Learn more in Tom Kennedy's on-demand webinar Persuasive Presentations: How to Capture the Hearts and Minds of Buyers

Think about the worst presentation you ever sat through. Did it feel like you were experiencing “death by PowerPoint”?

If the speaker was like your typical speaker, he relied completely on his PowerPoint slides and bored the audience by reading verbatim the text on those slides. Just thinking about someone doing that is enough to make you yawn.

That approach is the primary mistake people make when giving a presentation, says Tom Kennedy, who is giving a webinar November 8 titled Persuasive Presentations: How to Capture the Hearts and Minds of Buyers.

“There are probably three primary mistakes,” Kennedy says in a recent RainToday.com interview. “First of all people calling the slides the presentation. They aren’t. And when someone says send me the presentation, the only answer is ‘I can’t’ because you’re the presentation.”

———————————————————————–

Listen to the complete interview here:

———————————————————————–

Other mistakes people make when giving presentations:

* Using your slides as notes: Slides can be effective, but not if you load them up with your speaker notes.

“There’s nothing wrong with having slides. Great visual aids are wonderful,” Kennedy says. “But text on slides is invariably the speaker’s notes. Have notes, but don’t show your audience your notes.”

* Failing to target the audience: Often speakers feel they need to talk about themselves. If it’s a keynote or seminar, they’ll spend the first 10 to 15 minutes talking about themselves, their firm, and their accomplishments. If it’s a sales presentation, they’ll talk only about their services. The audience wants to know how what you’re discussing affects them. They don’t care about you.

“It’s always about [the audience]. It’s not about the presenter,” Kennedy says. “The ‘I/me’ talk I call it—about us—is not the way to target the audience. Make it about them.”

The key is to cultivate a relationship with your audience, particularly if it’s a sales presentation, he says.

“We buy from people that we like and trust and are comfortable with. So, it’s all about relationship. It’s not about the data,” Kennedy says.

* Handing out your slides in advance: Audience members often want a copy of presentations in advance. Don’t do it, says Kennedy. If you do that, people will look ahead and not pay attention to what is being said.

It’s better if you provide a handout after your presentation. And that handout can include more information than what you included on your slides, such as your speaker notes. That way people can pay attention while you speak, and they won’t worry about taking notes.

Everyone is a salesperson, says Kennedy. Whether you’re presenting to a client, giving a keynote, or networking with prospects, the people you speak with matter the most. Develop a relationship with them and you will then be able to sell yourself and your ideas.

Earlier this year, we asked you to share your selling services challenges. You flooded us with your challenges and concerns, which included communicating the value of your services, client relationship management, and qualifying leads. In this blog series we identify 12 of the major selling obstacles you are struggling with the most and offer advice and suggestions for overcoming them.

This week’s challenge: turning speaking engagements into new business.

It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? You give people a sample of what you have to offer to encourage them to pay for the full service. Why, then, do people have such a hard time turning audience members into clients?

Target Your Audience

It starts with your audience, says Anne Miller, a communications coach and author of Make What You Say Pay! “My best strategy for selling my training and speaking services is to speak before carefully selected groups so that people can experience what I do,” she says.

That means not taking any speaking engagement for the sake of it. Target your audience the same way you target your ideal client. What are their needs and challenges? Do your services meet those needs? What venues do they prefer–do they like intimate in-person settings or are they partial to online/virtual events?

RainToday Publisher Mike Schultz presents at the ICCA Congress & Exhibition in Florence, Italy

Once you have your audience and venue, it’s up to you to engage attendees, grab their attention, and keep their attention. You do not want to be the speaker that puts people to sleep or has them pulling out their smart phones and laptops to check email.

Appeal to Challenges and Emotions

One way to command their attention is to go beyond showcasing what you know and appeal to their challenges and emotions, says Vickie K. Sullivan, founder and president of Sullivan Speaker Services, which helps professionals with their branding and marketing initiatives.

“The key is to be beyond smart and go straight to urgent. That’s a content and focus issue,” Sullivan says. “Many speakers show they’re talented, but buyers sometimes leave with, ‘She’s great. I’ll work with her someday.’ And someday never comes. Buyers have more priorities than budget, so if your speaking can direct solutions to a problem they are already funding, well, it’s a beautiful thing.”

Strong speakers also have a demeanor that shows they’re comfortable in their skin, Sullivan says. And that allows audience members to also relax and enjoy being around them. Consider, for example, former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who is currently United States Secretary of Homeland Security.

“I heard her speak at Harvard University and immediately saw why she was so popular,” recalls Sullivan in her article, Clever and Compelling: 3 Traits that Instantly Attract Buyers to You. “This audience of equally powerful people was enthralled because she was so comfortable. Everyone knew she could break some eggs if she had to, and yet she came off as if she were having a fun conversation with friends. Did she say anything in particular that gave us that impression? Not a word. This relaxed confidence permeated everything she said. ”

Interesting and compelling speakers also use their words to paint pictures for their audience members. Metaphors are an important tool in their skill set.

“Metaphors are so important today because we live in a world of constant information that’s coming at people at increasingly accelerated rates. People cannot absorb all of that, and in fact they tune more out than in primarily as a survival mechanism,” says Miller. “You need to get through that stuff so they can see you in a unique light, see the value of your proposition, and want to take action with you.”

Metaphors can help you turn a seemingly boring topic into an exciting one that keeps people talking about it—and you—long after your presentation is over. When used as openers, they seize attention because they’re unexpected, writes Miller in Make What You Say Pay!

Success Story

Linda Rey, whom Miller profiles in the book, discovered the power of metaphors after she gave a presentation at a breakfast meeting of the business council to which her insurance agency belonged. She wanted to make sure she left with more than a stack of business cards, so she turned to her skydiving experience to help grab the audience’s attention and address business’s insurance challenges.

Rey placed an envelope on each table that included pictures of her jumping out of an airplane. When she took the podium, she asked everyone to open the envelopes and share the contents. As they did, they all began murmuring: Was that Rey? Is she crazy? How could she do that?

After everyone settled down, Rey said it was her in the picture, but she jumped only after she had proper instruction. And she said you should follow the same practice when buying insurance—only after you have proper instruction.

Rey told the audience, “As with skydiving, when you don’t know what you are doing, there is a very good chance that you are going to get injured. You could hit the ground really hard, financially speaking. And that would hurt, not only you, but both your family and your business.”

Once Rey had their attention, she offered useful tips on choosing a broker and buying insurance. Eighteen months later, she was still receiving business from that speaking engagement.

Think about the last conference you went to. Chances are there was one speaker who droned on while reading the text from his PowerPoint slides while audience members checked their email or even nodded off. And then there was one speaker who energized the room, woke everyone from their drowsing, and perhaps got people tweeting what he said. He was interesting, energetic, entertaining, and offered ideas and advice. People couldn’t get enough of him.

I would bet that Mr. Persona acts similarly with prospects and clients, causing people to seek him out for his opinions. He stands out among his many competitors, who in most cases don’t take the time to understand clients’ needs or to develop a core expertise. He is, as Andrew Sobel says, “a person of interest.”

“This is not about charisma or personal flair, but rather about authenticity and value—about being an interesting person to spend time with, someone that clients feel stimulates their thinking, someone from whom they learn and get ideas,” Sobel writes in his article, What You Can Do to Keep Clients from Walking Away.

It means you must become a “Deep Generalist.” This is someone who has a well-developed core expertise about an industry, function, or other niche and layers broad business knowledge on top of that, Sobel says.

“This enables you to have discussions with your client about their business issues—whether they’re talking about operations, organization, or strategy—and to always put your specific solutions in the context of the overall enterprise,” he says.

Vickie K. Sullivan adds that successful service professionals also possess certain qualities that clients and prospects are unable to describe, but they “know them when they see them.”

“There are three things that require a unique way to communicate and turn into a signature persona. When buyers see these dynamics, they are instantly attracted,” writes Sullivan in her article, 3 Traits that Instantly Attract Buyers to You.

The three traits Sullivan writes about are comfortable transparency, effortless brilliance, and being approachable yet unavailable. Those three things tap buyers’ emotions, which drive most sales. Use them to “create a persona that intrigues a crowded marketplace,” Sullivan says.

Dynamic Phone Conversations

The traits Sobel and Sullivan describe are not restricted to in-person meetings. Wendy Weiss, the Queen of Cold Calling, says they apply to initial phone conversations you have with prospects. If you want the conversation to result in a meeting, you must be prepared to speak with the prospect and you must communicate things in a compelling manner.

“A lot of people don’t do the upfront homework that they need to do to understand the issues, the challenges that those prospects might have, and how to introduce [themselves] in such a way that it resonates with the person that [they're] talking to,” Weiss says in her podcast interview, Don’t Let these Myths and Misperceptions Derail Your Cold Calling Efforts.

The key is to talk about things your prospects are interested in and in a way that compels them to learn more.

Writing with Flair

You can also apply your communication style and business and industry expertise to your writing—articles, blog posts, ebooks, tweets, etc. Take a look at the tweets of industry gurus Alan Weiss (@BentleyGTCSpeed), Scott Ginsberg (@nametagscott), and David Meerman Scott (@dmscott). Or consider Seth Godin’s Blog and Jill Konrath’s Selling to Big Companies blog. Notice how their distinct style and voice comes through while at the same time they give you information you can apply to your business. It helps drive their success in the social media world.

Their success using social media often results in their content going viral. Hundreds if not thousands of people share their content via Twitter, Facebook, and email. Such viral success, however, is not limited to well-known gurus. As the Geisheker Group discovered, if you uncover a need, the solution you create to meet that need can lead to not only a surge in web traffic but thousands of dollars in revenue.

In a case study about the Geisheker Group, How a Small Company’s Ebook Went Viral and Generated $100K in Revenue, Gwen Moran explains how the firm’s ebook fulfilled a need many small businesses were struggling with—creating a marketing plan—but also established the company as an expert in the field and resulted in new clients.

“While some firms balk at giving away ideas and intellectual property, this has been a windfall for [founder Peter] Geisheker,” writes Moran. “By sharing his marketing ideas via the ebook and his information about specific marketing tactics each month in his newsletter, the firm has landed more than $100,000 in new business.”

Social Media Isn’t for Everyone

If all this talk about social media has you feeling pressure to use them, relax. The fact that these marketing vehicles exist does not mean you have to use them, says Andrea Obston in her article, Social Media: Take Two Breaths and Email Me in the Morning.

“They won’t necessarily drive the right clients to your bottom line if they don’t suit your marketing objectives and their needs,” she says.

Before you jump on the social media bandwagon, you need to ask yourself a few questions about your clients, what they want from you, how they want it delivered to them, and what it would take to get them to automatically seek you out.

If it turns out social media provides the vehicles your clients and prospects are interested in and you’re ready to commit to it, remember to use your distinct voice and persona, as well as your expertise, to add value. Add an interesting voice to the conversation; don’t bore them with talk about just you and your services.

Photo credit: Adam Bindslev

How do you reach C-level execs?

Getting the word out about a high-tech company with a specialty service is always a challenge. But when the service is a patented procurement process, traditional approaches such as advertising and public relations are particularly ineffective.

William Gindlesperger, founder of e-LYNXX, recognized this, and he knew it would be crucial to market his patented technology exclusively to key decision makers.

For years, Gindlesperger relied on word of mouth from satisfied clients. But once his pending patent was approved and ready to be marketed, he needed to ramp up the company’s marketing efforts.

Here’s what they did to reach C-level executives:

• Build on your strengths. For many years, Gindlesperger wrote regular columns for the national and regional printing trade press. When he wanted to get the word out about the new technology, he returned to that venue.
• Get the word out. Once an article was written and edited, the marketing staff sent it to journals and trade associations that have published the company’s material in the past. They then posted the article on the company’s website and distributed it through free news release websites.
• Follow up. Once trade journal articles were distributed, marketing staff followed up with the publications’ editors to see if they wanted to interview someone at the company or have them customize an article just for their publication.
• Demonstrate expertise with content. White papers delivered the substantiated facts that B2B technology buyers required. Within one year, e-LYNXX wrote three white papers that were circulated during prospect and client meetings, as well as on its website.
• Never turn down the chance to make presentations to industry groups, business clubs, or potential clients. “I know that if I talk to a room of 100, 20 people will love me, 20 will hate me, and 60 will sleep right through my presentation,” Gindlesperger says. “That’s OK if I can connect with the 20 who love me.”

[Excerpt from RainToday case study How a Specialized High-Tech Company Used Monthly Articles and White papers to Reach C-Level Execs by Karen E. Klein.]

Challenges, no matter how great, can be overcome (Photo by Darcy McCarty)

“Nothing is easy.”

That is the mantra for several people I know. They sigh, shake their heads, and mumble those words whenever something doesn’t go smoothly or fails to succeed. Life seems to be one long struggle for them.

I don’t believe that nothing is easy. Many people have a natural ability to do things very well, whether it’s engineering, accounting, writing, or speaking in front of people. Those people aren’t without challenges, however, especially if they’re trying to sell their services.

For many service professionals, the challenge is in marketing and selling their services and growing their firms. Add to that the inability to think creatively to tackle that challenge, and they end up with the same old tired solutions that do little to help them. They are usually the ones saying, “Nothing is easy.” But it doesn’t have to be that way.

To break out of that rut, Mark Levy, author of Accidental Genius, suggests using freewriting to open your mind and explore ideas you might never come up with using traditional methods. You essentially approach a problem by writing as fast as you can about the topic or ideas that spring forth from that writing. You write constantly even if the writing turns to random thoughts. But you have to write fast enough that your internal editor doesn’t stop you. Let the ideas flow.

“With free writing you not only come up with new ideas, but you come up with the ability to share the information with other people in a way that they can follow what it is that you’re saying and can act on your words,” says Levy in his podcast interview, How to Solve Business Problems Using Freewriting. “Freewriting is probably the single most valuable productivity tool I’ve ever learned in my life.”

Not only will freewriting help you solve business problems, Levy says, but it can help you with writing blog posts and articles and with preparing for speaking engagements such as webinars.

Creating a great presentation for a webinar is just one aspect of running a successful webinar, writes Aaron Joslow in his article, Stop Producing Bad Webinars: 3 Tactics to Make Webinars Shine. You can create the best PowerPoint presentation in the world, but if you don’t deliver it well all will be for naught.

Speakers are “talking to attendees who, for the most part, are listening alone at their desks. While a webinar may have 50-200 attendees listening, the speaker is having 50-200 one-on-one conversations,” writes Joslow.

How do you get such speaking engagements? Vickie K. Sullivan says one avenue is social media, particularly organizers’ online efforts. In her article, How to Use Social Media to Generate Speaking Opportunities, Sullivan says there are many ways to participate in organizations to make yourself known. You can produce video samples of your speeches to share, interact with organizations in public social networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter, and get involved in their private communities.

CPA firm Hughes Pittman & Gupton recognized the importance of social media networks and became an active participant on Twitter and LinkedIn. They use them to attract prospects and to maintain current client relationships. By going on the offense with  social media and other digital marketing tactics, it has been able to keep growing while many competitors have lost revenue and struggle to stay afloat.

“We’re cost-conscious, but we also believe that marketing means going on the offensive. We need to remind prospective clients about us and close that business. If these marketing efforts weren’t working for us, we would drop them,” says partner Brooks Malone in the case study, CPA Firm Goes on the Offense with Digital Marketing and Grows Business.

If you’re selling services to law firms, you must also go on the offensive, says Allan Colman.

“This market is uniquely idiosyncratic, resistant, and challenging, and it requires special insight, strategies, and training to successfully penetrate,” Colman writes in his article, Selling Services to Law Firms: Are You Up to the Challenge?

It is possible to break through, however. Colman says it requires making a concerted effort to understand their markets and challenges and to develop trust. And it means understanding the behaviors of lawyers and law firms, which are unique. Fail to do so, and you can destroy a relationship. But if you follow Colman’s strategies, you will as a result experience extraordinary professional reward.

As the purveyors of excellent content on marketing and sales for professional services, we here at RainToday attend many events and see a lot of presentations—both live and online. Over the years I’ve seen some really great presentations, and others that have downright put me to sleep.

RainToday Publisher Mike Schultz recently took the stage at the ICCA Congress & Exhibition in Florence, Italy

What do the most successful presenters do differently? And what can you do to keep your next audience from falling asleep? Here are eight presentation tips that are sure to improve your skills and get you delivering powerful presentations like the pros in no time.

8 Presentation Tips

Tip #1: Give examples and tell stories. Nothing brings a presentation to life more than stories. Stories demonstrate to the listener how he can take the information you are sharing and apply it to real life scenarios. Stories inspire. What’s more, your attendees are much more likely to remember a story than a 10-step process.

Tip #2: Keep the audience engaged. No one wants to attend a presentation and listen to a talking head for 60 minutes. Boooring! Engage the audience by asking questions. To get the juices flowing at the beginning of your presentation, ask the audience a poll question and rather than having them raise their hand, ask them to stand up. This will energize them and you.

Tip #3: Keep the mood light. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Be professional, yes, but also keep the feeling light. Insert humor. Consider sharing a YouTube video. Pick on an audience member (gently). Pick on yourself.

Tip #4: Practice, practice, practice. You should know your presentation inside out. Nothing puts an audience to sleep faster than someone standing up and reading from his PowerPoint slides. You should know your presentation well enough that if your computer broke the presentation could go on. Or, as some very high profile keynote speakers do, don’t use PowerPoint or a computer at all.

Tip #5: Bring the energy. In live presentations, you feed off the energy from the audience. Online presentations are quite a bit more difficult, as you cannot see how your audience is reacting to you and your presentation. If you are doing a lot of online presentations, consider having an audience in the room with you when you deliver. This will help keep your energy level high.

Tip #6: Use your body. No one likes to watch a stiff person stand anchored behind a podium, nor do they like to watch someone pacing back and forth on the stage. Especially if you are nervous, there is a tendency to either use the podium as a crutch or become fidgety. Be aware of this and use your body language and motions to emphasize your points. Use hand gestures when you speak. Use inflections in your voice to make points stronger. But don’t overdo it.

Tip #7: Slow down. Even when you think you are talking slower than molasses in January, chances are you’re talking too fast. We all speed up when we are nervous and, frequently, let our voices trail off at the end of sentences. Keep a slow pace. Trust me, you are going much faster than you think. If you have a trusted partner in the audience ask him to give you signs if you need to slow down or speed up.

Tip #8: Record yourself. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and your presentation style from watching a recording of yourself. When you watch the recording, see how you do on the other seven tips. You may be surprised at all the areas for improvement you uncover.

Follow these presentation tips and you’ll be giving keynotes like the pros in no time at all.

For more presentations tips along with presentation habits to avoid, don’t miss RainToday’s upcoming webinar with Tim Wackel on January 19, Become a Polished Presenter: Keys to Delivering Powerful Presentations.