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Lesson Info

Influential Presentation Strategies

So I have already gotten some phenomenal responses from that last session. I want to make sure I say thank you again to Ariana and Chris for being the guinea pigs, and workshopping through their influential intentions. I don't know about you but I found it to be very enlightening, about how you can start to see all these pieces gel together, and create that plan, when before we might normally just come into like a discussion saying, well this is the way it should be. Why don't you understand this? And instead eliminating all of that frustration, and taking an objective look at what we're trying to accomplish, and suspend the ego, suspend our own values and beliefs, so that way we understand that person's reality, and communicate their language within their reality, and so thank you so much to you guys. I want to make sure that I touch on one very important point in this profiling, your mark example, and that is to record what you observe right away. So every time you have a touch point...

with your mark, record your observations. The biggest lie that you will tell yourself is, I'll remember that later. You will not remember that later. So fresh out of a coffee meeting with them, fresh off of a phone call with them, go back to your field guide, go back to your covert profiling tool, and write down what you observe. Definitely kinesthetic. Oh okay here's some values that they mentioned. Here's some identifiers, because chances are, you have multiple marks in your life. You have some clients you're trying to get, you're trying to influence your spouse to take out the trash, you're trying to influence multiple people in your lives. So it's very difficult for you to keep all of this in your brain. Like the hard drive is already full. So make sure that you record it so you don't miss all of this valuable information. So you have your field guides, and you have your covert profiler. This is a phenomenal tool that you can use over and over again. I'll say you can also take that information, in these tools, and incorporate them into your contact management system. So a lot of your contact management systems will have a section of notes, or fields that you can add. I really recommend that you add the E or I field, the S or T field, the F or P field, the VAK fields, and the values, the identifiers, the beliefs, the emotions, add those fields into your contact management system. What I personally use, because I don't have a very thorough management system in that regard. Some people use Salesforce, or Infusionsoft, anything along those lines. Outlook I guess. Personally for my influential profiles, I love Evernote. I love Evernote. So I have a folder in my Evernote app, that says profiles, and in it I just have... I title the note of the mark, being their name. That's the title of the note, and then I just create a copy and paste form, that I copy the blank version, attach it to their specific note, and even in that note you can do little checkboxes. So you just have VAK, and you can check off V, check off K, things along those lines, and it's an ever-growing document, as I keep learning more about my mark. Plus with Evernote, it's in my iPhone, it's in my iPad, it's on my computer. I can access it anywhere at any time. So the second I leave that meeting, I am putting in information in my phone, because it's fresh. So please make sure that this is a part of your process when you interact with your mark, is put it into some sort of system of whatever works for you. So make sense? Thinking of ways how you can start you putting that into your... To your system? Great. So as I mentioned before, some of the questions that I've gotten in both here in the studio audience, as well as people watching from home, is how do some of these techniques apply to speaking in groups? How do I influence groups of people? How do I approach, creating a presentation, creating the structure of a presentation? So I created this segment just recently for creativeLIVE. I have delivered this in the past in previous workshops, but not quite in this order of of a workshop, but it's still completely going to apply, and you're still gonna love it, and it's going to be a series of questions that I asked myself, before I create a presentation for specific audience. So first of all, my content stays the same. Just as your influential message stays the same. The same intention is there, the same lessons are there, but before I deliver a presentation, I continuously look at, what is the wrapping paper that I'm going to put around it for this group, because one hook for one company might be different than a hook for a different company, and one hook for entrepreneurs, is going to be different than a hook for corporate America. So even though your message of your company, your services, your hopes were of how you're going to present yourself in a job interview, all of that's going to stay the same at the core. But it's how can I adjust it for this group, and so this is the series of questions that I go through, to make sure I'm in the right perspective for creating that presentation. The first one is, what is the problem that I am solving from this presentation? If they are not getting some result out of you speaking, then you are wasting time. So being very clear about the problem. Why have you been brought in to speak to this group? The next question that I ask myself is, and this one isn't a slide, but it's kind of natural next question I ask is, are they aware of that problem or not? And if you notice when we did the white board, that's the question that I asked Arianna, about the website, because you perceiving a problem, does not necessarily mean that your mark sees that same problem. So making sure and checking in with, how do they see that problem, or do they see that problem? The next one is how does my audience experience that problem? So some people may know that they are overweight, but they experience that problem with pain, having to take too many medications, having to spend a lot of money on those medications, not being able to play with your kids, not being able to go on the rides when you go on vacation, and certain places, not being able to do certain things. So this is how they experience that pain. So again just tying all of this into all of the other lessons that we've talked about, is you want to paint the picture of the pain with their language. So the VAK, and if it's a group of people as a presentation, then you want to paint the picture of that pain through a visual, through an auditory, and through a kinesthetic. So in your presentations, you obviously can have audio-visual to support your presentation. So that covers you know the visual side, that covers the auditory. There can be the kinesthetic could be words and phrases that you use as well, but one auditory trick that I use, when painting this picture, is let's use the overweight example, and not being able to play with ones kids, is if you... If you tell a story about a client that you've worked with, or even if you make up some scenario, or if it's a culmination of many stories that you've experienced as a coach, and this represents this one situation, and you tell a story about how a client wanted to play with their kids, you know out in the playground, and when the kids came up and said, mom why don't you come out and play with us? And they said no you know my feet hurt today, and they and they walked away and the kid goes, your feet always hurt. That's so much more impactful, because you are actually using the dialogue of the character in your story, rather than you as the speaker describing the situation, you're painting the picture of the story, and anytime that you can give the dialogue of the characters in your story, then it's much more impactful, and please know that this is really honestly Shiree's crash course into speaking. So I'm going to be hitting on a lot of different points. Feel free studio audience and people online, to go ahead and ask questions, because I brought up the point of stories, I do want to point out a few things of what should be in your presentation stories. So the first... First of all there needs to be a point behind the story. Please don't tell a story for a story's sake. There needs to be a moral, or a theme, or a takeaway from this. What lesson is this story illustrating? So that's number one goal with the story. The second is you want to have characters in your story. So you want people talking to one another, and you don't want to say, well he said such-and-such. Rather you want to do something along the lines of, he walked into the room, and then... What are you guys doing in here? So you embody that character for that moment, and you want, especially in your stories you want to speak in present tense, rather than he... Like he walked into the room. You could say, and I'm sitting there, and I see him walk into the room. So your stories are in present tense. That for whatever reason, creates that visual motion picture in your mind's eye. Anytime you're describing something in the past tense, we're using a completely different part of our brain, and we are not as engaged. So if you are creating a really thorough presentation, work very diligently on speaking in the present tense. So you want your characters, and did I mention dialogue between those characters? Okay great, and you want a setting. You want a scene. You don't want this story to happen out in space. Like ground it for me. Again if you're painting this visual picture, one of my missing pieces is where are they. Are they in the park? Is it morning? Is it night? You know what's the... Some people get very flowery with it and talk about it's a crisp cool night, and sometimes that can be very effective, and then sometimes you may not need that detail, but as long as those descriptor words serve the ultimate story, and the emotion that you're wanting to get out of it, and anything else with stories? I think that that covers the main ones okay? Okay so how does your audience experience that problem? Again this is you putting yourself in your marks frame of mind. Putting yourself in their shoes. Not how would you perceive being unhealthy, or how you would perceive struggling with building your business. It's how do they experience this problem, and any times that you can get those words from them ahead of time, even better. Before speaking I will interview my meeting planner, and ask them these questions, so what are the problems? Okay well how do they know that that problem is occurring? What's the feedback that you get? And then especially for more thorough engagements, I will survey and interview just people within the company. So even if I'm speaking of 500 people, I might ask my meeting planner, could you hook me up with five of those people? I just want to have a 30-minute conversation with them. So I can get they're influential vibes. I start to pull key words and phrases from them, and I incorporate that into the pain point, the problem description in my speech. Yes? And when you talk to those five people, do you ask them these questions as well? So you ask the meeting planner these questions, do you ask the employees these questions? Yes I make it as conversational as possible. It just depends on my rapport with them, and most people are not professional speakers. So they may not understand how do you experience this problem? But you know okay. So what do you perceive this problem to be? Okay tell me about a situation when that came up, and then that's just leads me into a question after question, just so I get a better sense from it. Yes. And the next one is understanding what your audience is proud of. So just as we've done in the E part of influential vibes, of negative state and positive state, that's what we're doing within our speech, is first we identified the negative state. Now we need to identify the positive state, and generally groups have a group think of some sort, that they have accomplished something recently, or they have a strong tradition behind the organization. For example I'm a part of the National Speakers Association, and one of the things that is embedded in the NSA culture, is what we call yes the NSA, different NSA. What is embedded in the NSA culture is what they call the spirit of Cavett, and Cavett Robert founded the National Speakers Association. He was a phenomenal motivational speaker, but he created the Association, as the phrase goes within NSA, is not to try to get your piece of the pie, but to make the pie bigger, and so it's this tradition, and idea of working together as industry professionals. Yeah we may be in competition with one another, but we are more focused on how to help our own community of people, and so no speaking to that group, I likely will refer to this spirit of Cavett, because it's so engrained in this associations culture. So like for example Zappos. Zappos has a culture of service, and they are very proud of their culture of service, and they share stories of how they went above and beyond, to help their clients and customers. So if I'm a speaker for Zappos, I'm going to definitely tap into that, at key moments in my presentations. So I know the corporate culture, or the the group culture of the positive state, and the negative state, make sense? Great, yes? Can you give an example of how you would tap into it, speaking to Zappos. Sure so Zappos if you're listening... (laughing) So it depends on what I'm brought in there for. So what is the problem that I'm fixing? If it is how we can create more positive influence within Zappos, then perhaps let's just say for theory sake, like some of their ratings have gone down in a certain area that they are assessing, and so they're bringing in these workshops to help fix that. So first of all I need the problem that I'm fixing, and I would probably top into the positive state, by saying look I know that we've had a challenge come up recently, that we aren't hitting marks in certain areas, and I'm so honored and thankful that Zappos has brought me in to discuss this with you. Listen I know that each and every one of you has a heart of gold, and I know that you love working here at Zappos, because the culture is so strong. You've been through the training. This isn't a bad thing that's happened. It's just a challenge to potentially grow and help our customers even more in a better way. Is that a good example? Yeah great. All right so we have our positive and negative states that we know about our group. The next one is, what are my audience's desired outcomes? So this is what do they want for themselves? So they may say I want to... Like if it's a support group of some sort, to help with health, and being overweight, they may say I want to lose weight, or I want to feel better about myself, or I want to play with my kids. Like what are the desired outcomes that they are searching for? So you as, let's say you're a nutritionist, may be educating a group of people on all the things that they need to do, because you know it helps with their blood pressure, and their sodium levels, and all of these other factors, but that's not as intriguing, or sexy for them. They want you know, the six-pack abs. They want to be able to run a marathon, they want whatever these other goals are. So make sure you understand what... How they perceive the outcome out of this presentation, and what that will be. Next is what is the outcome I want for me in this presentation. I find that this is where so many people miss so many awesome business opportunities, by not asking themselves this question. As somebody who has the honor to stand in front of a group of people, and speak your mind, and teach and help, that is wonderful that you're taking on that stewardship, to help your fellow human beings, in whatever area that you're able to contribute. However I don't want you to miss the opportunity that this is a chance for you, to build your following, build your business, get clients, get email addresses, build your brand. There are so many outcomes that you can get from this. So I want to make sure that you have your own influential intention, for the presentation for you, and there's nothing wrong with you having a goal for yourself. Yes Chris? You just give a bunch of good examples. When you're giving a speech, do you focus on just one to be very focused on it? Yes I try to as much as I can, because here's where a lot of speakers go wrong, is either they don't ask themselves this question, they miss out on the opportunity altogether. They think that, oh if I just get up and speak, people will naturally know, to come up to me and ask to do business with me. It's very similar to people, oh if I write a blog post, then they'll know to sign up for my newsletter, and that's not the case. You have to be... Have that clear specific goal in mind to get them to move forward. With that said, if I have way too many goals, it's the same thing of me going to a website, and seeing buy now! Sign up for this! Give me your email address! And it's just too much, and when we have too many options, we generally choose none of them. So I try to... I try to have one or two goals. I think three is a bit much, just because when you are up here, you are remembering everything that you're supposed to say, you're picking up on the body language out there, you're trying to make manage, and maintain those goals that you have, you've got audio-visual going on. I mean this is... This is spinning plates baby. There is so much happening here, and so you don't want to overwhelm yourself with too many goals, and so I prefer people to take a laser approach, rather than a shotgun, of give me your email address, and get my coaching, and hire me for more speeches, and let's create a workshop together, and let's be JV partners! And it's it's going to lead to no results. So typically for me in my business, depending on the type of group I'm speaking with, if it's a local Association, then my goal is email addresses. I want them in my online community, and I want to stay in touch with them through my newsletter. If it's corporate, then my main goals are keep my buyer happy. So make sure that the CEO, and the meeting planner are very happy with this. Make sure that they look good for bringing me in, because that's a huge issue, because any times they hire somebody that doesn't deliver, that makes them look bad, there's ramifications. So I want to make sure that I hit it out of the park for them, and then the second is for more of a corporate setting, is the spin-off business potential, whether that's one-on-one coaching, or hey this was a 45 minute speech. You know we can do like a year-long training, four your group. We can bring this virtually, just depending on what the business model fits for theirs and mine. So I think one to two is plenty to shoot for, and how that shapes your presentation, is when you know what the goal is for you, then you can hint... Like say if you want email addresses. You can hint towards near the beginning, how you have a community of people, and you get great feedback from your blogs, and your newsletters, and in fact just the other day, I got an email from somebody after I sent out my newsletter, who said that this helped them get a promotion, and give that example, and then say near the end, where your call-to-action is, hey remember when I talked about my newsletter community, and I promised I'd give you valuable information, and in fact remember so-and-so just got the promotion? I want to make sure that you guys have an opportunity to be a part of the conversation, and get the free value as well. Here is how, and then and then you walk that through. Same with you can prime at the beginning for your influential intention for yourself of, if you want a longer engagement, then you can share a story about a client that you've worked with, and the positive results, and then near the end you can... Depending on corporate that's different. You may not want to put a call to action like that in there, but if they say like, oh you can totally mention your one-on-one coaching services to them, then that might work. So absolutely. Great question. Thank you. So then the next question that I asked myself is, what is the outcome I want for my audience from the presentation? So yes we had our own selfish goal. Now we do want to make sure that we are very clear about what is the outcome that we want for them. So when they walk out those doors, what are the tools that they will have? What are the emotions that they will feel? What are the action steps that they will take? Does that sound similar to other things that we talked about earlier with influential intentions? Hmm isn't that interesting? Yes Chris you have a question? Just how does that then... Does it always match up with what are the audience's desired outcomes, or do you find that differs? It can be, and that's why I added this next question, of what are my audience's needs? So in the first one of the audience, the desires, another way to phrase that is, what do they want? And then this version is what do they need. So you are going to market your speech, and wrap your speech from the perspective of, I know this is what you want, and get them primed, and frothing at the mouth, for yes that's what I want! And then you pepper in the things that they need to get that. So if they want to lose weight, they go yes I want this, and yes I want to be played with... I want to play with my kids, and yes I want this and that. Great then here is a simple plan that you can follow in order to get those. So their wants and needs may not align, but you need to make sure that both are incorporated in your presentation. Where most people go wrong, is they hit the needs throughout the presentation. This is what you should do. This is what you should do. This is what you should do, and it's too... It's too... It's not sexy quite frankly. It's not engaging enough for me as a listener, because you haven't told me what I want, and if I don't feel like you understand my problem, and I feel like you don't understand my wants and desires, I'm not connecting with you as a speaker, and therefore I'm not engaging with you further, and I'm probably going to be on Twitter, or whatever it is. So that's the different level. So the first part, and notice how we open up with the perspective of the audience, and then we go back into the perspective of us as the presenter, and we align those. Exactly the same thing that you saw up here with the whiteboard, is I went back and forth with Arianna about, okay this is the problem that you see, does he see that to be a problem as well? Okay this is how you see it. How would he do describe this situation? So you're going back and forth between these roles. Quite frankly I think that's one of the reasons why I think actors are so very skilled, in the realm of communications, is because they are trained to put themselves in another person's perspective, and so if you have an acting background of some sort, fantastic. You might potentially theoretically have a leg up above others. I'm sure that there are other professions that would do that as well, probably lawyers, but I just find that so much of my acting background contributes to that back and forth, that I'm able to switch gears towards. Yes? How do you represent what the audience wants? Do you just straight-up say, I know you want X Y & Z, or do somehow allude to it? Right so in a perfect world, if you have a background or story that is similar to theirs, and say like I have experienced what you are currently experiencing, then that's what you tie into. It's very similar to what we did with Chris before, of how he achieved a certain level of success in his life, but then there was something missing, and he searched for the solution, and now he has the solution, and I am so happy that I get to share the solution with you! So you don't have to go through the trial and error that I went through. That's definitely much more impactful. If you don't have that story, then again I would refer to a story of a friend, family member, or client, in which you you related with, were a part of in some way. So again I'm referring back to stories, because that's the... I think the word you used was, a roundabout way, or elusive way, or something. That's the best technique that you have, rather than this is what you want right? (laughing) So stories is one of your best tools in the toolbox.