Take a moment to ‘own the space’ when getting straight to the point in your business presentation

Last week I was discussing the need to open your business presentation with the kind of energy you feel when you’re closing a successful presentation – and taking inspiration from the great magician John Archer.  It reminded me, however, that there can be conflicting objectives at play as you open.

On one hand, you want to come straight to the point, driven by that sense of energy. One the other hand, you actually need to take your time to get established, allowing your audience to ‘tune in’ to you as they settle and ensuring that you don’t simply blurt your all-important opening words because your heart is pounding away that little bit faster than normal. Above all, you need to take control of the situation and ensure that, for the next few minutes at least, you ‘own the space’.

I usually illustrate this to asking those I am coaching if they have ever been to a dinner with entertainment provided by ‘table-hopping’ magicians. I explain that it’s a tough environment for the magicians – they need to break into the table, interrupt the conversation and struggle with noise, difficult lighting conditions and waiters trying to serve food, never mind potentially tipsy guests. The best performers will do all they can to ‘own the space’; they will clear a small area for themselves, adjust the seating a little and clear away any obstructions or distractions. Only then will they start to perform their magic – when the conditions are right for them to do the best job possible. 

Few people get to experience working as both magician and businessman, so I was

delighted to hear Marvin Berglas echo my thoughts in one of Pete Wardell’s excellent ‘Magic State of Mind’ interviews.  Marvin is the man behind the super-successful range of ‘Marvin’s Magic’ tricks that you will find in department stores all over the world. He continues as a performer, however, particularly at the Emirates Stadium where he organises the corporate entertainment for Arsenal FC. Inevitably he gets asked in business meetings to ‘show us a trick’. The way Marvin responds is to say: “Sure, but not near at the corner of your desk; let’s go and sit around the table and I’ll show you something special”.

So – take a moment or two before launching straight into your business presentation. A moment to check that your audience are all settled and that everything you need is in place. And don’t, whatever happens, get caught out by the arrival of the coffee. All too often a trolley arrives just as you are delivering your full-on, scene-setting, engagement-designed opening statement. You cannot hope to compete with the clinkety-clink of cups and saucers and the passing of the sugar bowl. So stop speaking and make a point of pouring the coffee yourself. Far from looking servile it will show that you are in charge and you will re-start when full attention can be assured.  You own the space!      

Twitter's birthday coincides with sharp warnings of its dangers

So Twitter is eight years old and don’t we all (OK, many of us) love it? The medium’s birthday coincides, however, with two sharp warnings, first about how dangerous it can be and second about how its instant one-to-one personal nature is being eroded.

The first example is Grant Shapps’ notorious ‘Bingo & Beer’ tweet that has been deemed patronising at best and the end of Shapps’ career at worst.  Was this actually personally tweeted by Grant Shapps?  How closely involved was he with the tweet?  Whatever the answers, it went out under his name and he gets the blame.

The second example is rather more sad.  At least one tweet went out on L’Wren Scott’s Twitter account after she died; it would seem that she was using an automation service. Many brands do likewise, but it’s a long way from what Twitter was all about when it first emerged eight years ago this week.

Open your business presentation as if you were finishing it – the John Archer way

I have discussed in the past click here (May 2013) the importance of opening and closing a business presentation. Rule 13 of the Rules of Magic states that ‘Firsts and Lasts are remembered’, so special focus and rehearsal are always required for these elements in any presentation.

Firsts and Lasts each have their own additional reason for being important. It is at your close that you need to place your ‘Call to Action’, thereby getting a reaction and hopefully a result from your presentation. Your opening, meanwhile, is your chance to engage your audience and if you don’t achieve that, anything that follows will be rather meaningless.

For this reason I have long advocated a degree of extra energy up front – be a little more ‘full of beans’, I say, than might feel completely natural and the energy will bounce back between yourself and your audience. Aware that ‘full of beans’ may cause some translation confusion with some of the multi-national business people I coach I have long sought a more universal phrase and I have found one – within the world of magic.

John Archer is a magician and comedian much admired by his peers. He tours extensively with his friend Tim Vine, he was the first person to fool Penn & Teller on their TV show and he lectures regularly at magic conventions. His take on First and Lasts goes like this:

“You come off stage feeling so pumped up you could go back on. You should go on like that”.

Extracted and adapted from Nick Fitzherbert's book

Presentation Magic, published by Marshall Cavendish.  

German edition available April 29 

Use words that ‘paint pictures’ in your business presentation and your audience will ‘see’ what you are saying as well as hear it.

Of all the different methods of adding impact to the delivery your business presentation, one of the most effective is using words that 'paint pictures’. I have already applied the principle in the title of this blog. I could have said ‘using visual imagery helps audience...’, but instead said ‘words that paint pictures’, thereby conjuring visions in your mind of artists, brushes, colours and a beautiful end product. It is perhaps ironic that the term ‘visual imagery’ has no such power.

If we use words that paint pictures our audience can ‘see’ what we say as well as hear it and the impact is increased considerably. If Churchill had talked simply of: “ideological conflict and a physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas” or even “efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the west” would we still be quoting him today? We do so because he painted pictures with the words he used in 1946: “an ‘Iron Curtain’ has descended across the continent”.

The concept of words that paint pictures can be extended with great effect to phrases that paint pictures. Many enter our everyday language to the extent that they become clichés and we have to think again: making mountains out of molehills; using a sledgehammer to crack a nut; take the wind out of my sails etc.

A good descriptive phrase can, however, do much more than simply paint pictures in our minds. I was once coaching a team of Fund Managers in presentation skills. We got into a debate about the importance of stating clearly that good Fund Managers should develop intricate knowledge of the companies in which they invest by making regular visits to those companies. “I think that can be taken as read” said one somewhat surly member of the team; “the trouble is that anyone can say that”, said a more reasonable colleague. The one person who said nothing was reserving her thoughts for the presentation she was about to give. “I like to invest in companies”, she said, “where the management sit close to the loading bay”. With that one short sentence she had painted a clear, meaningful and memorable image; furthermore she had made it self-evident that she visits companies and follows a specific protocol.

The surly Fund Manager was suddenly keeping rather quiet and he sunk even deeper into his seat when his colleague built upon her ‘loading bay’ pronouncement with a story that was guaranteed to fix her in the minds of her audience. “On one occasion I was nearly arrested for loitering while doing my investment research”, she said. “A policemen was concerned that I was paying very close attention to a row of parked motorcycles. I had to explain – to the extent of showing ID – that I was considering investing in a company that made a specific part for motorcycles and I needed to see for myself how widely the part was being used on the bikes in my surrounding area”. Investors see a lot of Fund Managers; here was one that would stick in their minds as truly committed to getting the best bang for their bucks.

PS Regular readers of my blog posts will know that I usually brighten them up with a picture or two. I have not done so this time – I am relying on the words alone to create pictures in your minds!

If you must use notes for your business presentation, here are the options

“I’ll do a deal with you. As long as you can deliver your opening and closing without notes, you can do what you like in between”. That was how I described in my most recent post the way that I start to wean the business presenters I am coaching off the use of notes.

So what form of notes should they use in the middle sections of their presentations? Let’s look at the options:

1. Full script - Definitely not a good idea unless you have a really compelling reason such as lawyers insisting that delivery needs word-perfect precision to avoid litigation. The only time I have ever had a full script to hand was for the delivery of an address at my father’s funeral – I simply couldn’t be sure that my emotions wouldn’t get the better of me.

Every business presenter knows that reading from a script is to be avoided and yet many of the people I coach arrive with closely-typed sheets of A4 paper.  This is marginally preferable to 56 sheets of printed out PowerPoint slides, but neither so-called ‘aid’ is actually helpful to the presenter. The reason they give for carrying a script is that “I might freeze”; having focused on the potential to freeze, invariably that’s exactly what happens. They look down at their copious notes and are none the wiser – because they can’t begin to find where they should be!

So we establish the need for something smaller and less ‘flappy’. With a touch of intended innuendo for the sake of memorability, I introduce them to the benefits of ‘small and stiff’ as we start to talk about cards, but even this usually needs a step-by-step approach.

2. Set of cards – This is intrinsically good because, if you have not already done so, it forces you to carve up your presentation into series of segments, with one card for each segment. Then you need the discipline to restrict yourself to five rows and about five words across each row. The cards then cue you to the key points and even the moments that require a pause as you move to a new point and, especially, a new card. If you number the cards and move them to the left each time you complete one you are all set – as long as you have the physical space to lay your cards. Many people fall at this final fence, fumbling their cards due to lack of space and even dropping them on the floor.

3. Simple ‘map’ card – The ideal solution. Assuming you know your subject matter – and if you don’t what are you doing talking about it? – all you really need is the simplest prompt so that a brief glance enables you to cover off all the main points, get them in the right order, and get back on track if you freeze. And the good news is that all this should fit onto one – probably A5-sized - card.

Here (see left) you can see a map-style card that I made for myself. The situation here was not that I was unsure of what I would say, nor that I had a fear of freezing. The challenge was that I had been invited onto the Chris Evans Show on BBC Radio 2 and been given just three minutes to talk about how I apply the Rules of Magic to business presentation skills. I had never previously done this in anything less than 40 minutes so I had to be absolutely crisp and concise about the points I wanted to make. And if Chris asked me for examples of applying the rules I had no time to rack my brain as to what might work effectively on radio – I needed instant responses, which I listed (see right) on the reverse of the card. It clearly worked because it led to bookings in several different European countries and many enquiries about the availability of a book, which I eventually answered with the publication of Presentation Magic.

That’s all you really need to know about notes if you are simply standing up and speaking, but of course most of us are expected to use at least a degree of PowerPoint when making business presentations. If so, it is essential that you know what slide is coming up next and cue it with confidence and in sync with what you are saying. How do you achieve that without a bunch of PowerPoint print outs?

If you have an Apple laptop loaded with either PowerPoint for Mac or Keynote you already have the solution and may not even realise it. In either of these programmes click ‘View’ and select ‘Presenter View’ ('Presenter Tools' for older versions) and your screen will give a display like the one below. 

Rather than simply displaying what your audience can see, the screen shows both the slide being projected and the next in line. The Notes section can be displayed in the size most convenient to you; the full run of slides displays at the bottom so that you can pick and choose slides seamlessly; and clocks show both current and elapsed time. This facility is absolutely invaluable to the presenter, but is still difficult to find on PCs; it is one of the main reasons I use Macs.

I said up front that I wean people off their notes gradually and there two reasons for this. First, I put a lot of emphasise on working on the structure and content of their presentation, often re-ordering it and taking a lot out. The result is that it has a much more natural flow. They are speaking from their heart rather than being driven by some slides, so they don’t need a bunch of reminders about what to say!  Second, simply knowing that the safety net of some simple notes is there invariably instils enough confidence to mean that you are not going to need it. Indeed, that is why I refer to my map-style prompts as 'Confidence Cards'.