POWER PLAY #10: Give Them Exactly What They Want It’s always exciting when you get to the part of the presentation where you tell your audience about the solution you have for them. The problem is that many presenters get so hung up on telling every single aspect of the solution, every benefit and feature, that

POWER PLAY #9 Use Pictures Instead of Bullet Points Whenever I ask people to tell me what qualities they associate with ineffective speakers, one that always comes up is slide presentations with too much information on them. Probably the worst are entire paragraphs, which the presenter then recites to the audience. Second worst are endless

POWER PLAY #8 Share Three Big Concepts in the Body of Your Presentation You’ve got your audience focused, and you’ve introduced your topic with a sexy headline. Now you’re ready to serve up the meat of your presentation. It’s time for the key ideas or concepts you’ll be imparting to your audience. How many of

POWER PLAY #7 Bring the Pain You’ve heard the cliché, “No pain, no gain,” and it’s especially true when it comes to presenting. Earlier, we established that the best presentations solve the audience’s problem, but it’s not enough for you to know there’s a problem, nor is it enough for them to know there’s a

POWER PLAY #6 Give Them a Sexy Headline When you look at a newspaper or magazine, what determines which articles you read? It’s the headline. If the headline catches your attention, you’ll check out the article, but if the headline doesn’t appeal to you, you move right on. This is the same way your audience

POWER PLAY #5  Make Them Itch, Then Scratch Did you know that tens of thousands of presentations are going on right now, all over the world, where the audiences aren’t paying any attention to the presenters? Or that in one of our recent surveys, 63 percent of people said that presentations they attend end up being

POWER PLAY #4 F—– the Audience At the beginning of any presentation, attendees are usually restless. They have no idea whether they’re going to be bored or get anything out of it. They’re distracted, too, and often will be fiddling with their phones or whispering to someone next to them. Seriously, unless they’ve paid to

Let’s say you’re on a car lot looking to buy. A salesperson saunters up for a meet and greet, gauges your interest, and determines you’re serious. It’s actually going pretty well—no pressure yet, and he seems nice enough. When he asks what you have in mind, you say you’re interested in a compact hybrid, because

POWER PLAY #2  Focus on Your Audience’s Problems, Not Yours One of the worst mistakes you can make is to think that the presentation is all about you—an opportunity to talk about your ideas, your products, and your solutions—and never relate it to anything the audience already cares about. Instead, remember why your audience is

POWER PLAY #1 Begin at the End Bestselling 7 Habits of Highly Successful People author Stephen R. Covey famously counseled that successful people “begin with the end in mind,” by which he meant that if you want to accomplish something great, it’s best if you first figure out what that something is. Metaphors abound: know