If you’re a Startup founder, you’ve heard this all before. “Your elevator pitch should be able to convince anyone in 30 seconds in an elevator”. Hold on hold on hold on! Let’s pause for a few seconds. Imagine that the roles are reversed. You’re in the elevator, lost in your thoughts, minding your own business. There is one other person in it, who you don’t know, and that person is looking intensely at you.
Last week we saw how presentation vultures can destroy your confidence and ability to present in front of an audience. We saw that the best way to fend them off is to strengthen your vital space anchor. But how can you do that? If your presentation has an objective, a clear message, it is much easier to use it as an anchor. Let’s imagine for example that the key message is that your presentation is about a new software service that offers necessary services to protect your IT systems.
Maybe you feel that your last presentation was a complete failure. You didn’t manage to shake off your nerves. You became confused. The client or your boss criticized you. Maybe you’ve been caught in a downward spiral for some time, each criticism making you lose confidence, and making the next presentation worse. I have good news for you: no matter what your situation is, this vicious circle can be broken, and you gain the necessary confidence to enjoy presenting.
A few weeks ago, Ideas on Stage had the privilege of organizing a sales presentation training for Krauthammer at Dolce La Hulpe, close to Brussels in Belgium. For us, delivering a training for dozens of senior people at Krauthammer, one of the world’s most respected sales and management training companies, felt like designing something for Jonathan Ive, Apple’s legendary designer: a bit intimidating but incredibly exciting. The training met with great success, and it was fantastic to work with such talented people, but what I will remember most are two presentations.
I know, paraphrasing the motto of the great Muhammad Ali, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, doesn’t seem to make much sense. Yet my point is that in a debate it is extremely important to listen and move with a maximum of agility, and talk with a maximum of punch. Take the example of the Gilets jaunes controversy in France. The government was completely taken by surprise by the popularity of the movement.
My colleague Ricardo pointed me to a tweet from Rene Ritchie, who was attending the conferences at CES. Dear almost everyone on stage at CES: Pay ungodly amounts of money — anything you have to — to get WWDC speaker training ASAP. Or go to Juilliard or the Royal Shakespeare Company for a month. Whatever works for you. — Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) January 8, 2019 This tweet says: “Dear almost everyone on stage at CES: Pay ungodly amounts of money — anything you have to — to get WWDC speaker training ASAP.
By now, you’ve probably heard that Apple was doomed. Last Wednesday they released a profit warning press release, followed by an interview with CEO Tim Cook. I’m all too aware of Apple’s previous profit warning. Back in the nineties, after Steve Jobs returned to Apple and a Saudi prince (whose name I forget) bought a lot of Apple shares, I decided that I would be a smart investor and I bought Apple shares too.
Too many presentations aim only to inform, yet this is one thing oral presentations are particularly bad at – we forget most of what we hear within 30 seconds. If you want people to remember information, give them a document and a coffee, and time to read. Then you can answer their questions, discuss, agree on the next steps, and leave. This is what happens in meetings at companies like Amazon and LinkedIn, where not only do meetings never have slides - they never have presentations.