award winning speaker and bestselling author of the fred ...€¦ · the fred factor and you...

CORPORATE

OVATIONSYour Roadmap to More Effective Presentations

Russ Peterson Jr.

PRESIDENT AND CEO, RYAN-SANDERS BASEBALL

Kevin Karschnik

Foreword by Reid Ryan

Mark SanbornAWARD WINNING SPEAKER AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE FRED FACTOR AND YOU DON’T NEED A TITLE TO BE A LEADER

“Corporate Ovations thoroughly covers it from A to Z . . .

It will help make you a first-class speaker.”

CORPORATE

OVATIONSYour Roadmap to More Effective Presentations

Kevin Karschnik Russ Peterson Jr.

Discovery Tree Press

Corporate Ovations: Your Roadmap to More Effective Presentations

Copyright © 2013, Kevin Karschnik and Russ Peterson Jr.

Published by Discovery Tree Press

3000 Joe DiMaggio Blvd, Suite 81Round Rock, TX 78665

www.DiscoveryTreePress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN–13: 978-1-940039-00-8

Cover and Interior Design: Desktop Miracles, Inc.

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Karschnik, Kevin. Corporate ovations : your roadmap to more effective presentations / Kevin Karschnik, Russ Peterson, Jr. p. : ill. ; cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-940039-00-8 1. Business presentations. 2. Public speaking. 3. Speech anxiety. I. Peterson, Russ. II. Title. HF5718.22 K37 2013

658.4/52

Printed in the United States of America

15

Table of Contents

Foreword by Reid Ryan 17

Introduction 21

CHAPTER ONE Overcoming Fear and Anxiety 27

CHAPTER TWO Know Your Purpose 39

CHAPTER THREE Audiences Want You to Connect 49

CHAPTER FOUR Open with Power 57

CHAPTER FIVE Close with Confidence 81

CHAPTER SIX Structure the Presentation Body 97

CHAPTER SEVEN Corporate Storytelling 115

CHAPTER EIGHT Say It Like You Mean It 137

CHAPTER NINE Engaging Body Language 163

CHAPTER TEN Using Visual Aids 189

CHAPTER ELEVEN Handling Questions 209

CHAPTER TWELVE Rehearsal and Evaluation 221

Implement to Improve 233

Acknowledgments 243

About the Authors 245

Satori 253

Endnotes 269

Index 277

49

“Connecting with people begins with knowing people. If you don’t have clarity concerning your listeners,

your message will be muddy.”

—John C. Maxwell, Leadership Expert, Speaker, Coach, and Author

CHAPTER 3Audiences Want You to Connect

In the previous chapter, we asked you to be a little selfish and think only of what you wanted to get out of your presentation.

But now that you have defined its purpose . . . it’s time to re-focus on the folks who really matter—your audience!

We’ve all seen speakers before who seem to speak intelligently on their topic, but have absolutely no connection with the audience. These speakers may be highly educated in their subject matter. They may have amazing experiences of struggle and success, have lived through incredible adventures or overcome fantastic obstacles in life. Or they may be highly skilled at their craft, like a professional athlete, successful entrepreneur or a renowned artist. Audiences

50 | Corporate Ovations

may show up for these types of speakers, but they will quickly zone out if the speaker doesn’t make any effort to connect with them.

Speakers connect with audiences by serving them. And you serve your audience best by preparing a great presentation and by ensuring that your presentation will provide value to them.

“I try to bring the audience’s own drama— tears and laughter they know about—to them.” —Judy Garland, Actress and Singer

Proper preparation for speaking takes place in three key areas: your subject matter, your audience and your purpose. Each of these three areas is important to delivering a high value presentation to the audience. In Chapter Two we reviewed the importance of knowing your purpose for speaking, and this chapter deals with knowing the audience.

As John Maxwell wrote in his book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, “Anytime you aren’t sure about how to bridge the communication gap, don’t start the process by telling people about yourself. Begin with moving to where they are and seeing things from their perspective. Adapt to them—don’t expect them to adapt to you.”1

Know Your Subject

Have you ever attended an event to hear a speaker and after the presentation ended, you couldn’t recall one significant piece of information delivered? If a speaker does not prepare her subject matter properly, the audience will not retain the true meaning of the information.

Too many individuals think that they have been delivering presentations on a specific topic for so long that there is no need to prepare. Not so! Even if a speaker is the most knowledgeable

Audiences Want You to Connect | 51

person in the world on that topic, if she doesn’t take the time to structure her message to align with the needs of the audience, she won’t connect with them. Her message will fall upon deaf ears.

Don’t try to be perfect. Try to be effective.

You can probably recall some teachers or college professors you had who were extremely knowledgeable on their topic. You know, like the ones who had actually written the textbook you were using in the class! But you may also remember the many lectures when you and your fellow classmates struggled to stay awake as the pro-fessor dryly cycled through his PowerPoint slides.

Of course, it is important to understand your subject matter before speaking, but your knowledge is not the only focus for preparation. As the college professor example illustrates, you can be the smartest person in the room on a topic and not deliver an effective presentation. The professor may have gotten all of the information right, but members of the class struggled to come away with what they needed.

When delivering a presentation, your goal is not to be perfect; it’s to be effective. And the good news is you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room on a topic to deliver an effective presentation. (Was that a collective sigh of relief we just heard?) You simply have to know your subject well enough to convey your message to the audience and then have the ability to deliver that message with confidence.2

Sir Ken Robinson, one of the world’s leading speakers, shares a story of a little girl in art class who never paid attention to her teacher. One day the teacher noticed she was listening attentively during the art lesson. The teacher walked over to see what she was drawing and she asked the little girl, “What are you drawing?” The girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher said, “Well, you can’t do that. Nobody knows what God looks like.” To which


the little girl replied, “Well, they will in a minute.” The lesson? You may not have the answer to everything, but if you are able to deliver your interpretation of the material with confidence, the audience will follow.3

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything creative.”—Sir Ken Robinson, Teacher on Innovation and Author

Some argue the message is more important than delivery. For example, if a medical research scientist took the stage and announced an absolute cure for cancer, the audience response would be a standing ovation, regardless of the scientist’s ability to present effectively. While it makes sense that the message is much more important than the delivery in this example, most of our pre-sentations on weekly sales figures or project updates don’t always elicit the same level of admiration from our audiences.

When it comes to message and delivery, we believe the two work best together. We will focus later on your delivery methods using voice and body language. But for now, let’s take a look at how to tailor your presentation to your audience.

Know Your Audience

Recently, we both attended the Chick-fil-A Leadercast Conference4 to hear a group of experts speak on the topic of leadership. Some of the speakers had a definite connection with the audience. For these speakers, there was a feeling of energy being transferred from them to the audience as they gave valuable insights into the topic. The audience would then return the energy with laughter and applause.

While most of the speakers were great, there were a few who just weren’t able to make the same kind of connection with the audience. Why is that? It’s because the great speakers knew what


the audience wanted and used that information to prepare a mes-sage tailored specifically to them. Professional speakers will tell you that the time they feel most alive is when they are on stage, truly connecting with an audience.5

It’s not what you say that’s important, it’s what they hear.

Imagine an IT presentation from a software engineer meant to persuade a customer to buy their technology. First, the engineer prepares a presentation to deliver to engineers at the customer’s site. The group of engineers loves the technology and approves the project from a technical standpoint. Then, the customer’s executive team is notified of the engineering team’s selection.

The executives at the customer site ask to have the solution presented to them the following week before they will give finan-cial approval. Unfortunately, the sales engineer does not have the foresight to adjust the presentation to the new executive audi-ence. As a result, the engineer consistently speaks with too much technical jargon and detail. Within 15 minutes of the hour-long presentation, the executives are no longer listening, and as a result, the software company does not win the business.

If the message is not prepared specifically for the audience, it will not hit the target. When an audience attends a given pre-sentation, they obviously want something. They are constantly asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?” Steve Jobs was the master at answering that question for his audiences. He had a special ability to connect the dots between what he wanted them to know and why they needed to care. In the audience analysis, it is important to identify what the audience is going to expect—information, persuasion or entertainment. Only by identifying their expectations will you be able to identify what you should offer to them.


“The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives.”6

—Lilly Walters, Professional Speaker and Co-Author of Speak and Grow Rich

Align Your Purpose and Audience

Some of you may have seen JC Anderson’s short instructional video on how to properly swing a golf club.7 He begins speaking at a very fast pace using extremely technical words and jargon to describe the geometry of the circle and the physics of the muscular thrust required in a two-line delivery path. His technical explana-tion goes on for over a minute and upon completion he moves into a demonstration. As he strikes the golf ball it bounces straight up in the air to his hand, to which he acts completely surprised. He quickly throws the ball forward and fakes a completed swing.

JC Anderson’s Golf Lesson http://www.CorporateOvations.com/golflesson

The first question we would ask is, “Did JC achieve his pur-pose?” Most will want to immediately answer, “No, he didn’t,” but don’t answer yet, because it is a trick question. You don’t know what his purpose was!

So, what if we told you his presentation is informative and his purpose was to educate you on how to properly swing a golf club. Now answer, did he achieve his purpose? Gotcha! It is another trick question. You can’t answer until you ask about his audience. If we tell you he was speaking to you and me, average weekend golfers, now you can answer the question, “Did he achieve his


purpose?” No, he did not achieve his purpose. Most of us are more confused now than before he began his explanation!

Now, let’s change the scenario. Let’s assume JC is trying to inform his audience on how to swing a golf club better, and his audience is a group of physicists from MIT. Now tell us, did JC achieve his purpose? With that type of explanation to that type of audience, he may have actually achieved his goal to inform the audience on swinging the golf club. The answer is now a definite maybe.

Let’s change the scenario one more time. Let’s now assume the audience is back to you and me, the average golfer. This time, let’s change his purpose from an informative presentation to an enter-taining presentation. In other words, his sole purpose and goal is to entertain his audience. Now answer the question, “Did he achieve his purpose?” While the video may not be hilarious, it was defi-nitely entertaining. Yes, JC did achieve his purpose.

Audiences know when you are speaking to yesterday’s audience.

The golf video is a great example because it shows how just changing the purpose or the audience of a presentation can change its success rate. By changing one or both elements, a presentation can go from a miserable failure to a Corporate Ovation! Make cer-tain you properly define your purpose and your audience before constructing your presentations. It is the only way to know if you have achieved success.


CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS

• If you don’t take the time to customize and prepare your message, you set yourself up for failure.

• It is equally important to know your subject and connect with the audience.

• Corporate Ovations occur when the speaker aligns their presentation purpose with the audience’s needs.

TOMORROW’S CHALLENGE

As you prepare for your next presentation, answer these questions: ■ How will I connect with my audience? ■ What does my audience need to know? ■ How can my audience relate to me or my topic?

247

CORPORATE

OVATIONSNow that you’ve read the book . . .

What’s next?

Start a movement!

Join the thousands of others who have committed to putting an end to boring presentations.

www.CorporateOvations.com


Connect

www.facebook.com/corporateovations www.youtube.com/corporateovations

www.twitter.com/CorpOvations www.CorporateOvations.com

Tools

There is no best; there’s always a better.

–Kevin Karschnik

Perfection is a direction, not a destination.

–Russ Peterson, Jr.

Group Discussion

Guidewww.CorporateOvations.com

www.CorporateOvations.com

What’s Next | 249

Bulk Orders

Corporate Ovations can be ordered in bulk. Whether you need 25 or 5,000 copies, we can help. Bulk orders are great for corporate gifts, sales conference breakout sessions, university business school special events or church leadership train-ing. The Group Discussion Guide (PDF) available at CorporateOvations.com is a free tool designed to help small groups get the most out of the book. Discounts are available for quantities as small as 25 books. If you would like to place a bulk order, please contact us at [email protected]

Special Offer

Access the accompanying online video library for Corporate Ovations at iSpeak University. Use the Promo Code below to receive 50% off the registration and access to videos which parallel the Corporate Ovations book.

ww.iSpeak.com/ispeak-university ISPEAKU50


Group Study

The Corporate Ovations Group Study kit is ideal for you to conduct your own mini-training sessions on the skills taught in the book. Let Russ and Kevin teach you their workshop through video lessons. Then facilitate your own interactive exercises to practice your new skills. Group sessions work best with up to 10 participants.

Facilitator Kit

- Facilitator Guide & Instructor training videos - Video lessons for the workshop taught by Russ and Kevin - Copy of the participant guide - Audio version of the book Corporate Ovations

Participant Guides

- Participant guides for each attendee

Self-Study

The Corporate Ovations Self-Study kit is designed for individuals interested in further improving their personal communication skills with the techniques taught in Corporate Ovations. The Self-Study guide comes with:- Video lessons taught by Russ and Kevin- Participant workbook- Audio version of the video lessons- Audio version of the book Corporate Ovations

What’s Next | 251

Speaking

Need a professional speaker who can inspire while developing new skills? Russ Peterson, Jr. and Kevin Karschnik will leave your audience informed, inspired, and ready to improve!

Corporate Ovations Keynote

It’s not what you say that’s important, it’s what they hear! As speakers we all have a goal or purpose for speaking, but too often we forget that the audience is there because they have a goal or purpose for listening. When we place the focus of speaking where it needs to be (on the audience) we are able to construct the right message. In this keynote the authors share the three key areas of focus for effective presentations – Prepare for the right audience, develop effective visuals, and deliver an engaging and memorable message. Don’t let your next presentation end in a sigh of relief from your audience. Learn how to end your presentation with a Corporate Ovation!

9-Minute Presentations Keynote

According to Opinion Matters research in 2012, 50% of time in meetings is wasted. Much of this can be attributed to poor presentations rambling aim-lessly for far too long. We can cure this issue by starting a movement within our organizations to incorporate 9-Minute Presentations. If you have ever said to yourself after watching a presentation, “There was a whole lot that just wasn’t necessary,” then you need to know about this effective and timesaving method for presenting. While not every presentation can take on the 9-minute format, far too many 60-minute presentations can. In this keynote the authors share the research behind the selection of 9 minutes, as well as the template for how to construct and deliver this effective form of presentation. Learn how to improve the effectiveness of your meetings while saving time and money for your orga-nization. Join the movement today!


Workshops

The ability to communicate ideas and influence others through public presenta-tions is consistently ranked as a top quality sought by employers today. Become a polished and persuasive public speaker!

Corporate Ovations for Business Professionals (2 days)

Business professionals in management, HR, finance, or IT can benefit from this two-day workshop. All participants will learn the methods from the book and practice their skills with video recordings plus coaching and feedback.

Corporate Ovations for Sales Professionals (2 days)

Sales professionals present to some of the toughest audiences – prospective customers. Using methods from the book, attendees will learn to align their proposals to their audiences. Presentations will be video recorded and each par-ticipant will receive feedback and coaching.

Corporate Ovations for Leaders (3 day workshop, plus 6 hours of private coaching)

Leaders and executives have unique needs for developing speaking skills because they tend to have the widest array of potential audiences from the Board of Directors, to the media, to their team of employees. In this workshop facilitated exclusively by the authors, participants will learn and practice the Corporate Ovations presentation methods. Attendees will also receive 6 hours of private coaching to improve upon their own specific skills.

award winning speaker and bestselling author of the fred ...€¦ · the fred factor and you...

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