Managing Presentations

Bore No More: Presentation Skills for Every Speaker

Whether you’re pitching a new business initiative, updating a client or making the case for a raise, you want to showcase confidence, competence and credibility in every interaction so that your audience knows that you mean business.
You speak volumes – even before you’ve said a single word. From the way you use your hands, eyes and mouth to the way you give pause, pace and pitch to your voice, you are constantly broadcasting how you really feel – as well as how your listeners should feel about you.

How confident are you about the messages you’re sending?

Whether presenting one-to-one, for small groups or in front of a crowd, if you know how to command yourself and the audience while delivering a compelling and memorable message, you’ll be perceived as more competent, persuasive and powerful. Who wouldn’t want that?

This session will help you:
• Manage presentation anxiety with any audience.
• Improve your pace, pitch, projection, and pauses for both calming and dramatic effects.
• Read your body language the way your audience does, and overcome the barriers to communication.
• Understand how male and female audiences perceive you differently.
• Improve your memory and focus to decrease preparation time.
• Make scripted presentations sound extemporaneous, and make impromptu presentations sound polished.
• Bring your unique “voice” to every presentation.

“Deborah is a highly enthusiastic educator and trainer. If you’re a part of her class, you’ll be touched the very first minute that Deb starts to present to you, and you’ll be totally moved by her passion, her professional knowledge, and her skills. I am sure that Deborah is one of the best in the world.”

Wesley Zhang, Sony Ericsson
Beijing, China

Get to the (Power)Point: Slide Design and Delivery Skills

If you sense that that your slide presentations are “PowerPointless,” then this session is for you! Transform yourself into a meeting hero by cutting your PowerPoint presentations down to the bare essentials needed for you to inform or persuade your audience. Learn how your presentation goals impact slide organization and content, how to make every slide sell your key messages, and how copy, design and delivery come together for a seamless presentation that yield nods, attention – and agreement. You will be amazed at how clear, concise and creative your PowerPoints will be – even when presenting complex technical information.

This session will help you:
• Identify your presentation goals, and how to make the presentation meet those objectives.
• Identify and create consistent key messages.
• Simplify complex information.
• Separate the “nice to know” from the “need to know” information.
• Make a much bigger impact with far fewer slides.
• Stop reading slides once and for all.
• Turn your slide titles into attention-grabbing headlines.
• Engage your audience through the use of powerful visuals.
• Weave story-telling techniques into any presentation.
• Create a core presentation that is quickly and easily customized for multiple purposes.
• Transition from frontal presentations to interactive ones.

Connection Counts: Audience Engagement Skills

Ever speak to an audience who would rather be somewhere else? Whether you’re facing a hostile mob, a confused group, or just a bunch of people with a to-do list a mile long, you want to get and keep their rapt attention. And if you think that questions are for “fending off” rather than great opportunities for your audience to both buy-in and sign-off on your ideas, then this session is for you!

This session will help you:
• Recognize the three types of audience members.
• Quickly and accurately read your audience’s body language.
• Handle hecklers, nay-sayers or “Debbie Downers” with dignity and grace.
• Manage side conversations and other distractions.
• Prepare for the six questions every presenter should be able to answer.
• Actively encourage constructive Q & A.
• Diffuse difficult situations with poise.
• Use interactive facilitation techniques to keep the energy high.

“I was absolutely fascinated and inspired by attending Deb’s presentation skills training—it was always exciting and encouraging. Now I am confident that I can completely grasp my audience’s attention and impress them within the first five minutes of my presentation thanks to Deb’s lessons.”

Mabel Wong, Mercedes Benz
Beijing, China

Delivering Technical Presentations
to Non-Technical Audiences

Communicating clearly and concisely is important for every speaker, but it’s positively do-or-die for highly technical presentations delivered to non-technical audiences. There is no better way to lose your audience members than by rattling off formulas, data, statistics and processes that are crystal clear to you but are incomprehensible to them. Just because your content is dense should make your audience feel likewise! Bored people aren’t persuaded people, and confused ones aren’t committed ones. Even internal audiences, like the senior management team, might need you to walk them through exactly how the product or process you’ve designed will rewrite the industry before they will green-light your project — or give you that well-earned promotion.

It doesn’t matter how brilliant your ideas are if insiders are the only ones who understand them. To win over an audience—whether it’s sales staff, customers or your boss—a technical presenter has to take all that complicated content and mash it down into easily digestible, enjoyable bites (or bytes). Otherwise, you might as well be talking to yourself, because no one is going to be listening.

This session will help you:

Preparation
• Learn to identify key measures of your audience and adapt accordingly.
• Identify objectives and tailor your presentation to those goals.
• Avoid the pitfalls of relying on credentials or expertise alone to win over an audience.
• Liven it up without dumbing it down by restructuring complex information into the context of everyday life.
• Get your point across without losing your listener with unnecessary details.
• Learn to use analogies and metaphors in place of long sequences of facts and numbers.

Organization
• Increase audience comprehension and retention by simplifying structure.
• Use repetition to enhance understanding without losing your audience.
• Learn to highlight qualitative insights over quantitative results.
• Avoid caveats that might be appropriate with an experienced audience, but will confuse average listeners.
• Prepare lean and limber slide decks that highlight the “need to know” over the “nice to know”.

Presentation
• Manage presentation anxiety.
• Improve vocal communication style, including pitch, projection, and pace.
• Master effective non-verbal communication, including eye contact, gestures, stance, and dress.
• Develop a compelling, individualized “voice” that sounds like you, with added polish, professionalism and persuasion.
• Get the most out of visual aids: select the best media and use it well.
• Effectively manage Q & A and partner with your audience for a successful presentation.

Present Your Best Self: Professional Polish for New Hires and Those on the Rise

You can make or break a first impression in three seconds – how confident do you feel that you are representing yourself and your company as favorably as possible? By learning key elements of social interaction and professional etiquette, you will learn to make a positive first – and lasting – impression, exhibit the social skills that put other people at ease, demonstrate appropriate respect for authority, and make sure that your appearance, behaviors and communication skills all contribute to making you a master of professional and personal social interaction.

This session will help you:
• Understand the importance of first and lasting impressions.
• Dress and groom for success in any situation.
• Demonstrate dining do’s in both casual and sophisticated settings.
• Greet and introduce people to support rank and authority.
• Remember names to make others feel important.
• Use and accept business cards with panache.
• Make comfortable and appropriate small talk with anyone, in any situation.
• Behave and communicate appropriately in meetings.
• Show respect for office property and in cubical settings.
• Communicate assertively in person and over the phone.
• Build self-confidence in personal and professional interactions.
• Avoid and manager embarrassing moments.