INNERGISE!

One of the weaknesses felt by many people is their presentation and speaking ability. One of the single greatest fears of humans is speaking before a group when either the audience or the topic is unfamiliar to the speaker.

This was substantiated by a recent survey where people were asked the ten things that they most feared. In ascending order they were: dogs, loneliness, flying, death, sickness, deep water, financial problems, insects, heights and, top of the list, speaking before a group!

Anyone can learn to present effectively to other people.  However, few people naturally possess strong presentation skills.

Think about the greatest presenter you have ever seen.   What was it about that person and their presentation that made you think it was so good?

However, all professionals make mistakes when presenting.  Some are the mistakes of a beginner, others can be from habit, and others happen through neglect.  If you recognise common mistakes, this will often be enough to ensure that the mistake is avoided or its affects minimised.

Some typical mistakes that we make include:

• Presenting in your style, not your audience’s
• Not doing enough preparation / running last minute presentations
• Not having enough expertise on the subject matter (“earning the right”)
• Not taking control of your audience
• Allowing “internal terrorists” to run riot
• Focusing on the “nodders” and not the “dreamers”
• Starting with a “mumble”
• Finishing with a “bumble”
• Being unaware of the dynamics of your audience

How may of these have you felt yourself doing in the past?

The 5 steps to great presentations:

• Know what you’re talking about (“Earn the Right”)
• Feel comfortable being uncomfortable
• Have total clarity about the results you want to achieve
• Know your audience – who they are and what they want
• Design and prepare something unique

The starting point of any presentation is to make sure that you have the 3 core Innergies working together at the same time.

Emotional Innergy:
Get truly passionate about what you are talking about, otherwise, don’t try and talk about it.  If you don’t believe in what you are talking about, then why will your audience?

Get truly passionate about your audience.  Listen to them, understand their needs, issues and concerns and honestly empathise with them.

Mental Innergy
If you are delivering a sales presentation, know your product / service – what it can do, how it has worked for others in the past, where it’s limitations might be.

Similarly, know your customer.  Do your research and understand all you can about them before they ask you what you know about them.

Physical Innergy
What tends to happens to a lot of people at work at around 3pm?  Typically, their energy and concentration levels are at their lowest point (reports have shown that most breakages in factories and warehouses happen around this time!).

We call this the “Physical Floor” and in some cases, you can see people demonstrating the same lack of energy and concentration throughout other parts of the day, not just at 3pm.

When typically is your Physical Floor during the working day?  How do you feel at that time?

The opportunity to stand up and deliver a  presentation in front of an audience of any size (1 to 1,000) is a priceless opportunity to demonstrate how good you are and so for that moment when you are presenting, your physical Innergy needs to be at it’s highest point (the “Physical Ceiling”) to demonstrate that you will absolutely deliver what you say you will, no matter what.

As a customer, if I have given up some of my precious time to let you present to me, I want to see you really believe in what you are talking about (emotional), you know what you are talking about (mental) and you have the energy to deliver (physical).