Client LoginIf your company has a sales force, maybe you’ve said this to yourself: “Our salespeople aren’t solution selling, they tend to make everything a product pitch.” It always seems that salespeople get blamed for pitching products, which at first glance makes sense. After all, they’re the people in front of the customer. But should all […]
Killing Three Birds With One Stone
In our workshop, we teach that if you understand and align with how the human brain processes information, you can vastly improve the effectiveness of your communications and the engagement of your audience. Typically when I teach this, I offer 3 different ways to build audience engagement. But I read something recently that beautifully pulled together […]
The Three Types of Presentations: “Why?”, “What Now?”, and “How?”
When putting together their talks, many speakers miss a critical early step: understanding what type of presentation they need to give. What does that mean? Well, remember that your idea needs to solve a problem the audience has, or to meet an unmet need. That means you need to also understand what the audience needs […]
The Power of Contrast
Admit it. Just be honest. I won’t judge… But you have either sat at the edge of your seat in anticipation – OR (more likely) you have actually succumbed to the dark forces of the infomercial. It’s OK. We’ve all been there. Infomercials – which we all know and mock – are an incredibly powerful […]
How to Develop a Presentation – Six Essential Steps
I get asked this question a lot: “Once I have the idea for my talk, what do I do next? How do I actually put it together?” This is the process I use (and we teach): 1. Define the idea at a high level. Can I summarize it in 140ish characters? Concise = clear. Is it in my […]
Lessons from TED: How to Find the “Big Idea” For Your Next Keynote
THE PROBLEM A lot of presentation and speaking advice starts here: STEP ONE: Have a big idea. No arguments with that advice, of course. You need a big idea before you can figure out anything else about your talk. The problem is: how do you find yours? THE SOLUTION Here’s a framework I use with […]
How Easily is Your Audience Distracted?
We often hear that we live in an ‘age of distraction.’ And if you’re like me, it’s easy to think that it’s the OTHER person who has the problem…they’re the ones (often the younger ones) who can’t focus…right? But how easily are you distracted? And how easily do you think your AUDIENCE is distracted? While […]
The best trick for natural delivery? Marking your script
You have the structure. You have the words. But a great talk goes way beyond words. In a recent study, the ratings for the most popular TED talks were the same whether the viewers watched with or without the sound on. Why? Because the speakers were able to convey meaning with everything else at their […]
DeconstrucTED: Nilofer Merchant’s “Got a Meeting? Take a Walk.”
In our “DeconstrucTED” series, we look at some of our favorite TED and TED-style talks. We deconstruct them to demonstrate how we all can be more effective communicators in our own right. This week, Oratium’s Eli Murphy shares why Nilofer Merchant’s 2013 TED talk is one to remember. Q: Nilofer opens with a pretty bold […]
How to Slim Down Your Presentation. Or, Having Your Appendix IN
I was sympathizing with some sales guys at one of our workshops recently. They were showing me some sales collateral that Marketing had created for them – and this was the old joke… that wasn’t, and isn’t, funny: It was an unbelievably dense deck. A bewildering quantity of material. It was the kind of deck that […]
