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Keys to being a unique and memorable presenter

By Jim Endicott, Owner/Manager of Distinction Communication, Inc.

Note: I'm pleased to offer the first of periodic articles by Jim Endicott, a nationally-recognized executive coach, author, and speaker specializing in professional presentation messaging, design, and delivery. Jim was an award-winning columnist for "Presentations" magazine and has written for Business Week, Consulting and Selling Power. He is the co-author of The Presentation Survival Skills Guide.

As I started working with a senior group of executive presenters one morning, I began to notice an uncharacteristic nervousness. Most of them had years of experience delivering extremely high stakes presentations but this particular morning, many of them tanked. So, what happened?

A few months back I found myself working with this team in their mahogany-appointed corporate boardroom in Los Angeles. Over the previous six-months we had done a thorough assessment of internal and external perceptions, collaborated on more defined core presentation messaging and finally recreated their corporate sales presentation. The remaining essential element was the physical delivery piece - how well could they tell the corporate "story." This part should have been a no-brainer for these seasoned presenters. This day, however, would be anything but routine for them.

As the video camera rolled to record their first pass through their assigned presentation area and their peers prepared to evaluate their performance, most of them developed an uncharacteristic set of nerves. One by one they assured me that "this wasn't how they usually presented" but over the course of the morning, there were only a few standouts. Let me tell you what happened that day and why you can stand out from the crowd with just a little effort in some key delivery skills areas.

Preparation

After we got through the first set of presentations, something was obviously wrong. As we discussed the events of the morning, one of the issues became clear. In nearly all cases, they had only received the presentation content they were to present a few days earlier and most tried to do a crash course on their flights to corporate. They knew the company story (or at least their version of it) down cold, but wrapping their knowledge around an unfamiliar set of presentation graphics took them off their prepared scripts. A few, however, excelled despite the last minute cram session.

Caught up in the details

For most, there was a conscious effort to try to thoroughly explain each bullet. Their "speeches" became heavy and sometimes full of company buzz words and jargon. The real winners that morning were those who realized that in delivering a duration-sensitive message about a many faceted business model, they didn't need to say it all. It wasn't critical that each business component be expounded. There simply wasn't enough time. The bullets became guideposts but not the presentation itself. The good presenters addressed themselves to the higher-level concepts that each slide described. In any presentation, simply reading each bullet will quickly insult the intelligence of your audience. Underscore bullet elements without taking your audience back to remedial reading class. If you've kept your bullets simple, the audience can quickly relate your spoken summary information to the bulleted items.

Passion not process

There were a few standouts that morning but not because they were flawless presenters. To the contrary, a few moved a bit too much in the presenter area. They didn't always know what to do with their hands. But that didn't matter. As they addressed their specific area of the presentation, there was something different about their voice and their room presence. They were truly enthusiastic about their subject matter. Their eyes sparkled and their voices took on additional dimension as their vocal pacing, inflection and volume conveyed the clear message that this wasn't a script. It was their life. We couldn't help but get swept along in their energy. I guess I could have critiqued their unnecessary movement more. I could have forced them to focus on keeping their hands comfortably at their sides when not gesturing but a preoccupation with style over passion would have shut down a stellar presentation. If it's really all about communicating with an audience - they clearly accomplished their objective with little help from me.

Drawing in your audience

The truly good presenters in the group would occasionally use the name of a person around the table (a pretend customer) and would relate the topic at hand back to a certain concern they had raised or question posed. The presentation took on more of a personal tone. Sure they were going to cover that point anyhow but the personal reference made all of us around the table feel like the presentation wasn't about them, it was all about us. What a difference.

The power of self-awareness

Most presenters are pretty unaware of how they are perceived by their audiences. We present time and time again with little or no feedback and sometimes rarely show improvement. As brutal as videotape may be, it's the ultimate reality check for anyone serious about becoming a better presenter. Areas like, how we move, how we gesture, how much undue attention do we give to the images on the screen, how well we work the room with our eyes, nervous habits that elude our consciousness - all are unable to escape the scrutiny of the camera. It's not about beating ourselves up. To the contrary, most of us do many things well and it simply takes more focused tools to further refine our skills. The power of self-awareness is the power to get beyond where we are today. Something many never do.

By the end of the day, the members of the group were pretty tired but were leaving with a stronger sense of what they did well (we made a point of underscoring those things) and the areas on which they could work. What impressed me most is that they truly wanted to know. At a time when many executives seem to avoid situations that could be unnecessarily uncomfortable for them, this group leaned into the process. They were apprehensive at first but their desire for self-improvement would cause them to hang it all out in front of the toughest of all presentation audiences - their own peers.

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