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Learn to connect with your audience and motivate them … with “Resonate”

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences

by Nancy Duarte

Reveals the underlying story form of all great presentations that will not only create impact, but will move people to action

Presentations are meant to inform, inspire, and persuade audiences. So why then do so many audiences leave feeling like they've wasted their time? All too often, presentations don't resonate with the audience and move them to transformative action.

Just as the author's first book helped presenters become visual communicators, Resonate helps you make a strong connection with your audience and lead them to purposeful action. The author's approach is simple: building a presentation today is a bit like writing a documentary. Using this approach, you'll convey your content with passion, persuasion, and impact.

  • Author has a proven track record, including having created the slides in Al Gore's Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth
  • Focuses on content development methodologies that are not only fundamental but will move people to action
  • Upends the usual paradigm by making the audience the hero and the presenter the mentor
  • Shows how to use story techniques of conflict and resolution

Presentations don't have to be boring ordeals. You can make them fun, exciting, and full of meaning. Leave your audiences energized and ready to take action with Resonate.

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Public Speaking tip – Define your image

When you first begin to prepare your presentation, you defined an image that you wanted to present. “What do I want them to remember of me?”

Who are you? How will you be remembered after this presentation?

Everything the audience sees needs to reinforce that image – clothes, facial expression, stance and gesture.

At its most basic this means projecting confidence and sincerity. Unless you decide otherwise, the audience needs to know that you are comfortable with your message and that you believe in it.

If you are also using this presentation to present yourself as the face of your business, or as a candidate for a position, then take that into account as well. You need to be seen as trustworthy, competent, at ease with your material.

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The Sales Presentation

Volumes have been written about the skills needed for successful sales presentations. Advice abounds about how to present benefits, not features; how to conduct product demos; how to use influencing techniques; how to establish rapport; how to close; and more.
Top sales performers embrace not only these sales skills but, most importantly, this fundamental of effective presenting: focus on the audience. They are clear that a sales presentation should be a dialogue between salesperson and audience. Most sales presentations typically involve small enough numbers of people to facilitate this.

more => http://bit.ly/g8lwH7

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Tuesday's tip for public speaking success – defining the wow

The impact of your presentation is not an accidental by-product of a presentation. It is something you create deliberately.

And the first thing to do is to define what it is that you want to create. What exactly is the impact going to be? In other words, you need to define:

How will your audience respond to your speech or presentation?
What will they take away with them and remember?
What will they remember of you?

Why will they think “Wow what a fabulous presentation!”?

Start by defining the purpose of your presentation or speech. What do you want its impact to be?
You may even want to have several– in different parts of your presentation. But they must not be left to chance or you risk creating “Ho-hum …” rather than “wow!”

Then define the message; the central message of your presentation - what one thing do you want the audience to take away? This message - you need to be able to state it in one sentence. That way you will stay focused on that outcome when you are planning

The second of the questions was “What do I want them to remember of me?”

Who are you? How will you be remembered after this presentation?

You cannot be someone you are not, when you present, unless you are prepared to be a performer for the entire production. Insincerity will detract from your speech as quickly as a joke in bad taste. But you can present a side of yourself as the highlight – the side you want your audience to remember.

And the most powerful choice you will make is how you get that image to support your message – how you
put the two together.

This package, this combination of impact, message and image are what people take away from your
presentation. They are the wow you create.

But the pivotal word, there, was “choose” – the impact you choose to make, the impact you choose for your presentation to make.

Whatever you may be trying to achieve, don’t let the impact of your presentation be an accident. Right from the beginning, it needs to be part of the planning. When you are visualizing your production, toying with ideas and possibilities and first drafts, make the impact of you as a person and of your performance an integral part of that process. Visualise it and work it into all aspects of your production planning.

Then you have the foundation for creating the “wow” factor.

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Quotation

Laurence Clarke Powell said ... “Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow...”

Friday freebie – warm-up ideas to build confidence before your speech

A warm-up routine can be built to give you public speaking confidence. This is the set of behaviours
that will work best for you so that when you begin your presentation you feel confident. (It will also benefit your voice and stance as well, but in this freebie, we are focussing on building confidence.) Just email me and I will send you the warm-up ideas as a set of tips by email.

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Friday freebie

How will your audience respond to your speech or presentation?
What will they take away with them and remember?
What will they remember of you?
Why will they think “Wow what a fabulous presentation!”?
And how will you create the "fabulous presentation"?
Get a range of ideas and thoughts from the contributors to this free eBook. Just email me, and I will send you the eBook.

The Power of Pauses

Public speaking is just that - speaking, right?

And we focus on what we will say and how we will say it; on how we will stand and how we will move and how we will use eye contact, but always we focus on the saying - the speaking.

Sometimes we forget the value of silence.

Maybe it's because we have had drummed into us the dreadful crime of using an um or an ah, or a y'know to fill the silence while we think. So we focus on fluency, on continuing to talk, and on the next point and the next ... to the conclusion.

And sometimes, in the midst of all that focus, we forget the power of the pause.

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the power of the pause!

It can refocus audience attention. (Remember how it felt in school when suddenly you noticed that the room was silent and the teacher was looking at you?!)

At the least it interrupts the flow of that continuous speech we were using so that that audience attention is refocused on what we have to say next.

A pause will then add power to your next point ... because that attention is so newly focussed.

A pause will build your confidence, simply because of the power, but also because you had the gumption to stop the flow of speech.

If it is a pause to let you think, then the audience should recognise that and value that you are giving your best to your presentation.

A pause is a powerful way to change tack. You can change from a supercharged, rapid fire delivery style to one that is quieter, slower, more reflective. Again the power is in the change of attention, and in the fact that you have given your audience variety. But the pause has also allowed you to add power to the change of direction.

For all of these reasons ... and there are many more ... you take your public speaking to a higher level when you use the power of the pause.

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6 Techniques to Make Your Presentation Unforgettable

It’s great to find yourself at the front of the room, speaking clearly, shuffling confidently through your perfectly-chosen slides, seeing looks on the faces of your audience members that seem to say “Yes, I am listening. No, I cannot turn away.”

If only it was always that easy…

It can be helpful to think about attention in terms of presentations in three ways ...=> http://bit.ly/9XkHuQ

Are your messages being heard?

From Kevin Leahy ...

Here are some of his suggestions for improving front-line communications and building rapport and trust.

... and there are - seven of them - all very relevant to communication, and just as applicable to public speaking

Read the article here => http://nyti.ms/hzsS5J