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Mistake 6: Keeping It Totally Serious

Humor increases interest and retention. Every core story or presentation should have some humor built into the panels. A joke from a popular cartoon like The Far Side is great for this—you can buy the 365-day calendar and just page through it, looking for a joke that will be funny at a certain point in your delivery. When I teach this program live, for example, I introduce “Sammy Schleb, the world’s worst presenter,” and show how he ruins his opportunities by presenting poorly.

Mistake 7: Failing to Practice the Presentation Each and Every Time Before You Give It

The more you know the material, the more persuasive, powerful, and effective you can be. If you are glued to the presentation and have to read it, you’re in trouble. The biggest mistake most presenters make is reading the presentation without practicing aloud, pretending they have a live audience. It’s in the out-loud practicing that you’ll develop great segues, presells for info yet to come, and perhaps even a little humor.

One of my clients hired a salesman and gave him a video training program teaching him how to present and a fantastic full-color presentation to practice. He rehearsed until he felt he was ready, and then presented to me and the CEO of the company. We listened to a painfully dull, word-by-word reading of the bullets. I retrained him immediately. We covered all the points in this module:

Make it exciting.

Move fast as the wind.

Make it a dynamic and compelling experience.

Know the material cold.

Draw some conclusions for your audience.

Don’t read the bullets mindlessly.

Develop the “patter between the panels” covered on the next page.

Then the sales rep went out and presented to 20 clients. He didn’t get even one sale. Confounded, the CEO and I thought we’d better take a look at how he was doing the presentation. To our horror he was still reading the bullets mindlessly. He did not link the points together or relate them directly to the prospect’s business. There was nothing dynamic about his delivery, no stories to illustrate his points, no humor.

I worked with him some more and then we reviewed his process two weeks later. He had developed cue cards to help him be more dynamic. No help. He was still sluggish and wooden. The moral to the story? Some people just can’t present. Others are natural communicators and born to present. That said, practice can make a huge difference. And whatever you do, test this trait before you hire someone.

Here’s another true story: In an almost identical situation, where the rep just did not know his material, the client actually took the presentation away from him. The client said, “I can read these bullets faster on my own.” That’s what you call dying in front of an audience.

Mistake 8: Having No Idea What Comes Next in the Presentation

You need to presell every panel if you can. Make your audience’s mouths water with anticipation. “The next panel is the number one most important point I am going to show you.” By knowing your material so you know what comes next, you can preframe, presell, and promise great material in the sections yet to come. This way you keep the excitement and anticipation going all through the presentation. By knowing the material cold, you can have what I call “the patter between the panels.” Draw some conclusions for your prospect/audience. Have great segues. All through the earlier chapters in this book, I reference material yet to come. That’s called a presell, and you may have noticed how it made you want to continue.

Exercise

Outline a quick 30-panel presentation that you could deliver to a prospect. Write a great title that makes people want to see the presentation. On panel 2, put “Areas covered.” The purpose of this panel is only to sell the heck out of the material yet to come. It’s not to upstage you by giving things away. So here’s a boring example of areas covered:

AREAS COVERED

State of the