Tips and Quotes Archive

Some people believe that holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go, and then do it.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

Worry is like a rocking chair, it will give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere.

Put simply, the reason why we even exist is because literally billions of atoms and molecules have combined in a particular way to make up you and I.

Lets take building as our next example. It can't be too difficult to erect a structure - heavens, I managed it at age 8! But to put up something that will be admired, valuable and enduring - well that's a different story.

Presentations are much the same. If you're going to make an impact, you need to put a good deal of thought in to how you will achieve this. Granted, good content is vitally important. But if two presenters have excellent content but the one structures his in a compelling manner and the other simply gushes forth, who's going to get the business?

Without structure, your talk is merely matter. So, how about putting it together properly, and making it matter?

The simplest structure is to have a good intro (seldom more than 10% of your presentation), a substantial body showing the benefits of your proposal, and a conclusion that sums up what you're proposing? Sounds dead simple, doesn't it?

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Once this is established, and you know how much time you have available, you can begin to plan what resources you will need, how you will go about putting it all together and how you intend to structure your talk or presentation.

When I realised that I would need to do an increasing number of sales presentations in the future, I quickly booked myself on to a presentation skills course to learn how to do it properly. Many years later when it seemed likely that I would be hosting my own seminars, I went to see how others do them - to see both what I wanted to emulate and also what I needed to avoid.

Here's the tip. If your purpose is clear to you and yu know what your outcome should be, it is far easier to know what you should say to your audience.

Here's the best shortcut you'll ever get. Watch a true professional. Hey - the wheel was invented ages ago - no point in trying to reinvent it! Besides, who has the time?

The age old rule for presentation attire - dressing one step up, or similar to the level that you expect of your audience can prove an over simplistic approach in certain instances. Often an audience may be present in mixed levels of attire. The direction you should then take is to align your attire with your message.

For example, a person advising others about their finances would be expected to wear a suit in order to establish credibility. But if you know that you are addressing the shop floor staff on the new pension or provident fund, a more casual approach, like a blazer with an open neck shirt would make your audience feel more at ease.

Darker colours like navy, charcoal and black are referred to as power colours and work well on larger audiences, especially when contrasted with a white or creme shirt or blouse. The V created by a suit centres the audience on your upper chest and head, highlighted when a contrasting tie or scarf is worn.

Casual attire can be appropriate for smaller groups, and particularly when a great deal of interaction is expected with the audience, and when equipment is being demonstrated.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown in to flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepeset thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope..

The most significant moment of your presentation is your opening. It is at that moment, usually within the fist 5 to 10 seconds that a first impression is made. Thereafter, people are simply adjusting from that starting point. The appropriate attire helps you to establish that initial "wow" moment.

The general rule of attire is to dress one step up from your audience. This implies that you need to have a reasonable idea of the level of dress of your average audience member. This is easy to establish and involves a phone call or two.

Here's the tip. While looking at yourself in the mirror, say, out loud, something like "Hey, girl (or chum!), you look like 2 million dollars today. Go and get 'em!" If it works for some of the world's most successful speakers and presenters, why shouldn't it work for you?

The best rules to form a young man are: to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

Of our five senses, we rely predominantly on our eyes for information - in fact research reveals that the eyes give us as much as 87% of our information. It follows then that the visual information we give has an overriding impact on the success of any presentation. This is why practice is never complete until a presentation is fully rehearsed in front of a mirror - and it's a good idea to do this more than once. An alternative is to use a camcorder so that you can play it back and evaluate yourself.

Your audience will judge you on your slides - particularly if they are poor, but far more significantly, they will be looking at you - your movements, confidence and mannerisms. A rehearsal in front of a mirror lets you see how you're doing in real time, and it doesn't lie. By video taping yourself (good idea to mount your camcorder on a tripod) you can play the recording back, even rewind if necessary and correct the irritators that could turn your audience off. Using these aids you can experiment by mixing your gestures and then see how they come across and what works best.

It is worth noting that although people come to absorb your content which has to be good, decisions are instinctively influenced by visually sourced information. In fact, no matter how good your content, the visual information usualy makes or breaks the decision. It is best therefore to allocate enough time for rehearsing the body language aspect of your presentation - the part that most influences decisions.

Lastly, it's better to have no slides than substandard ones. In essence, if you're going to use slides, learn how to make good ones!

I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do
The something that I can do.

(quoted in 1986, after a deft handling manoever led to his opening goal against England in the 1986 FIFA World Cup)

A little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God

If two suppliers offered exactly the same product of exactly the same quality and colour at exactly the same price, and you could only choose one, who would you choose? Most people would choose neither.

When people have the choice, they choose what they perceive, in a split second, to be of most benefit to them. In simple terms, they are seeking their "edge", that thing that tips the scales - the "something" that is important to them.

In a market saturated with great products at good prices, unbelievable warranties, and shallow claims the edge is what someone wants that they are not getting elsewhere. The edge is what others are not doing, the edge is doing it another way, cleverer, better, perhaps first, and noticibly.

Today it's about capturing peoples attention by being different.

So before you plan your presentation, identify your edge, because if you don't have one, what do you have?

"This administration is doing everything we can to end the stalemate in an efficient way. We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end." [and then later] "Our nation must come together to unite." [And finally…] "In my sentences I go where no man has gone before."

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

What is a presentation? We broadly define a presentation as an opportunity to convince an audience of an idea, concept or product. What size constitutes an audience? An audience can be anything from one to an infinite number of people. So, can an audience be one person? Yes it most certainly can. One uses different techniques to present one-on-one, one on two, one on many or two or a team on all of the above. So to mistakenly think that presentation skills apply only to one on many presentations is to misunderstand what a presentation really is.

It is also ridiculous to assume today that there is a specific method and flow to be used for all presentations. A sales presentation involving a new revolutionary product may have a beginning, middle and end format, but the end may involve a call for action or, depending upon the objective of the presentation, may be a request to commence on a path of considering an alternative viewpoint. For instance if your are anti-culling, a conservation project may want to convince you of the benefits to the environment of culling in a scientific and humane manner in order to preserve the environment. Your reaction to the presentation may not be immediate action, but may cause you to begin investigating the merits of a point of view that you may not previously have entertained.

The very first question you ask yourself, even before considering your audience size, is what am I trying to achieve? For many young men the most important presentation he will ever do is to his girlfriend's Father when he asks for her hand in marriage. How important it is for him to get that presentation right, but also to ensure that his conduct leading up to the presentation was commensurate with a successful outcome!

Today the person lacking in the ability to present effectively starts out at a spectacular disadvantage. In the modern world these skills have become a pre-requisite to success in more ways than we often realise.

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

If the winds of fortune are temporarily blowing against you, remember that you can harness them and make them carry you toward your definite purpose, through the use of your imagination.

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

When will people listen to you, and why do people buy? They listen when you address their problem and they buy when they are convinced that your solution will solve it. So what is your first step? If you already have the product, ask yourself whose problem it is most likely to solve, and how it will solve the problem. Then design your sales process around fulfilling the needs of the market you have identified. (If you don't have a product, then find a problem, get a product that solves a problem that people with money will buy, and present it to them).

How your solution will solve my problem is far more enticing than what a product or service can do. It's a time trusted concept called features versus benefits. Your presentation is designed by outlining the problem, sketching the current and the ideal situation, showing that the current situation sucks and how your solution creates the ideal situation for them, and then telling your audience to buy it now and making it simple for them to do so.

Because of credit cards, its never been easier for people to buy, especially when they have just been enthused. So make sure that they buy, that it's from you and that it's now.

It's quite simple. Why would people part with their cash unless you are solving their problems? The amount they are prepared to spend is in proportion to their perception of the size of their problem.

Now ask yourself why people spend what they do on luxury items when a basic item usually performs 90% of the required functions (eg. motor vehicles or cell phones)? The answer is the same. It solves a problem - usually the need to be seen to be successful. If it solves a problem, people will buy. If it doesn't, they won't.

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

Don't reserve your best behavior for special occasions. You can't have two sets of manners, two social codes - one for those you admire and want to impress, another for those whom you consider unimportant. You must be the same to all people.

On the Ning Nang Nong Where the cows go Bong! And the monkeys all say Boo! There's a Nong Nang Ning Where the trees go Ping! And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo. On the Nong Ning Nang All the mice go Clang! And you just can't catch 'em when they do! So it's Ning Nang Nong! Cows go Bong! Nong Nang Ning! Trees go Ping! Nong Ning Nang! The mice go Clang! What a noisy place to belong, In the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!

This weeks tip is around simplicity. Multi-media presentations are the "in-thing" these days. In fact, there are so many things you can do today to enhance the quality and effect of your presentation. It's now possible to add music or video clips that cue automatically or by mouse click, use different transitions to create required effects and so on, and it's fun (and time consuming!) playing with them. Indeed, a well positioned bit of video or music can do just that - add flavour to your presentation and help to drive your point home.

When you review you draft presentation, you need to be courageous. We become so attached to our little works of visual art that we sometimes lose track of the possibility that our favourite slide or clip may do nothing to help get our main message across. Two options then remain - change it or scrap it, and brutal as it may sound, the latter usually works best.

Your message must flow in a logical sequence. You want an enticing beginning, a body packed with benefits and sound reasons to invest in your suggestion, and an ending that convinces the audience to take action - in your favour! You may need to decide whether you're applying for a position as a PowerPoint designer, or delivering a compelling presentation that results in action. The latter is more lucrative.

Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Even though many circumstances we find ourselves in seem very important and earth shattering, will these circumstances really have an effect on anyone but ourselves? Will the trees stop reaching to the sun? Will the rivers cease to flow? Will the sparrow sing its last song? No, and yet we treat these circumstances as such that we miss out on the changing leaves, babbling stream, and the song of a bird that experiences the world in a totally different perspective.

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

When speaking to a group of people, a skilful introduction (intro) by someone other than the presenter really helps to get the "show on the road".

But what about a good outro?

The outroducer, who is usually the same person as the introducer, can add tremendous value by briefly recapping some of the main points of the presentation, perhaps add some humour and show appreciation. They key is "briefly". A long outro can put a dampener on what was a good talk. A concise "to the point outro can round it off beautifully.

The keys are: Briefly summarise a few select key points, add some wit, and show appreciation. Always be sincere and enthusiastic, but don't overdo the flattery.

Early in June last year, I made what I considered a substantial investment in my speaking career - I paid for a morning of personal coaching with a man considered by many of the world's most highly paid speakers as the best there is. But what astounded me was where his focus lay. "Show me how you start off" commanded Professor Ronald Arden. And so I did. Over and over again, until I got it the way he wanted to see it done. When we were finished, he was well pleased. "A morning well spent, methinks!" he proclaimed.

Six months later I received this feedback from Brian Matthews, the President of the Irish Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association of Great Britain after I'd addressed their meeting for 40 minutes at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin: "Paul, you started so powerfully, that it didn't matter much what you said after that!" Well, I guess one can take that one of two ways, but that was also great feedback.

You see, whatever the nature of your presentation - if you start well, you can look forward to an enjoyable downhill ride. But if the beginning is faulty, prepare yourself for an uphill struggle. Such is the power of the opening gambit. Ask any chess player.

There can be no question that the debate regarding presentation attire is hotting up. The trend is shifting towards more informal clothing, but unfortunately, with the rapid demise of most major languages including English, far too many people interpret "informal" to mean "sloppy".

After my very first presentation skills course I was elated. I felt I'd come out of it well, and now had the tools to make brilliant presentations. Only one problem though. I was like an 18 year old with a drivers licence - lots of enthusiasm and practically no experience - in other words, a hazard unto myself. And so it is with so many of our presentation skills graduates - lots of practical tools, no experience. For some, and I'm referring to those who don't use the tools, that's how it stays. Some find or create opportunities to start practising these exciting new skills. Others do not, deluding themselves that having done a course they know what to do. Ah, know and can do. Like the difference between the north pole and the equator.

Yes, they may have learned what to do, but if you don't practise how to do it and review your performances critically, you're never ever going to be any good at it. One of our review methods is a follow up session 6 months after initial training to evaluate progress and "fine tune". It is a simply glorious experience to observe the progress of folk who have spent six months aiming towards a goal.

The tip then is....once you've been exposed to the tools, you develop them into skills by repeated use and then habits. Simple, but so effective.

I once heard that the very first step in curing alcoholism is to acknowledge your addiction to alcohol. Only then can you begin the healing process. Without that acceptance of where you are now, no progress is possible. Progress is fuelled by a hunger for improvement, but hindered by delusion.

If you want to learn how to speak to other people with impact and persuade them to your way of thinking, its time to take a look at yourself. Discover where you are right now, and what the factors are that are helping you succeed, and which are the ones standing in your way of communicating with others impactfully.

Perhaps you're a little too intense. Maybe you have a tendency to mumble, or waffle. Perhaps you're a bit too complacent. Whatever it may be, you'll only discover what it is, if you take a good look at yourself.

Because when you accurately identify your current position, you have a powerful base for progress. Without a powerful base, your first steps are always tenuous.

I see it all the time - professionals and amateurs alike. If you're going to use PowerPoint, please ensure that your slide show is set up in such a way that you do not find yourself walking in front of it while your slides are up. The shadow you throw on the screen is very distracting to the audience, detracts from your presentation, and looks sloppy. The secret is to give yourself a few extra minutes to set the room up properly in advance. The other secret is not to use too many slides. That way, you can move freely around most of the time anyway because you're only using slides to illustrate key points. And remember this. Slides are for key points, not to replace you. Less is more. I'm not kidding you.

The value of establishing audience rapport quickly is fundamental to the success of any presentation or talk. This not only relaxes you, the speaker, but gets the audience aligned with the objectives and flow of the talk. A popular method is to use "ice breakers" in the form of asking questions and getting audience responses. Another is to play games with your audience at the beginning, getting them to participate. Humour, if properly planned and used cleverly, is another effective tool but often the most dangerous, as it can backfire if not used convincingly.

Whichever you choose, it's best to involve your audience and even get them to make some kind of commitment up front. Your chances of persuading people to do what you are suggesting they should do is determined far more by whether or not they like and trust you rather than what you are saying. The outcome of your talk is often decided by how you open. So get involved with your audience and talk to them, not at them. The degree of your success will be determined by how well you connect.

Most presentations or talks are scheduled for a specific time period - 30 minutes - 75 minutes or whatever. There are a number of important reasons why you should try a stick to your time slot as best you can:

1. Your audience is geared for this amount of time - people have lives outside of your talk.
2. There may be other speakers with a limited allocated time following you.
3. Caterers can't keep food warm indefinitely - eventually it will start to spoil.
4. The venue may be booked for a limited period.

And so on and so forth. There is, of course another good reason. The shorter and more compact your message - the more impactful it will be. Get the picture?

Ask any successful speaker or presenter and she will confirm that the importance of getting the attention of the audience from the outset is immeasurable. This is often achieved by using humour. Others like to get involvement from their audience immediately. Both methods can be very powerful if used well, but how about this one: Make a strong headline opening statement. For instance, what if Norman Vincent Peale had started a talk in 1952, a mere 7 years after the closure of World War 2 by saying. "Imagine a Europe in 50 years time with one single currency and virtually no borders?"

Nothing like a strong headline opening statement to rivet your audience.

The best colour for shoes during a presentation is black. The smarter the presentation, the more important it is you stick to black - without the white socks, that is! For gents, socks should match the trousers, not the shirt, and your belt should also be black. Ladies - you know what to do.

What looks best when you're doing a presentation, walking around or standing still? Surprisingly the answer lies somewhere in betweeen. Fidgeting while standing indicates you're nervous, while pacing does much the same. So when you decide to stand still, then plant yourself on the ground and stand still. If however you want to move, do so slowley and deliberately. This shows you're in control, and looks best. A combination of both techniques will make you appear most relaxed.

Watch out for the irritators. They can be repetitve gestures or fidgets, or a phrase like OK, basically or in terms of. But they can kill off your presentation in a few minutes. Practice time should create the awareness and experience will eliminate them if you focus consciously on them..

Ever considered where vocal sounds come from? It's the muscles in and around the diaphragm pushing air out of the lungs, through the trachea, over the vocal chords and out through the mouth. We've become so skilled at using our voices that we can fashion sounds to come out exactly as we please. Funny then how, when we present, these sounds do not seem to come out quite as we intended.

Here's your tip this week. One minute before going live, take just five deep breaths in through the nose and slowly out though the mouth. Your brain will be better powered, your diaphragm exercised and your nerves better settled.

Carrying on from last week, if you haven't been videoed doing a presentation lately (or don't practice your talks in front of the mirror) you may not be aware of what your body language is telling your audience. Your popularity will be determined 55% by this factor alone. Words account for only 7% and your tone of voice in between at 38%. My experience as a facilitator of presentation skills training shows that most people who do any form of public speaking fidget so badly that their audiences lose the message altogether - as they're too busy waiting for the next antic. In the process the presenter loses credibility.

You simply must get a look at yourself before you go live. Trust me on this one. Confident body language will set you up for delivery of your content. Your easiest options are to practice in front of a mirror or make a video of your presentation.

Am I going on a bit about this one? Sure I am - because it's that important.

Question time is the death of many a well intended presentation for mainly two reasons:

Here are two simple remedies.

We worry about the content, we tweak the structure, we spend hours on the slideshow, we lose sleep, and we may even make the time for practise. But we forget this: Most times when you do a presentation, you do it on your subject of expertise. So you need not worry about the content at all, you should simply decide what snippets to select and then structure in a manner that makes sense using an opening, body and conclusion. Then focus your attention of how you put the message across. Think about how you look, how you will appear to the audience and use your friend when you practice.

The mirror.

If someone asks you a question you are unable to answer, admit you can't, endeavour to find out the answer and then get back to them. Release yourself from the burden of having to know everything, and sieze the opportunuity to demonstrate your honesty and sincerity.

Before you start, ask yourself this question: Why did they come to listen? When you have answered this, you have discovered what it is you need to do. When we present our focus is all too often on ourselves - it shouldn't be.

your focus needsto be on the needs of your audience, giving them value and sufficient information to enable them to make the decisions your are wanting them to make.

Its not about how you do, it's about what they do when you're finished presenting.

You only really find out the true value of backing up your slideshows when you get stuck without a backup. Here are some suggestions:

1. Back up your most frequently used presentations on a disc (CD or flashdrive preferably)
2. Keep a set of overhead transparancies with you (they may be outdated, but failing all else, they beat having no show at all).
3. Ensure that another IT literate person whom you trust has separate backups of your shows - they can then simply email them to you if something goes wrong when you're away from your base.
4. Have a plan B. Can you continue without your slides?

Remember to refresh your backups when you update your main shows.

All the preparation in the world will not save you from unpleasant stress if something goes wrong with your set-up for a presentation and you're running out of time. I strongly suggest one or both of the following:

1. Give yourself an "additional time cushion" of 30 minutes for traffic/set-up.
2. Where possible have your own helper to assist with logistical problems.

Eight times out of ten any assistance supplied by the venue is either clueless, has no perception of your time constraints or both.

These two little tips could save your sanity one day important day.

For some reason we all seem to feel a sense of being under scrutiny when we speak in front of people, that they're just waiting for us to "mess up" so that they can fall about laughing at us. If you were an audience member, is this the way you would approach a presentation? Probably not. Then why do we as presenters usually feel this way? The truth is this:

You audience wants you to succeed.

Try and remember it, and give yourself a break. Get up there, put a smile on your face and give your best. You may be surprised at how well it all works out!

In truth it's an Oscar Wilde quote that touches the heart of what we're all afraid of, but desperately need - constructive criticism.

"A true friend stabs you in the front." - Oscar Wilde.

Others will see what we can not see objectively no matter how hard we try - mainly because we usually do not see what we're not looking for in our performance - but a friend will. However tough it is to take criticism, it's not easy for a friend to give it to you either as they put themselves on the line by doing so.

The more graciously you receive criticism, the more likely people will have the courage to tell you what you need to hear to improve. Contructive criticism is extremely important if you intend getting better quicker.

The most important thing...

We spend most of our preparation time putting together the structure of our presentation and creating a visually pleasing show. What we should be spending most of our time on is ourselves. Because no slide show can persuade. Only you can do that.

Believing you can [2]. Stop and think of the significance of this statement for a moment:

All people can talk when they get mad - Dale Carnegie.

It follows then that we speak best when we lose our inhibitions. If nervousness is one of your barriers to public speaking, this could be a key focus area for you.

So often when I chat to someone before they attend presentation training, I get told something seemingly unique to that one person:

"You know what my problem is? I just feel so nervous and intimidated, especially when I'm talking to senior people."

Well this may sound a bit odd to you, because I've been teaching presentation skills for years, and now speak professionally. But I used to get so nervous, I would get a choking feeling, my voice used to tremble and I would feel ill before having to speak or do a presentation to an audience. So what changed? Mainly two things.

First, I discovered that most people in the audience have not come to listen to me make a fool of myself, they've come to hear me succeed. Their time is too precious to spend listening to a dud.

The second thing that changed for me was I just got up and started doing it, and the more I did it, the better I got. Sounds like stupidity, but perhaps it's plain common sense. But certainly something to think about long and hard. Because, as I've discovered, the secrets we keep best from ourselves are not really secrets at all.

And, oh yes! The bit about senior people? I've discovered they also usually have just the same number of fingers, toes, chins, heads and knees as the rest of us. Now who would have thought...

Do you want to know the most effective means to win your audience over - whether you're speaking to one person or one hundred? Make eye contact - frequently and warmly.

It is natural to favour the people in front of you with more eye contact than the rest of your audience. Because it's impossible to make personal eye contact with every member of a large audience, make sure that you look at different sections of the audience frequently and don't ignore or "short change" any section. Often decision makers sit on the side.

Having cue card notes is fine if you need them. Just don't spend the whole presentation with your nose buried in them! The trick is to speak to your audience, not at them.