they don’t have time to go through and distill for them what they really, really need to know. In short, your audience is looking for wisdom.
Are you providing wisdom for your audience? It would be nice if every speaker could come up with stunningly original and creative thoughts for each audience.
But this is not always required. You can impart wisdom to your audience by giving it a well-organized perspective on your subject matter. This means you don’t get them lost in a forest of facts. It’s not that facts don’t matter. It’s just that facts without context and priority have no meaning. As a speaker, you can give wisdom to your audience by giving them an overriding metaphor or a new thematic way at looking at a particular problem or cluster of issues. By creating themes or overriding messages, you help your audience interpret some small slice of the world in a more coherent, and hence, more meaningful way.
And when you are adding the value of meaning, even if it is how to make award winning paper airplanes, you will be perceived as a speaker who adds the value of wisdom to your audience.
Steve Sargent, president and CEO of GE Australia and New Zealand, runs through a four-point checklist–sometimes in just 30 seconds–before every organized communication event, from small meetings to large speeches.
Don’t even think about speaking in front of an audience without going through this checklist.
The surest way to get quoted by the media is to attack somebody, even if it is yourself. Reporters love attacks. Why? Because attacks are a part of conflict and every great drama involves conflict.
The best story to be on if you are a reporter is war. Walter Cronkite became famous by covering WWII. Dan Rather got famous during the Vietnam War. Wars are interesting to cover because people are attacking each other every day.
The second best story to be on if you are a reporter is a national political campaign. Why? Because the leader of one party is attacking the leader of the other party every single day. And vice versa.
When you attack your opponents by name, your competitors, your boss, or yourself, you instantly make reporters excited. The more forceful, pointed, or emotional the attack you make, the greater your chances are of being quoted.
“General Electric is destroying the Hudson River!”
“McDonalds is on a mission to make every kid in America weigh 300 pounds.”
“I hate myself for forgetting to report all of my campaign contributions.”
All of these quotes will make it into final radio, TV and newspaper reports because they contain attacks.
Of course, as always, just because something is interesting to reporters doesn’t mean it is a good idea for you to say it. If a part of your message is to attack government waste, or inequality, then, by all means, attack away. But don’t ever attack anyone or anything in front of a reporter unless you want to see that attack in headlines connected with your name in tomorrow’s paper.
Many business communicators lard up their speeches with jargon and weasel words. The result? They sound like bureaucratic stooges.
Your goal when dealing with the media is to communicate a message in the clearest and simplest manner possible, while at the same time building your reputation as a strong and forceful communicator. Strong and forceful are relative terms, so if you use all of the same buzzwords that everyone else does, you will always seem mediocre. Many businesspeople acquire their bad rhetorical habits at some point during their second year of business school or after having attended their third annual board of directors meeting.
Here are some of the worst offenders:
“Going forward . . .” What an utterly useless phrase. Use “in the future” instead. You wouldn’t tell your teenage son, “Going forward, please keep your room straight,” so why use it in a speech or interview? The sole purpose for using a phrase like “going forward” in a speech is to create the impression that you are saying something fancier than you actually are. So please, going forward, never use the phrase “going forward.”
“If you will.” People tack this phrase onto the back of a sentence as if to say, “Look at this most original and brilliant insight I have just come up with. It will require you to change your whole conception of the universe, if you will be so kind as to indulge me in this mind- thought experiment.” Pretentious drivel! Imagine a trap door, if you will, that will spring open and devour you if you ever use the phrase “if you will” in a public speech.
“As it were.” See above.
There is nothing wrong with using specialized language to convey complex concepts to sophisticated audiences, but that is not what many business communicators do. Instead, they use complex phrases to communicate simple concepts because they are under the delusion that this makes them sound more professional. The more simply and conversationally you can speak, regardless of the topic’s complexity, the more likely your audiences will understand, respect and appreciate you and your message.
TJ Walker, Media Training Worldwide
For more information on media and presentation training please visit http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com,
You have the best of intentions. You give speech after speech using strong visuals, compelling examples and riveting stories to make your points come alive. But then, slowly, your speaking skills start to dissolve. The next thing you know, you’ve become a boring hack, just like everyone else.
How did it happen?
Here is the usual suspect. You are supposed to speak at a conference in 3 weeks. The conference coordinator calls your office urgently and says “Can you email your presentation today? We promised all of the attendees that we would send them in advance!”
But you are on the road, or busy. So you ask a staffer to put together a rough draft PowerPoint slide. Since the assistant isn’t a mind reader, all he/she can do is list bullet points of concepts that you have discussed before on this subject, or take out facts and numbers from your website and previous presentations. So far, no harm, because this is just a draft.
But now the speech is tomorrow and you haven’t had time to think about it. And all you have is the “draft” prepared by your assistant. There’s still time to prepare a great speech on the plane. But things come up, as they always do, and you are preoccupied.
Now you have to give the speech in five minutes. And you are left with one option: you will kinda, sorta read the bullet points on the PowerPoint slide to your audience. You know it was awful, compared to your normal way of speaking. But nobody came up to complain afterwards. In fact, several people still complemented you, though they were vendors looking to do business with you.
The next thing you know, you’ve gone six months and a dozen speeches using this technique of reading bullet points off of a screen. You have a new habit.
Stop! You are destroying your reputation! And no one has the guts to tell you!
Throw away your slides and start from scratch. For your next speech, you need to come up with five major points, and then an example and a story for each point. Then, come up with a visual slide for each point that contains no words. Finally, prepare a one-page outline that reminds you of your key points, examples, stories and slides. Finally, rehearse.
Now you are ready to re-enter the society of interesting speakers and presenters. Welcome back.
Thousands of years ago, Aristotle wrote that believability is one of the three most important facts in being a good speaker—this has not changed. A speaker must be believable to have an impact on an audience.
This is why it is so important to eliminate obvious issues that can easily destroy a speaker’s believability. Reading from a script destroys believability because your audience doesn’t know if these are your ideas or even if you understand the ideas you are reading. Excessive looking at notes inflicts the same damage. Obvious displays of nervousness also eat away at the perception of believability.
“If he is really so confident of his ideas, why is he shaking like a leaf?” your audience muses.
The single easiest way to come across as more believable to an audience is through your eyes. Give long, luxuriant, and steady eye contact to as many people as possible, one at a time. Do this throughout your presentation and you will be believed.
So many presentations are boring because their pace is exactly the same throughout. Whether the speaker reads a script, follows a PowerPoint or just works from an outline, the word flow is coming out at roughly the same speed and same volume. The result?
Boredom. The audience falls asleep.
Practically anything you can do to alter or change the pace of your speech is a good thing because it will make you stand out from all of the other speakers who never change their pace. This is why when a speaker makes a seemingly spontaneous remark, the audience responds favorably. When uttering a spontaneous remark, whether louder than usual or under the breath as an aside, the speed and volume change. This variety makes the speaker more interesting.
Since most speakers are nervous, they don’t pause long enough when tossing out rhetorical questions to the audience to allow the audience to think of an answer. Great speakers pause longer and that results in a favorable change of pace.
Telling funny stories, even telling jokes can change the pace (but I’m not recommending that you try to be a joke teller). When you get your audience to laugh, you are, in effect, changing the pace of the presentation. Because now you are pausing and you are giving your audience a chance to communicate back to you in the form of laughter.
Occasionally getting excited and speaking quickly is OK, as long as you balance that with longer pauses and moments where you speak slower than normal. Walking around in front of your audience and moving at a different pace can also create more variety in your presentation.
When it comes to a presenter’s speaking pace, consistency isn’t just the hobgoblin of little minds, it is the bane of bored audiences everywhere.
We re all taught to avoid clichés by our high school English teachers. And this is good advice, when it comes to writing reporters, articles, or even giving speeches. Reporters have also been taught by their instructors to never, ever write or utter clichés in news reports.
However, there is one big exception to this rule for both newsmakers and news
reporters: Reporters LOVE quoting experts, executives and newsmakers using clichés.
Why?
Because clichés are often more colorful ways of making points. Clichés become clichés in the first point because they are a more memorable way of making a message stick in someone’s head.
A journalist’s job is to make new information more understandable and more memorable to readers, viewers or listeners. When a reporter combines new information along side a cliché that repackages old information, the result is often a better understanding and context of the new story.
If you want to be a masterful media communicator, sometimes you have to swallow your pride. You have to realize that you are not the journalist or writer—your job is to get your message out. Your high school English teacher might not be impressed if she sees you quoted while using a cliché, but that should not be your concern. Your job is to get quotes that reflect your message.
“At the end of the day…”
“The bottom line is…”
“We hit a home run when we…”
None of these clichés are brilliant, but they may help you insert your main points into a story.
One of my clients was a financial regulator for the state of Florida. His office often had to shut down fraudulent boiler room operations. His message, after each shut down, was that consumers should be cautious if someone calls them at dinner time and offers to turn $5000 into $10,000 in three weeks in an oil well investment.
That was the message, but how did he get this idea into newspapers, TV and radio?
He said, “Remember citizens, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Same message as above, but because it is a cliché, the news media quoted him. And they quoted him using this cliché EVERY 3 MONTHS FOR 20 YEARS.
Not only do clichés work, but they will keep working for you over and over again.
Remember “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
One great way to get your message quoted by reporters is to state your ideas in the form of a rhetorical question. Why do reporters like rhetorical questions?
Because journalists like to break up the structure of their stories. If every sentence begins with a subject, is followed by a verb and ends with an object, the story can look boring very quickly. An occasional rhetorical question surrounded by quotation marks helps mix up the flow of a story.
“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
“Are we going to face a possible bankruptcy next year?”
“When is management going to listen to its own workers?”
“When will the airline unions realize that if they get all of their demands, there will be no airline left in business?”
“Why has the governor betrayed the faith of the voters?”
“Will Microsoft Office revolutionize the way workers get their jobs done?”
The one thing all of these questions have in common is that they aren’t real questions. They aren’t the expressions of one person seeking new information.
They are rhetorical questions, meaning they are simply a way of making a point in the form of asking a question. But they question doesn’t have to be answered in order for the point to still be understood.
Do I think it’s good to communicate your message points in the middle of an interview by using rhetorical questions? Yes I do.
There is one big difference between an informative presentation and a sales presentation. In an informative presentation you are also trying to sell your ideas, but in a sales presentation you must do more. You must sell in a more specific time frame, typically sooner rather than later.
In a sales presentation, you must give out data and inform, but you must do more than that. In both types of presentations you must conclude your thoughts.
However, in a sales presentation, you must do more. You must CLOSE. Closing requires a very specific action that you are requesting from your prospect. It does not mean being high-pressured or acting unethically, but it does mean asking your prospect to do something highly specific, such as select your firm over another, sign a contract, or place an order. At some point during the close, you must ask the prospect directly for his or her business.
A surprisingly high number of sales people feel too awkward or embarrassed to ever come right out and ask people for their business. This is a big mistake.
Most people like to be asked for their business. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
If you conclude a presentation by asking people for their business, the worst thing that can happen is that they say no. But if you don’t ask, there is the possibility that your prospects liked you, were impressed with you, were inclined to hire you, but simply got distracted and then you became out of sight, out of mind. Then, you have poured money down the drain.
So don’t just conclude your sales presentation, conclude by closing.
There is one big difference between an informative presentation and a sales presentation. In an informative presentation you are also trying to sell your ideas, but in a sales presentation you must do more. You must sell in a more specific time frame, typically sooner rather than later.
In a sales presentation, you must give out data and inform, but you must do more than that. In both types of presentations you must conclude your thoughts.
However, in a sales presentation, you must do more. You must CLOSE. Closing requires a very specific action that you are requesting from your prospect. It does not mean being high-pressured or acting unethically, but it does mean asking your prospect to do something highly specific, such as select your firm over another, sign a contract, or place an order. At some point during the close, you must ask the prospect directly for his or her business.
A surprisingly high number of sales people feel too awkward or embarrassed to ever come right out and ask people for their business. This is a big mistake.
Most people like to be asked for their business. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
If you conclude a presentation by asking people for their business, the worst thing that can happen is that they say no. But if you don’t ask, there is the possibility that your prospects liked you, were impressed with you, were inclined to hire you, but simply got distracted and then you became out of sight, out of mind. Then, you have poured money down the drain.
So don’t just conclude your sales presentation, conclude by closing.
Recently, the CEO-designate of JP Morgan Chase, James Dixon, was asked his opinion about a merger while he was on a conference call with investors. Here is what he said according to the New York Times:
“Forgetting the business logic and the price, there will be options down the road there, I would answer your question about capable and that we weren’t really quite capable yet because our army was doing all the other stuff we had to do, particularly the systems conversions…The army will be capable to do other stuff sometime next year, which is reasonable. Doesn’t mean we will.”
If you are confused by that answer, you aren’t alone.
According to the Times, “A gaffe, a garbled sentence or a muddied articulation of a corporate strategy can not only mar the public profile of a chief executive but also prompt a run on the stock.”
The Times reported that J.P Morgan’s stock took a dive shortly after Mr. Dimon’s less-than-inspiring conference call.
The Times also put a spotlight on the CEO of Legg Mason, Raymond Mason. Here’s what Mason said in answer to a question about a recent acquisition during another conference call with investors.
“I’ll try to answer you, but you can’t put a lot of faith in what I’m going to say. I know in one meeting I said if we look at this a year from now it will be clear, or should be clear, you know, what is and what we can do and what’s attainable and how quickly, and I still think that’s true. God knows, I would hope that’s true.”
According to the Times, investors were so under whelmed with Mason’s answers that the stock price dropped 8% within one day.
What’s really going on here?
It’s simple. CEO’s, their advisors, their lawyers, their investor relations counselors and all of their other little helpers are wasting hours and hours writing and re-writing the prepared texts that the CEOs read at the beginning of the conference calls. Everyone wants to get the text just so, because it will be sent out as a press release, put on the web site and distributed all over the place.
There’s only one little problem with putting so much attention on the prepared text: if the CEO of a publicly traded company can’t answer real questions from investors in an intelligent manner, then people lose confidence—quickly! Stupid answers trump boring prepared text every time.
The solution is easy–videotaped or at least audio taped rehearsal question time with the CEO BEFORE the conference calls. Unfortunately, CEOs tend to surround themselves with yes-men and yes-women who are afraid to tell the emperor he or she is wearing no clothes or is in drastic need of having clearer answers to questions. Sadly, CEO advisors are no more apt to tell the boss he must rehearse than a Bush aide wants to tell the President there are no Weapons of Mass Destruction or a Clinton aide wants to say “no, you can’t have another Big Mac.”
If public relations and investor relations processionals ever get serious about exerting influence on their profession than they must become as forceful and as persuasive as lawyers are with theirs. CEOs must be convinced that they are committing an egregious breach of their fiduciary duties if they ever, ever answer questions in a public forum in front of investors or the press if they have first done a full-dress recorded rehearsal.
Until then, expect to see more billion dollar losses on corporate valuations because of dumb CEO answers to smart questions.
