THERE is no other accomplishment one can have—including PR professionals—that can so quickly make a career and secure recognition than the ability to speak.
As a PR communicator, educator and marketer, I subscribe to this tenet, knowing full well that if you can articulate your thoughts, the power to connect with your constituents, stakeholders or audiences will be stronger, and carrying out plans will produce more substantial results.
PR people do a lot of written and verbal presentations. Both are equally challenging and important in leveraging personal and professional opportunities, but the oral variety, in many instances, is more demanding.
What is a presentation? It is speaking before 1,000 people using PowerPoint in a formal setting, a Ted Talk with just your voice and strong physical presence as your tools, or coming face-to-face with 10 people in a more informal atmosphere. It could also be a one-on-one with just a document or a laptop on a desk, or a relaxed chat over Starbucks coffee. Eighty percent of the skills you use routinely over coffee are still relevant to a 1,000-person presentation.
So, what happens? You become a presenter. You cease to be yourself. You loosen up, and become more personal and animated. Structurally, a successful presentation is one where you “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them and tell them what you’ve just told them.”
Nearly every communications opportunity is simply a well-told story. Think about it. Jim Endicott, president of Distinction Communication, said, “Your presentation opportunities must tell a compelling story of change, personal development or future potential. It must open with fire that quickly engages your audience and moves at a pace that keeps the message flowing in a meaningful way. And it must end in a way that underscores key points that can win the hearts, minds, wallets, or votes of a busy and distracted audience. There should be a story behind every pitch.”
The illustrated-storyline method, where visuals are used to accelerate and clarify your ideas, works best. Out with too many bullets, just like images in a child’s storybook, creative approaches must be clear and easy to understand. Or you can be a business storyteller who can lend credibility and believability to the story being told. Your tactical use of pacing, pauses, and purposeful movement should transfer your passion and excitement to your listeners, moving them consider new ways of thinking.
Selling the steak, not the sizzle. Nowadays, presentations are made easier. Software, powerful technologies, plug-ins and utilities, seminars and books have helped make the job less of a worry. Anybody can now present. Your biggest challenge today is in key messaging and delivery so your audiences “get it” and are moved to action. Of course, there is a world of difference between those two perspectives. Technology focused, presenter-centric presentations have become commonplace. The competition has shifted from simply “giving presentations” to effectively “getting the message” across—from mere pizzazz or dazzle to lucid storytelling.
Emotions rule. Effective communicators use three essential channels to convey important messages: facts that are crisply articulated and pre-distilled; emotional restraint propped by creative or right-brain stories and visually rich images; and symbolic connectivity between the emotional and rational aspects of the pitch. People are more persuaded by what they’ll lose than what they may gain. You remember unsolved problems, frustrations, failures and rejections much better than you remember your successes and completions. Truly, this is a solid manifestation that emotions sell better than reason.
It’s all about your audience. Endicott shared several mistakes in presenting. One is your tendency to choose your own self-interest over your audience’s desire to know. It’s an issue of relevance. Good presentations are not about you, although most political pitches are centered on “me, myself and I.” Failure to establish the relevance of your idea or information early is often a byproduct of traditional presenter-anchored messaging. This approach places a higher value on what you feel compelled to tell than any meaningful dialogue around the process of identifying and articulating issues and the solutions that are being proposed.
An adaptive communications style allows you to be heard and understood better. “It’s not enough that you understand your own communications style tendencies, but you must be willing to adapt your styles to achieve efficiency. Endicott said, “Your individual style should move from yourself to the audience, and from your own world to their world; from ignoring what’s going on in the presentation room to acknowledging room dynamics; from getting glued to your notes to establishing more eye contact; and from too much use of words and charts to leveraging stories and vivid images.”
Never choose intellect over interpersonal connections to influence an audience. Who you think you and your company or party may be, is not as important as how you’re perceived. You can try to manage those perceptions, but presentations—and presenters—often inadvertently send all the wrong signals. It’s not typically what you have said and done that creates those impressions; it is what you have not said and done. You’re rarely persuasive when your presentations are clearly centered on you or the party you represent.”
A persuasive presentation flows this way: Define the problem, quantify the impact, specify the need, propose the solution, quantify the benefits, sell the advantage or differentiation, and substantiate the claim.
In a Columbia University study, presentations influenced by the left or rational brain make use of bullets, heavy text and cold, hard data points. They are logical, sequential, analytic and data-driven, where the audiences “check out” fast, rarely remember, and are provided little emotional and persuasion value.
Right brain or emotional presentations make use of images from personal stories, audience interaction or testimonials. They are sensory-based, emotion-filled, imagistic and talk of the here and now. The impact is usually stronger, engaging the audience’s senses. The points are made more quickly, messages are remembered much longer and action points are heeded immediately. The appeal is directed to the heart, eliciting such reactions as, “The presenter understood the problems and has some good ideas for solving them. I really think I can work with him.”
Points to remember in doing presentations:
- Follow the mantra: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them and tell them what you’ve just told them.” Said another way: “Say what you’re going to say, say it and say what you’ve just said.
- Presentations must be designed to “awaken people by dreaming their dreams more clearly than they dream them themselves.”
- Aim to get this reaction from a prospect: “Well, those guys really understood our problems, and had some good ideas for solving them, and I really think I can work with them.”
- Interpersonal communications resonate better with people: “Senior managers spend so much time flying around the world rather than just picking up the telephone because they need to look people in the eyes and see if they are on the level.”
- In summary: When doing a presentation: Structure it, use the techniques that work for you, psyche yourself up, put substance in what you must present and be congruent.
Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland wrote in their book The Leader’s Voice that 86 percent of business professionals rate themselves as effective communicators, but only 17 percent of their audience agreed. Given this percentage ratio, our challenge as business communicators has more to do with our perceptions than our perfections.
During your life’s crucial moments, results are often established not only by your deeds, but also by what you say. Saying the right thing the right way can make the difference between clinching the account or losing the business, advancing your career or suffering a demotion, and getting the votes or losing the support of people. During these moments, it’s important to be pitch-perfect, which renowned media coach Bill McGowan defined as “using the right tone to convey the right message to the right person at the right time.”
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier organization for PR professionals around the world. Bong R. Osorio is a communications consultant of ABS-CBN Corp., SkyCable, Dentsu-Aegis Network, government projects among others, after retiring as vice president and head of the Corporate Communications Division of ABS-CBN.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer our readers’ questions about public relations. Please send your questions or comments to askipraphil@gmail.com.
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