Client LoginWe are dear friends with a delightful a family in Ohio: wonderful parents, blessed with several rambunctious young children. Like many of us, these parents are very mindful of protecting their impressionable young kids’ minds from Internet content that would be potentially harmful. And with this aim, one of the things they’ve done is to […]
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 […]
Switzerland…. Not so neutral on PowerPoint
Leave it to the Swiss…. There is an organization there advocating for a referendum prohibiting the use of PowerPoint during presentations. And they claim to be the 8th largest political party in Switzerland. Seriously. This puts them right behind the Evangelical Peoples Party (and given the anti-PowerPoint rhetoric on their site, I would argue they […]
The Beating Heart of Sales Messaging
Despite our best intentions, almost all presentations tend to revolve around the priorities and interests of the presenter. There are many reasons why this happens, but the deepest root is the natural self-orientation that sits firmly at the core of the human psyche. We are most interested in ourselves and we struggle to see the […]
The easiest way to remember names…and any presentation
Has this happened to you? You’re at a cocktail party and are introduced to someone for the first time. You have a brief but interesting conversation…only to realize later that you have no idea what the person’s name is? Or maybe you’re in a business meeting: there are a few new faces at the table, […]
The power of demonstration: Joe Smith’s “How to use one paper towel” [DeconstrucTED]
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. Joe Smith’s TED talk on “How to use one paper towel,” is one of Tamsen Webster’s favorites. In only 4-1/2 minutes, Joe forever […]
Adapt or Die: The Endurance [Swipe File]
[The Swipe File is a collection of images, stories, jokes, and other resources to use in your next presentation.] THE IDEA YOU WANT TO LAND: “ADAPT OR DIE” A lot of communications in business and sales are about “adaptation.” Often success — and even survival — depends on our ability adjust in the moment to new information […]
Make your presentations better by “playing the enemy”
There’s a long-standing military tradition of having a team of people “play the enemy.” The idea being to get a deeper insight on what they might do. “If I were going to attack me… how would I do it?…” It always interesting to look at an issue from the other side of the fence, so let’s play […]
