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The Secret to Great Presentations
By Doug Staneart
If you take only one piece of advice about public speaking, make sure that
it is this pearl of wisdom. If you focus on this one simple thing, the
number of times you say “uhm” won’t matter. If you focus on this one thing,
your gestures and not knowing what to do with your hands won’t matter. If
you focus on this one thing, then the occasional loss of train of thought
won’t matter. In fact, if you focus on this one simple thing, you can break
just about every rule that public speakers are supposed to abide by, and you
will still win over your audience.
This one simple rule has transformed countless mediocre speakers into good
speakers, scores of good speakers into great speakers, and numerous great
speakers into world-class speakers.
This simple rule that can make or break a speaker is… ENTHUSIASM.
That’s right, if you have a little excitement in your talk and a spring in
your step, people pay attention. Your audience will have just about as much
excitement about your talk as you do, and no more. So, if you want to win
over your audience, add a sparkle of enthusiasm.
One of my mentors told me that there are two rules to live by in the world
of professional speakers. She said, “Rule number one is to never speak on a
topic that you yourself are not enthusiastic about, and rule number two is
that if you ever violate rule number one, fake it ‘til you make it.”
Frank Bettger in his book How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in
Selling said it a different way. He said, “If you act enthusiastic, then
you’ll be enthusiastic.”
For those of us who get nervous in front of groups, it’s even easier. In the
previous chapter I pointed out that 90% of our nervousness doesn’t even
show. Let’s look at the other 10%. When we are nervous, we often cut out
preambles and get right to the point, our rate of speech typically speeds
up, we tend to move around a lot more, and we may move our hands around more
than normal. Well, when we are excited about something, we do the exact same
things.
Years ago, when I was a sales manager, I was often amazed at the number of
times that a brand new sales person without a lot of product knowledge and
absolutely no experience, could close sale after sale while my more seasoned
people were struggling. The more times I went on sales calls with these new
people, the more I started to notice a pattern. New salespeople are often
nervous, so when they walk into an office on a sales call, they tend to cut
right to the chase. They also generally talk faster because they are afraid
they’ll forget something. They have a tough time sitting still because of
the nervousness, so they move around a lot.
I noticed that these symptoms of nervousness worked to the advantage of
these new salespeople, because their prospects looked across the table at
salespeople who appeared to be extremely enthusiastic about what they were
selling. I would imagine that these potential buyers were saying things to
themselves like, “if this person believes so much in this product, it must
be good.”
We as speakers can also use our nervousness to our advantage. When we turn
that pent up nervousness into energy and enthusiasm, our audience can’t help
but be energized as well.
Doug Staneart, doug@leadersinstitute.com, is CEO of The Leader’s Institute,
http://www.leadersinstitute.com, specializing in leadership, public
speaking, and team building training for individuals and groups. He can be
reached toll-free at 1-800-872-7830.
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