Most presenters are just plain average and quite a few are simply dreadful. So, how can you move from being a run-of-the-mill presenter to being fantastic? Every one of us has the ability to be truly great as a presenter.

Your audiences are not just interested in what you are saying, but the way you are saying it. If you say it well, it makes the content so much more interesting. If you concentrate your planning and preparation only on content, you are only likely to be average.

Here are our top 10 tips for becoming great presenters:

1.  Make a personal connection to every member of the audience. This means lots of eye contact, liberal use of the words ‘I’ and ‘you’, and that everything you deliver is done from the audience’s perspective. To do this, you need to know about your audience in advance.
2. ‘Show’ rather than ‘tell’. In other words, you don’t need to give them ‘messages’ and ‘content’; instead you need to give them lots of examples and they will work out the message for themselves.
3. Share your experiences. Your audience wants to know about your thoughts, your feelings and your opinions. The fact that you are presenting to them means your audience wants to hear from you personally.
4. Be a living person. No one wants to hear from an unanimated statue. You need to be active. There is also a big advantage to moving – it helps reduce nerves when presenting.
5. Be natural. Our discussions show that great presenters are interactive. They ask questions, they involve the audience and essentially they treat the presentation as a conversation.
6. Know your stuff. Your audience expects you to deliver your material without prompts. Great presenters never use notes.
7. Talk from the heart. Be passionate about your subject. If you don’t believe it, they won’t either!
8. Have fun. Your audience wants to enjoy your presentation and they want to have a laugh. This does not mean you need to tell jokes, but it does mean your audiences expect you to be light (in delivery, not in substance!). Even for serious topics audiences expect some kind of lightness. They want humour and they want you to smile and be relaxed.
9. Motivate them. Your audience is expecting you to tell them what to do. Don’t just deliver information, they can get that from a book or a website. Instead great presenters give audiences some action to take e.g. to think, to do, to know, or to act differently.
10. One final thing. Audiences are not in love with the use of computerised slides (often referred to as “death by PowerPoint”). They just want to hear from you. Truly great presenters therefore do one other vital thing – they switch off the projector!

Need more help? Register for our PRESENT LIKE A PRO workshop in August and learn how to present with influence, impact and confidence, or CONTACT US for more information.

Last year we revamped our two day sales training workshop. With the advantage of having an Extended DISC Master Trainer in our team, we introduced new content with more focus on understanding how to sell persuasively through the DISC personality knowledge. This new “Persuasive Selling Skills” workshop was delivered last week by Becky Carr to a group of participants with varying experience and background. They really enjoyed the interaction, feedback and coaching provided, as well as learning about their own personality type and how to adapt this to become more persuasive sales people with their customers.

“Awesome trainer – made the workshop so interesting and encouraged us to interact”

With already having done the introduction to DISC personality types workshop earlier this year, our print industry client were keen to expand on their skills. A “Selling with DISC” workshop delivered to their sales team at the end of April has helped them take this knowledge one step further in identifying questioning and closing styles that works best with each personality type.

Difficult working relationships can really get you down, especially when we spend so many hours at work. This Herald article has some handy tips how to improve your working relationship with your boss. One effective strategy is personality based profiling, to help you understand each other better. DISC profiling is a hugely insightful tool. ProFormance offer a “business partners” paired report to help you build a constructive working relationship

click here for full article 

When sales results are not as great as you want, it is natural to look to the sales team and question their skill level and what they are doing. Approaching training providers for a quick fix in sales skills training will result in disappointment unless the real cause of the under-performance is identified.

In 20 years of working with clients to understand why sales results are lacking, we know that sales skill is only part of the problem. Skill is also tied into sales process and sales leadership.

Successful sales results come from a combination of all three elements:

Working closely with key stakeholders in the business (GM’s, SM’s, S&M’s, HR) we can identify what is in place that is working, but also what is lacking or needs improving.

Sales process – Has the business clearly defined the steps it takes to achieve a sale in their market? Is this sales process documented and shared with all sales and marketing staff within the business? Is it tracked and monitored?

This can be done with or without a CRM system. If there is a CRM system, is it capturing the right data and reporting meaningful information to assist the sales function to operate efficiently and effectively.

Sales leadership – Does the business have the right leadership structure to drive, track and performance manage sales achievement?

Regardless of the role, job title or size of company, the sales leadership responsibilities need to be identified, allocated to staff and actioned.

Sales skill – What are the specific set of sales skills that lead to sales success in your market? Once identified, how do your current sales staff measure up against this?

By identifying any skill gaps, relevant training solutions can be designed that do make a difference to behaviour and ultimately the sales results.

The great news is that these three sales components are not rocket science. Any business can evaluate their current sales system and identify how to improve it so they can achieve fantastic sales results. How rewarding is that for the staff and business?

To book a FREE evaluation of your sales systems contact Jo Hyland on 021 380 488 or send us an email.