GRAB 'EM!

The guide to killer presentation skills

Reinoud van Rooij

For more information on this and other editions contact:

Reinoud van Rooij Trainingen

Haarlemmertrekvaart 209
2341 NR Oegstgeest

The Netherlands
www.reinoudvanrooij.com

Publisher: RvR

Second edition

© April 2012, October 2012 Reinoud van Rooij

Translation ©2012 Valerie Thompson

Cover design by Marco van Buren

Interior book design: Marco van Buren

Editing: Dominique Prins

Printed and bound: Duineveld Sassenheim, the Netherlands

Van Rooij, Reinoud.

(BOEIEN! De Handleiding voor succesvolle presentaties. English)

GRAB ‘EM, The guide to killer presentation skills/

Reinoud van Rooij – 1st English ed.

ISBN/EAN: 978-90-818039-2-2

NUR 810

ISSN All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

While every effort has been made to ensure the reliability of the information presented in this publication, Reinoud van Rooij Trainingen neither guarantees the accuracy of the data contained herein nor accepts responsibility for errors or omissions or their consequences.

Acknowledgements

Giving presentations is fascinating. On the one hand, you are eager to demonstrate what you are capable of and what you know. On the other hand, you are afraid that others will think you are ignorant, incompetent, a moron or worst of all... boring. The best way to give a presentation is to simply ‘be yourself’. However, the last thing you feel like doing is being yourself in front of an audience of a hundred people. So how in the world, do you achieve that?

Intrigued by this paradox, I have learned through much trial and error how to give presentations to large groups. I speak from experience when I say that it is wonderful when it goes well. I have given many presentations during which the audience members sat on the edge of their seats, asked questions and approached me afterwards because they were hungry for more. I have also given presentations during which the audience members stared at me suspiciously with their arms crossed without asking a single question…

Through lots of practice and by meticulously analyzing hundreds of presentations, I have slowly but surely, discovered what makes a presentation captivating. I started teaching presentation training courses and because I am a perfectionist the courses became increasingly better. I got feedback, I made improvements and got feedback again and made more improvements. In 2010, I took a trip around the world and three months into it, I asked myself: ‘what shall I do, now?’ I suddenly had a desire to write a book on giving presentations. Strangely enough, I hate writing and I can express myself much better verbally than on paper. In fact, in high school, I got an ‘A’ on my Dutch final oral exam, but a ‘D’ on my writing exam. Consequently, writing was a rather touchy subject for me.

To my amazement, I discovered that I actually enjoyed it. I wrote one to two hours almost every day provided I was in the mood to do so. It was a piece of cake! At the end of my trip I had finished the book, or so I thought. Only after my best friend, David, gave his comments did I realize that this was just a good beginning.

I am pleased that I was able to put all the knowledge that I have acquired over the years down on paper. What pleases me even more is the idea that others can use this book to get to work, right away. Furthermore, this gives me the chance to reach a far greater audience than with my training courses and workshops,

In conclusion, I would like to thank my friend David van Zelm van Eldik, my friend Pieter van den Berg, my stepfather Peter Pauwels, my brother-in-law, Philip Bueters and my friend and colleague, Karin de Galan for the time they were willing to spend on proofreading and giving comments. I am very thankful to Dominique for all the stages of editing; from the beginning to the final version. I also appreciate her positive approach to giving feedback.  Last but not least I want to thank my inspiring wife Marihuela Belt who supported me all the way during the process of writing this book.

Enjoy the book and I especially hope that you will get more satisfaction out of giving presentations.

Contents

Acknowledgements

1     Introduction: What will you learn?

Part I The Basic Skills

2    Reveal yourself

3    Build rapport (get connected)

3.1    Make eye contact with people
3.2    Respond to non-verbal signals
3.3    Ask and answer questions

4    Answer questions

5    Ask questions

6    Put together a captivating structure

6.1    Research your target group
6.2    A short introduction
6.3    Start with a premise or question
6.4    Support the premise
6.5    Put together a dynamic ending

Part II Fine-tuning

7    Use PowerPoint effectively

7.1    Use PowerPoint effectively
7.2    Auditorium arrangements and PowerPoint

8    Use concrete and striking examples

8.1    Use concrete examples
8.2    Tell vividly

9    Make it dynamic: use a variety of structures and styles

9.1    Put variety in the structure
9.2    Use various presentation styles

10    Make it dynamic: body, facial expressions and voice

11    What to wear?

12    Nerves and fear, how to deal with them

13    Difficult situations

13.1    Faulty equipment, latecomers and noise
13.2    Chatterboxes
13.3    Enemies

14    Presentations for change management

15    Presentations in sales meetings

16    What now?

Bibliography

1    Introduction: What will you learn?

‘Ideas which are not presented well, remain just that: ideas.’

Reinoud van Rooij

Ideas amount to nothing unless you can get people to embrace them. It is a waste to have great ideas and just leave it at that. Giving presentations is the fundamental step to turning an idea in your mind into something tangible. It’s about getting others to warm up to your ideas. In this book you will learn how you can use presentations to persuasively convey your ideas to an audience. In this light, it is crucial that you learn how to make your presentations captivating, because captivating presentations are remembered longer.

Presentations have always fascinated me. Why does one presentation make you feel like time flies, while another presentation bores you to tears? Why can you barely remember anything about one presentation while another one makes you so enthusiastic that you cannot wait to tell everyone about it? Are there techniques which you can learn? Or is it a matter of ‘you either have it or you don’t’?

The majority of business presentations that I have seen just don’t grab your attention. This is often explained by saying that these are ‘business’ presentations and that makes it okay to keep the story ‘business-like’. To me, this is the greatest misconception of all. Dull business presentations are never remembered and are therefore just a waste of money. You don’t meet your objectives, you spend hours on pointless preparation and it is a waste of your listeners’ time, as well. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to make business presentations captivating.

I have been giving presentations (in various capacities) several times a week for the last two decades. Moreover, I have regularly performed on stage as a stand-up comedian. This is where I learned many different techniques; the main theme being: how do you grab your audience’s attention? And: how do you keep it engaged? With all of these activities in mind, I went on a mission to find the answers to these questions. Using the knowledge and experience which I have acquired as a result of my quest, I have been giving presentation training courses for the last eight years. Finally, I wrote a book about it.

The first chapters are about ‘revealing yourself’ and building rapport with your audience. The reason for this is that these are the most important skills necessary for a captivating presentation. As it happens, we all have a sixth sense when it comes to people who are phony. Consciously or unconsciously we think ‘something’s not right’. Immediately after that you think that ‘whatever he says can’t be right, either’. In the first chapter you will learn what you can do to ‘reveal yourself’ on stage.

Chapter three is about a second essential condition for a captivating and credible presentation. To be precise, this condition is building ‘rapport’ with your audience. Without rapport it is impossible to get your message across. Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to build rapport with your audience.

In the next chapters, you will learn how to engage in a dialog with the audience by asking and answering questions. This type of interaction makes the presentation lively and exciting. After that, comes an important chapter on the structure of your presentation. There, you will learn how to stage a presentation in a way that captures and holds your audience’s attention. The foundation for the most important skills has now been laid.

But a good presentation can always improve, by fine-tuning it with skills like: effective use of PowerPoint, increasing the dynamics and dealing with fear and difficult situations. As an encore, you will learn how to give two popular types of presentations: ‘change’ and ‘sales’.

From my own experience, I can tell you that it is very rewarding when you are able to take your thoughts and bring them out into the open, so that people understand them. Then your ideas actually become tangible. This book will help you to achieve that, step by step.

Part I    The Basic Skills

Part I deals with the basic skills of an engaging presentation. These are: revealing yourself, building rapport with your audience, asking and answering questions and putting together a captivating structure.

2    Reveal yourself

‘Those who are and remain genuine, will eventually always win respect and inspire confidence.’

Marinus Knoope, physicist and writer

I recently saw a presentation by someone who looked like he had just seen a ghost. His teeth were clenched, his shoulders were raised and he was speaking in a high-pitched voice saying: ‘I am so happy that I am allowed to give this presentation’. I did not believe a word he said and after that watched the rest of the presentation with skepticism.

If you want to convey your message effectively, then it is important that the participants trust you and believe in your credibility as a speaker. One way to do this it to reveal ‘yourself’. In concrete terms ‘revealing yourself’ means that what you say, what you radiate and what you do are in harmony. For example, if you are enthusiastic about what you are presenting, this should be reflected in how you speak and move. The audience is then no longer concerned about what they think of you, but listens to what you have to say.

However, the problem is that most people would rather die, than to have to speak in public. This is also supported by research conducted by Bruskin (1973) on this subject. In response to the question ‘What is your greatest fear?’ people rank ‘giving a speech’ number one on the fear scale, beating ‘death’ by a landslide! This fear primarily stems from our fear of rejection. And this fear is valid, because getting rejected is exactly what can happen when you are giving a presentation. Maybe the audience thinks your presentation is boring, maybe people ask difficult questions which you are unable to answer, maybe the listeners question your expertise and maybe you start stuttering or sweating or fumbling for words.

This threat of rejection makes us defensive. We apply tactics which ensure (pseudo) control and make us believe that we are safer. For example, we fill our presentation with PowerPoint slides and then read them one by one. Or we say: ‘please save your questions for the end of the presentation’ even though you know you have so many slides that there will be no time left for questions. Or you apologize ahead of time saying ‘I’m sorry, but I did not prepare the presentation very well and I was just told to do this, anyway.’ Many times we revert to the survival mode which is supposed to provide us with a sense of security. You try to act important by using a lot of difficult words or you go to the other extreme by playing the victim: ‘gee, this is really scary, I can hardly breathe. I hope you will be nice to me, otherwise I won’t make it to the end’.

The problem with this kind of strategy is that it may give you a false sense of security at the expense of ‘being yourself’ and building ‘rapport’ with your audience. This makes it harder for your audience to follow you, which in turn decreases your credibility. It’s the perfect recipe for a dull and ineffective presentation.

One of the first steps to giving genuine presentations is to recognize and subsequently, let go of your defense mechanisms. Below are several examples of defense mechanisms which people use when giving presentations:

The PowerPoint fetishist
Everything is on the PowerPoint slides, so all I have to do is press the <enter> key. I read out loud what is written on the slides and just look at the projection screen in the hope that the audience does the same. This way I don’t have to look at the audience but I can still give a presentation.

The Contact-avoider (Rainman)
I just look down at the ground or at my slides or I focus my attention entirely on the one person that looks friendly. If none of that helps, I turn around and look at the projection screen.

The Self-important one
“The self-enhancing role of affect can be clarified by the selective activation and increased accessibility of mood-congruent cognitions.” I hope you now think that I am very intellectual, even if you don’t get a word I am saying.

The Speedy one (Speedy Gonzalez)
I just talk extremely fast while showing a different slide every three seconds. That way this presentation will be over in no time and I can get back in the car and be home before anyone can ask any questions.

The Shrinking violet
Okay, I don’t really want to do this, but they just told me yesterday that I had to. Oh well, it’s doomed to fail anyway. And by the way, excuse me for living.

The Logged-out one
The logged-out one makes his entrance all rigid and looks right past the audience, with his eyes popping out of his head saying: “Uh, hello, it’s nice that you’re here because I’m here in body only. I left the rest of me backstage.”

The Life of the Party
I don’t remember what I wanted to talk about, but we had a lot of laughs. I didn’t have any time to prepare this presentation, anyway. I’ll explain the gist of it later, during happy hour.

The General
Everyone just shut up and only ask questions when I give permission.

The Theatrical one
It doesn’t matter what you thought of or remember about my presentation, just as long as you thought I was fantastic.

The (Used car) Salesman
Well, it’s like this, everything I say is fantastic. By the way, I hope my boss is in the audience.

The Strict School Teacher
Will the lady in the first row please take the gum out of her mouth… very good. What a stupid question, I already dealt with that subject. Am I clever or are you just plain stupid?

The Social Worker
Is everybody comfortable? You know what; let’s talk about what you want. Who has any ideas?

Think about which strategies you are inclined to use. You can also ask for feedback from your friends or colleagues. It is important that you gain insight into which strategy you use during a presentation, because only after that can you chose to make changes.

What's next?

What can you do differently? The challenge is to reveal as much of YOU as possible, despite the fear of rejection. Only then, can the audience ‘experience’ your presentation instead of ‘survive’ it. That is, of course, easier said than done: trying to just be yourself while you are under pressure. That is why I am giving you several tips to make it easier to be yourself:

Reveal yourself:
Here’s how you can approach this:

Tell an anecdote which forms the basis of your talk. It should be an experience from your own life which reinforces your talk. To make your story more exciting and relevant to your presentation, it’s okay to stretch the truth a bit.

Always speak in the first person. Say: I find, I notice, I think, instead of ‘It’s the opinion of the management that’ or ‘It is true that’.

Show what you think and feel, both verbally and non-verbally. For example: then I think to myself, I find, it gives me the feeling that, what I find nice/strange/unusual/weird about that it is.., personally, I would do this etc.

Prepare:
Make sure that your presentation is well-prepared.

Check out the auditorium and test the technical equipment ahead of time. That way you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Make sure that you have practiced your presentation in front of a live test-audience several times. I often practice a presentation in front of my wife. This will give you an indication as to what to expect and with that, you can let go of some tension. In doing so, you can make your entrance feeling “I have got it (reasonably) down pat’. The audience feels that immediately.

Relax:
Make sure you relax before you make your entrance. If you make your entrance feeling tense you will probably put on a façade. The audience will then have difficulty listening to you.

The key to relaxation is to control your breathing. Make sure that you are alone for a few minutes before your presentation. Spend ten minutes doing the following: inhale for five seconds and exhale for five seconds while you completely concentrate on your breathing. A scientific explanation about why this is an effective way to becoming relaxed can be found on www.heartmath.com.

Do something else that works for you. Listen to music, go outside for a few minutes, watch television or go jogging. Anything is fine as long as it works for you.

A word of warning! There is a limit to how much of ‘yourself’ you should reveal. Becoming overly emotional (perhaps because of unresolved issues) does not work. Getting very angry, bursting into tears or constantly saying how nervous you are for your presentation are all very real. However, then it becomes a case of ‘suffering together’ instead of ‘experiencing together’.

It must serve a purpose. The trick is to teach yourself to be ‘selectively genuine’ when giving presentations. Having the courage to be vulnerable is fine as long as you are ultimately in charge.

3   Build rapport (get connected)

‘A public speaker has to be as alert as a boxer. You have to say ‘gesundheit’ while someone in your audience is still preparing to sneeze.’

Toon Hermans, Dutch comedian, singer and poet (1916-2000)

If I want to know whether my daughter is lying to me I always ask her to look me in the eye and then I ask her to say it again. Many times I can see if she is telling the truth, right away. The same goes for an audience. By making eye contact with the audience you give them the opportunity to make contact with you and to pass judgment on you. That is exactly why inexperienced speakers do not make eye contact with their audience. Contact with your audience is what glass fiber is to the internet, without it you have unconnected computers that cannot exchange anything.

I recently attended a presentation where someone asserted that his product was better than the competitor’s. However, while he said that, he was looking down at the ground. I thought to myself: ‘I don’t think he believes in it himself’.

Looking at your listeners alone is not enough to build rapport with them. I was at a presentation last year, where the speaker definitely made eye contact with the audience, but failed to respond to the questioning and confused glances from the audience. He was oblivious to the fact that the audience had no idea of what he was talking about. Even though he looked at his audience he didn’t build rapport. Otherwise, he would have noticed this.

In order to get your message across, there must be a real connection between you the speaker and the audience. Without this connection there will be a gap; and it is a tough gap to bridge. You can create this connection in various ways. The previous chapter describes how you can do this by revealing yourself. In this chapter, you will learn how to do this by making real eye contact, asking questions or by responding to what you see happening. All of these techniques ensure that the audience feels that there is a clear connection between you and them, which makes them much more inclined to listen to you.

Here is how to build rapport:

make eye contact with people

respond to non-verbal signals

ask and answer questions

3.1   Make eye contact with people

By making eye contact with people in the audience, they feel ‘acknowledged’ and important. This way you make sure that the audience pays attention to your story. Furthermore, this helps you to pick up signals from the audience and in turn respond to them. This also helps you to come across as being confident, even if you actually feel very nervous.

The thing is that it is pretty scary to look your audience right in the eye. That is why inexperienced speakers often avoid eye contact and do one or more of the following awkward things:

Look down at the ground;

turn around and spend most of the time looking at the projection screen;

look past the participants into some vast, distant void;

look mainly at a piece of paper or the computer screen;

only face one side of the audience so that the group feels smaller to you;

only look at those in the audience who smile in a friendly way (it feels good but it is not so good for your presentation);

move quickly from left to right and back like a scanner, without really looking at anyone at all.

The consequence of this is that the audience will be less inclined to listen to you and more likely to lose interest.

What's next?

In order to maintain eye contact with your audience it is wise to begin by keeping it simple.

Start on the left hand side of the audience, look at someone there until you sense a connection;

then go to the next person and do the same;

this way you make brief contact with everyone in room. After you have reached the last person in the group go back to the first one.

If this works, then randomly pick people out to make eye contact with. Make sure you have done this with most of the people in the audience.

If the group is too big to make eye contact with each and every individual, you can do the following:

divide the auditorium into four sections; left front, right front, left back, right back;

focus on one square and look two or three people in the eye. Continue until you have had all of the sections. After the last section go back to the first section and look two or three people in the eye.

3.2   Respond to non-verbal signals

A second way to make contact with your listeners is to respond to nonverbal signals from the audience. Imagine you notice that people in the audience suddenly start to whisper to each other. It is important to make a mental note of it, and if it lasts too long, to act on it. You can go along with it by saying ‘I think I may have said something which was not completely clear because suddenly I see a lot of people talking to each other. Is something unclear?’ This gives your listeners the feeling that you are thinking about them and as a result, they will pay better attention to what you say. It also ensures that the distractive ‘whispering noises’ fade and that the audience’s attention is, once again, totally focused on you.

Naturally, you do not have to act on all of the signals that you pick up from the audience, but it is useful to make a mental note of them. If this happens often or if you notice a lot of people suddenly giving off the same signals, then it is time to respond. Other signals which you can respond to are puzzled expressions, yawning and sighing, people who sit straight up in their chair or slouch, people who look pensive, stare out the window or look at their watch.

What's next?

Make a mental note of the signals;

decide whether you want to say something about it (does it happen a lot, does it cause distraction, do a lot of people do it?);

mention what you see;

make a casual comment, sympathize or ask a question.

For example: imagine that you see many of the people in the audience yawning. Say something like ‘I can tell by looking at you that you have been listening for a long time and I know how tired it can make you. However, I have one more important thing to tell you before we take a break.’ The audience then feels noticed and acknowledged, which makes them more inclined to start listening to you again. Naturally, you could also take a break if you have the opportunity.

3.3   Ask and answer questions

By asking and answering questions you change the dynamics from ‘I talk and you listen’ to ‘we are going to engage in a dialog’. Aside from being refreshing, because the listeners are now involved as well, it ensures a deeper connection with the audience. The people in the audience feel they’re not just along for the ride, but that they actually have some influence. This is so important that I have even dedicated a separate chapter to it, namely chapter 5. But before that, let’s look at answering questions from the audience.

4   Answer questions

‘That which is familiar doesn’t cause us to question.’

Geerat Vermeij, evolutionary biologist

Evolutionary biologist, Geerat Vermeij says ‘that which is familiar doesn’t cause us to question’. And I say, ‘what we know is rarely exciting’. In other words, it is usually very positive when your audience asks you questions. This is a sign that your listeners are interested and desire to know more. This also gets the rest of the audience more involved and therefore, listen more attentively.

However, many speakers are afraid of questions, and understandably so. This is because there are pitfalls which are easy to fall into:

Pitfall 1:
someone in the audience keeps asking questions, takes over your presentation and messes up your whole plan;

Pitfall 2:
you spend (too much) time in discussion with just one person. You hear sighs all around the room;

Pitfall 3:
you don’t know the answer and go into panic mode (you clam-up, lie, insult the one asking the questions or just stand there with a silly grin on your face);

Pitfall 4:

you hear what you want to hear and start answering before the person asking the questions is done.

Last year, I fell into pitfall number 4 while giving a presentation on ‘the power of giving compliments’, to a supplier of office equipment. Someone asked me about how to deal with difficult employees. This man was clearly more interested in putting in his two cents worth than asking a question. Nevertheless, I dove right in and answered his question with a long and passionate plea. When I was done, I asked him politely ‘does that answer your question?’ Not surprisingly, he responded with a definite ‘no’. The audience started to grumble and after that I went over my own tips (below) again.

If you want to avoid these pitfalls, then it is a good idea to go through the following steps for dealing with questions from the audience.

What's next?

This plan of action assumes that the questioner has a real question and not some kind of opinion in disguise or that he/she is out to get you. See chapter 13, for advice on dealing with ‘Difficult situations’.

Steps for dealing with questions from the audience:

listen carefully to the question which is being asked;

paraphrase the question and try to find out what they are really asking. Keep asking questions until you find out exactly what the questioner wants to know.

By doing this out loud, the audience too, instantly knows what question is being asked. Many times the majority of the audience doesn’t hear the question. Repeating it out loud also prevents you from answering the question too hastily and getting it wrong. Finally, this step gives you time to think about the answer. Then there are two possibilities: you either know the answer or you don’t.

Option A: you know the answer

You give an answer and check if the question has been answered satisfactorily. Here again, there are two possibilities: the questioner is satisfied or the questioner doesn’t agree with your answer.

Questioner is satisfied:
- Good, next question.

Questioner doesn’t agree with your answer and it turns into a dispute:
- Go with the flow and explain that there are different views.

The problem with opposing points of views is that they often turn into a verbal tug-of-war. This leads to a waste of time and energy. What’s more, the audience quickly loses interest. For this reason, it is important to bail out of the discussion, as quickly as possible. Then switch to the chairman-mode: show understanding for the other’s viewpoint and take the heat off by pointing out that several insights are possible.

Example:
Repeat the questioner’s viewpoint:
"If I understand you correctly you mean…Is that right? I understand what you mean’
If necessary, you can go a step further:
‘I get where you’re coming from.’
After that, you may repeat your own views, but by then it is usually no longer necessary.
And then, the magic words:
'Apparently, we all think differently about this and that’s perfectly alright’.
This way no one loses face and you can move on.

Now we come to the situation where you don’t know the answer to a question. You can do two things: put the question on hold or ask the audience for an answer.

Option B: you don’t know the answer

Go with the flow and put questions on hold
You give the questioner a compliment: ‘Wow, that is a great question! I will have to think about it. I do not have the answer off the top of my head. I will put this question away for a minute, and then I will look it up during the break and get back to it later.

Ask the audience:

‘That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer off the top of my head. Does anybody have any ideas?’ Make sure you stay in charge when doing this and decide what to do with the answer. So, after summarizing the answer from the audience, you say whether or not you agree with it. Some organizations, where I give presentation courses, frown upon admitting you don’t know something. The philosophy in these organizations is ‘fake it till you make it’. Personally, I am not an advocate of faking it. Giving a vague answer creates restlessness, which makes it difficult to keep people engaged. The audience can usually tell if you don’t really know the answer, anyway.

5   Ask Questions

‘It is a sign of intelligence when human beings know how to ask good questions.’

Immanuel Kant, philosopher (1724-1804)

By asking the audience questions, you get a dialog going between you and the listeners. This way you change an ‘I talk and you listen’ presentation into a dynamic and interactive presentation. The audience is actually involved instead of just taking it in. Asking questions also helps you to get to know your audience; information which you can take advantage of during your presentation. This enables you to adapt your subject matter to the experiences of the audience, which in turn makes it stick.

However, many presenters are afraid to ask the audience questions because they are worried that they will get caught up in endless discussions. What’s more, they are afraid of getting answers they do not like. They are also afraid they will lose their grip. Maybe because they do not know really know how to ask good questions.

I was at a presentation once, which was organized by workers at a government institution. The topic was how to improve communication with the management. The presenter asked his audience of 100 people: ‘so, what do you think of the management?’ That’s when then I got out my iPhone and started reading the paper, because it was going to be a long night...

What’s next?

Steps to asking the audience questions:

Ask a closed question or a question with just one possible answer;

wait for the answer, repeat the answer;

comment on the answer.

Example:
‘Who came by train today?’
‘Oh, that’s strange, that is only a fourth of the audience.’

‘I didn’t expect that, considering the fact that parking is ten dollars an hour’.

Step 1: Ask a closed question, or a question with just one possible answer. The important thing when you ask a question is:

That the audience can only answer with yes, no or with one word;

that your question doesn’t trigger a debate;

that your question is related to the subject of your presentation (not just any old question).

Do: how many of you run out of time at the end of a project?

But don’t: what is the best way of tackling a big project? (too open)

Do: who voted this time?

But don’t: who else thinks that the president is an idiot?

Do: what percentage of the population do you think owns a house?

But don’t: how do you feel about the fact that so many people are

home-owners? (debate)

Step 2. Wait for an answer from the audience and repeat the answer.

It is helpful to realize that the audience is still in the ‘I listen, you speak’-mode and is inclined to stay there. Chances are that only a few people will raise their hand. What often works is to raise your own hand and then to ask the audience members to raise their hands: ‘Raise your hand if you agree with this’. This way you demonstrate, both verbally and non-verbally, that you want people to raise their hands and get involved.
Furthermore, it is important that you let the audience’s answer sink in. If you don’t wait for the audience to finish its answer, people will think that you don’t really want to know their answer or that it is some kind of a ‘trick’.
Don’t forget to repeat the audience’s answer. Not everyone in the audience has an overview of the entire room and not everyone is able to hear exactly what is being said. It only makes sense to comment on an answer after everyone knows what the answer from the audience was. If you comment too soon, your audience will get lost and give up.

Step 3. Comment on the answer.
This is important, because this shows the audience that you do not ask questions just for the fun it, but that there is a reason behind it. If you neglect to say something about the answer the audience will lose interest and will revert to the ‘consumer’-mode.

Example:
How many of you mainly use low-energy light bulbs?
Gee, that is higher than the national average. You are a ‘green’ audience and that is highly unusual because…

How do you convey your message in such a way that it inspires people, makes them enthusiastic and gets them involved? Is this just for a select group of passionate, talented individuals or can we all learn how? Good news: giving captivating presentations is a skill that you can learn, just like you learned to ride a bike. How? This will gradually unfold in this book. If you learn all of these skills and apply them, your presentations are guaranteed to make a long-lasting impression.

Reinoud van Rooij (1968) has been fascinated for years, by the question: ‘what makes a presentation captivating?’ Using an engineer-like approach, he meticulously researched this by watching and giving hundreds of presentations. In his capacity as a trainer, he has taught presentation training courses in the business world for the last eight years. When he was a student of stand-up comedy (and the years thereafter) he discovered, on stage, what it takes to get your message across. He gathered all of this knowledge on giving presentations and put it together in this practical book.

Inspiring book, full of ideas. Even if you only apply 10% of it, your presentations will become 90% better.

Karin de Galan, the galan training school.

Grab ‘Em! is practical and to the point: Reveal yourself! That’s when you will get your message across.

Management Team magazine