Gerry Sandusky's Blog, page 6

Move Your Audience By Moving Your Voice

Every presenter wants to move his or her audience. Whether that’s moving the audience emotionally or moving the audience to take action, one of the easiest ways to do it is by moving your voice.

In this video, I’ll share with you three powerful ways to move people and you can do it with a tool you already have and know how to use: your voice!

 

Click here to learn more about my online and 1-on-1 coaching program to help you engage, amaze, and influence audiences.

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What’s Your Story?

Everyone loves a good story.

Not everyone loves bullet points or PowerPoint slides.

Remembering that one thing can help you build more impactful presentations this year.

Two Steps to Improving Your Presentations in 2018

If you do these two things, I guarantee your presentations will improve:

Tell more stories
Show fewer slides

Look, we’ve all seen a million slides by now. We’ve even seen plenty of great videos. But we probably haven’t gotten to know you as well as we could. Tell stories that give a little insight into your world and use those stories to help make a point you want to get across in your presentation.

Why Stories Work

We all have stories. They don’t have to be long stories. But stories are more impactful than slides because they stay with us longer than slides. The good stories, we relate to, we connect with, we remember. That’s a powerful combination.

In this video, that I originally shared a couple of years ago, I use a story about a parenthood lesson I learned to convey a point about the power of tone in our communication.

A good story is one of the ways you can elevate the impact of your presentations this year.

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Use Less “I” and More “They” in Presentations

The fastest way to improve your presentations and your presentation skills is to get over yourself.

Once you get over the idea that the presentation is about you, then getting up in front of the room or in front of a camera gets far easier.

There’s a powerful shift that takes place when you change one thing about your approach to presentations: your focus.

The shift in focus of your presentations

When you focus less on yourself and more on the needs of your audience, magic happens. The audience connects more with you when you focus more on them.

I call it the shift from less “I” to more “They” in presentations.

Move past thoughts like these:

I don’t like how I look on camera.

I don’t like how I feel in front of the room.

I don’t want to look stupid.

Instead ask yourself a “they” question:

What do they need from me?

What message or insight can I share that they will really appreciate?

What do they need to hear today?

That one shift of focus can change lives, all around the world. I’ve seen it happen and you will too in this video.

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The Big Idea That Will Improve Your Next Presentation

One big idea can change everything.

Think of your favorite song. In a few words, what is that song about?

Think of a movie you really love. In a few words, what is that move about?

That’s the big idea.

It’s the idea that everything else revolves around. And too often it’s missing from presentations.

The Big Idea at Work

After you watch a movie, you don’t remember every single line said in every single scene. You remember what the movie was about.

Same with a song.

Okay, after dozens of listens to your favorite song you may know all the lyrics, but usually, you remember a melody, a line, an idea. You remember, the big idea.

How to Use The Big Idea

To create more powerful presentations, reverse engineer them. Don’t start with PowerPoint or case studies, or thousands of words. Start with one big idea and use that to guide you, just like musicians do when they create hit songs. In this video, I’ll show you how.

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When to Sit or Stand in a Conference Room Presentation

Sit or stand when presenting in a conference room?

Too often presenters sit during their presentation because they feel more comfortable. They feel like they can “hide” a little and not put themselves fully out there.

Other times presenters stand and make too much of a point with their body language.

Choose wrong and you’ll miss the mark with your audience.

Two Key Questions When Presenting in a Board Room

Knowing when to sit or stand isn’t about your personal choice and preference. It comes down to asking two questions:

What are you trying to accomplish?
How do you want to make your audience feel?

Techniques for Presenting in a Conference Room

In this video, I’ll show you how techniques for presenting in a conference room that will help you know when to sit, when to stand, and when to do a little of both.

 

Looking for more presentation pointers? Click here to check out our new free report:

12 Secrets to Improve Your Presentations.

 

 

 

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How to Influence Audience Perception in Presentations

Understanding how to influence audience perception in presentations begins with understanding the lasting power of presentations.

Think for a moment about the last presentation you attended.

What do you remember from that?

What was your perception of the presenter?

The Power and Speed of Perception

If you’re like most people, you remember the perception more clearly than the content. There are plenty of reasons for that.

One of the biggest reasons is we form perceptions quickly and then spend most of the rest of our time justifying it.

Shrinking Attention Spans

In a world of shrinking attention spans, most people form perceptions of others faster than ever.

That makes it more important than ever to have a very clear idea of the perception you want the audience to have long before you ever begin the presentation.

Perceptions and Influences

Getting clear on that begins with experiencing how quickly we form perceptions and what influences those perceptions.

In this video, we’ll do a little people watching. By the time you finish this video you’ll have a much more clear idea of how to form a target perception how tightly constructed that perception needs to be to have maximum influence on your audience.

 

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How to Handle Numbers and Data in Presentations

Data and numbers present unique challenges in presentations.

Some presentations require you to use a lot of numbers or data. There’s no getting around that. One or two numbers, no problem. Dozens of numbers, problem. Big numbers, big problem.

The problem is caused by our brain’s inability to hold onto numbers easily.

Your mind doesn’t hold onto data and numbers efficiently

Think of how often you have had to write down someone one’s phone number so you didn’t forget it. That’s only ten numbers.

Start talking about numbers in the millions or billions and you run the risk of your audience glossing over and tuning you out. Unless you can create a connection that leads your audience to the numbers.

A creative approach is the key 

In this video, I’ll show you how to use mental images your audience can relate to as a way to get them to both understand and remember the important numbers and data you want to share in your presentation.

 

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Two Techniques That Make It Easy to Present to a Large Audience

The only thing that scares more people than delivering a speech or giving a presentation is doing it to a large audience.

More people in the audience is actually something that can make your life easier as a presenter, not harder.

Once you understand that, you’ll start to see a big audience as nothing more than a big opportunity.

Size Matters.

Dealing with a big crowd isn’t as intimidating as you might think. You don’t have to talk louder–they have microphones to handle that. You don’t have to move around more. And you don’t have to work harder. You have to work smarter.

The Key to A Big Crowd

You actually have to do less.

There are two techniques that can help you look and feel more in control in front of a large audience.

The first technique involves understanding how a large crowd acts and moves, the second is understanding how you need to act and move.

Once you understand those two things, you may, like me, find a large audience the easiest kind to present to.

 

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The Power of Using Pictures in Presentations

We’ve all had the experience of seeing stunning pictures that stay with us. Look at the photo to the right, an abstract of a human face.

Which has a more significant impact on you? Seeing the picture of an abstract human face or reading the line, abstract human face?

Pictures have the power to say more than words and to stay with us longer than words.

Picture Superiority Effect

Researchers call it the picture superiority effect, the ability for people to remember what they see in a picture in greater detail and for longer than what they read.

Words matter. They certainly have their place. But like the research shows, in many situations pictures are superior.

One of those situations is presentations.

The Picture Effect in Presentations

When we pack our presentations–and our PowerPoint with more words than pictures, audiences tend to disengage. The word overload competes with the presenter and creates confusion and discomfort in the audience.

Pictures, on the other hand, give the audience a visual support to what the presenter is talking about.

The marriage of a presenter’s words with pictures as support creates multi sensory learning. The audience sees and hears different versions of the same message instead of seeing and hearing two different messages.

The Other Advantage of Picture in Presentations

Pictures also give a presenter more latitude. Put a bunch of words on a screen and those limit not only what a presenter can talk about but also what he or she can say.

Put a picture on a slide and the presenter has the tremendous latitude of what to talk about.

Put the Theory to the Test

Try it for yourself. Watch the video below and see for yourself the difference you feel as an audience member when I show you pictures and graphics versus when I show you screens filled with words.

Understanding how much faster audiences connect with pictures and graphics than words will help you build far more effective presentations, PowerPoints, and support materials.

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The #1 Mistake to Avoid in Your Presentation Open

In day-to-day interactions, we typically begin with an introduction.

“Hi, I’m Gerry–with a G…”

But in presentations, the introduction is not where you want to begin.

The Audience Isn’t There For You

The people who come to your presentation usually arrive for one of two reasons:

Someone told them they had to show up
They think they will get something valuable out of the presentation

That’s it.

Unless it’s your mom sitting there in the front row, or maybe a really good friend, they didn’t show up to root you on and help you have a better day. They showed up for them, not for you.

Why Starting with an Introduction Backfires

You only have a small window to capture the audience’s attention and interest.

If you waste that window on a lifeless introduction slide that’s all about you, the audience will likely tune you out before you get around to talking about them.

That’s the danger of beginning your presentation with an introduction slide.

Introduction Slides Have a Place

Introduction slides serve a function. They help frame up your presentation and give it context and let people know they’ve come to the right room.

But they shouldn’t serve that function right off the top of your presentation.

In this video, I’ll show you a better way to use your introduction slide and how to avoid the number one mistake in presentation opens.

 

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