![]() Equally importantly, pictures don’t compete with words. The ‘picture superiority effect’ tells us that concepts are more memorable if they are presented as pictures than as words. There is a lot of truth in the old saw that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. I can’t attest to the factual accuracy of these statements, but they do make you sit up and think ‘wow, really?’ Apple used to brag that more iphones were sold in the previous fiscal quarter than babies born in the entire world. One of them, from Germany, came up with the amazing statistic that more people die of heart disease in Germany every year than the total numbers killed in World War 2. I was once training an international group of pharmaceutical company executives on how to talk about heart disease. Reference a gobsmacking fact or statistic.Too many quotes and you sound like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Two rules about quotations: first, they must make your key point more pithily and wittily than you could in your own words secondly, they are best used sparingly. If you can make this clear from the start you will motivate them to stick around for the final reveal.Īnother of my colleagues, keen to stress that presentations must be targeted to the specific needs and interests of audiences, likes to quote communications expert Ken Haemer’s advice that ‘Designing a presentation without an audience in mind is like writing a love letter and addressing it: To Whom It May Concern’. Unsurprisingly, most audiences are a great deal less interested in what you want to tell them than in what they have to gain from listening. Tell your audience what’s in it for them.‘There are two reasons companies fail: they only do more of the same or they only do what’s new.’ It never fails to raise a laugh, which is another way to get your audience on side.Įncapsulate your main theme in an intriguing little nutshell like business strategist Knut Haanaes in his TED talk on business failure. A minority don’t raise their hands and I then point out that we must have some liars in the room since, as Mark Twain famously remarked: ‘There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars’. I often start my own presentations by asking who feels nervous at the prospect of speaking in public. One of my colleagues starts her presentation (on presentation skills) by asking how many people love giving presentations, and then picks on individuals to find out why they do – or don’t – love them. There’s no better way of commanding attention than asking a question to which a response may be required. ![]() And let the story speak for itself without spending too much time drawing out the key message at the end. Don’t start with: ‘I’d like to tell you a story’. For maximum impact your story should be brief, punchy and highly relevant to your topic. While overt key messages leave us cold, stories with implicit messages enthral, compel and move us. Humans are hard-wired to respond to stories, which predate the written word as a form of communication. A confident stroll to the microphone, a warm smile taking in the entire audience, and brief but telling pause before your first carefully crafted utterance will have them hanging on your next words. You can recognise a great speaker in micro-seconds by the way they occupy their physical space. Here are my top 10 recommended attention-grabbing techniques. What can you do to engage their attention and leave them hungry for more?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |