Presentation skills

Choosing a Presentation Remote Control

2009-06-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

If you deliver electronic presentations using PowerPoint or other programs, you can manually move forward to the next slide with the keyboard or the mouse. One way, however, to deliver more effective presentations that improve your connection to your audience is to add a remote control to your presentation tools. What features should you look for when selecting a remote control?

Remote Features

Many projectors come standard with a remote but features vary and may not always be easy to use. A better choice is to buy your own personal presentation remote control. When evaluating a remote, look for these features and decide what is important to you:

Ergonomic and easily fits in your hand. Keep in mind that you might be using the remote for an hour or an entire day. Plus, a smaller remote will usually have fewer and more accessible buttons, fits in your pocket, and is great for travel.
Simple to use. In most cases, a smaller, ergonomic remote is easy to use but test it before buying. One of my friends loves her small remote which is only about the size of a matchbook. The tradeoff is she needs to press 2 buttons together to make the screen go black, a feature that does not always work. I was reminded of the importance of an easy to use remote recently when I watched an excellent presenter pull out a huge remote that looked a price scanner gun from Home Depot. As he fumbled with a large panel of buttons, the remote dropped to the floor and broke open with batteries flying across the stage.
Transmit distance. Remotes operate with three different technologies: RF (wireless radio frequency), IR (infrared), and Bluetooth. A huge drawback with IR remotes is that you need to point the mouse directly at the receiver for it to work. Bluetooth remotes use the latest technology but currently have a maximum range of about 30' while many RF remotes have a range of 50 to 100 feet. With some remotes, you can have your back to the laptop and move to the middle of an audience. What do you need for your presentations?
Built-in mouse. Some presenters will sacrifice a bit in size to get a built-in mouse, usually a small button like you see on some laptops. The Logitech Cordless Presenter, for example, combines a full-size mouse and remote with a 30' range and is priced under $200. Other remotes have a track ball or a touch pad. I prefer a separate wireless mouse that I use for portions of my presentations. I find a built-in mouse to be too awkward but it might be great for your purposes.
Visible laser pointer. If you would like a built-in laser pointer, make sure to test it for visibility and practice moving it slowly. Some of the pointers have such a small laser dot that it does not show well on screen. Would an animation be a better way to highlight parts of a slide or a process?

When evaluating features, it is still not that common to find a wide range of remotes at your local computer store or office supply outlet, and so, your best option is to find someone who has a remote and try it out. My favorite is the RemotePoint Navigator from Interlink Electronics which is easy to use, fits comfortably in my hand, and gives me up to 50' of movement from my laptop. Another top model by the same company is the RemotePoint Presenter, with up to 100' of movement, a mouse button, and 32 MB of storage for your presentation; it is priced at about $150. The Phaser Mouse from IOGear is a budget-minded model for as little as $60.

There are many other models and brands to consider. Personally, I do not like remotes loaded with tons of features that you might not need; these remotes are typically bigger or more complicated to use. Remember, you should be using a remote so that you do not call attention to the technology and your audience can focus on your content.

Practicing with a Remote Control

After you buy a remote, practice with it before you use it. Do not just try it at your desk, you need to also setup your laptop and remote and actually run through your presentation. The first time I did this, the screen kept going black or I would accidentally advance to the next slide. The problem wasn't with the remote. The problem was that I was holding my presentation handout in the same hand and accidentally hitting a remote button through the handout. An easy adjustment but not obvious if my only rehearsal was in my office. I personally like to choreograph my slide actions into my presentation notes to avoiding looking back at the projection screen to check my location. Or, setup your laptop in the meeting room so you can glance at the screen and still keep the connection with your audience.

Practicing with your remote should be a built-in part of your presentation rehearsal to avoid distracting your audience and accomplishing the goal of communicating your message.

Bonus Tips: Always bring extra batteries; many speakers change out batteries for every presentation. To protect your investment, label the remote or put several business cards in the carrying case in the event that your remote is misplaced.

Dawn Bjork Buzbee is The Software Pro® and a certified Microsoft Office Expert and Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor. Dawn shares smart and easy ways to effectively use software and technology through her work as a speaker, trainer, and consultant. Discover more tips, tricks, tools, and techniques at http://www.SoftwarePro.com

Public Speaking Without PowerPoint - Three Ways to Engage Audiences Without the Screen

2009-04-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

If you have seen many speeches in your professional life, you have probably seen a boring PowerPoint presentation. It contains of a great host of slides that form a bullet-pointed outline of the entire presentation. The speech consists of little more than reading the bullet points. If you were in a darkened room, a nap might have overtaken you.

If you have given many presentations, you may be a perpetrator of such boredom. Challenge your self and give your audience a break. Next time you present, leave the projector at the office and try one of these techniques to engage your audience.

ENGAGE THEIR IMAGINATIONS WITH WORD PICTURES

Long before visual aids became common, speakers, storytellers and authors used words to trigger the imagination. The faux Martian invasion staged by Orson Wells through radio broadcasts caused a panic. People are very capable of conjuring up compelling images from their own mind; you can use this as a speaker.

Creating a word picture is not difficult. Start by imagining for yourself what you want your audience to see. Make the image as vivid as possible with colors, motions, sounds, scents and textures. Next, put it in words. Write down what you imagine including as many senses as you can.

You will probably need to revise your word picture to keep it short enough. Organize it, pare it down and tighten it up. It only needs to be detailed enough to evoke the imaginations of your audience; they will do the rest.

ENGAGE THEIR EYES WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

Before there was PowerPoint, speakers used photographic slides, chalkboard, white boards, flip-pads and fingers in the dust to provide visual aids for their presentations. These tools can be just as misused, too. The interminable travel slide show is cliché. So is the droning lecture accompanied by squeaking chalk.

Hand illustration has the advantage of being slower than clicking through electronic slides. You have to be selective about what you write or draw on your board. Write or draw selected words or images to reinforce the most important points of your presentation and show how they related. Focus on creating visual aids; if you are just producing an outline of your presentation, you could have used PowerPoint.

We are attracted to motion and color. Your use of hand illustrations can bring this into your presentation, adding interest and drawing additional attention from your audience at critical moments.

ENGAGE THEIR BODIES WITH MOTION

An important part of learning is doing. Look for ways you can get your audience to do something, even if the task is more illustrative than practical. It provides you with one more pathway to their mind.

Motion may also be a way to reengage an audience that is tired. People can only sit still for so long. If they have been sitting in a dim room for a while, they may welcome the chance to get up and stretch.

Activities can be difficult in large groups. You can get much of the benefit by drawing a few audience members up to perform the activity. This supplies a visual aid and stirs up the sympathy of the audience who will feel for their fellow who were unlucky enough to be picked or foolhardy enough to volunteer.

Be careful that your activities are not embarrassing or injurious to those participating. You want your audience to feel good about what they have done.

Preparing a presentation using these techniques can take more time and effort than typing your outline onto electronic slides. However, if your audience is not attentive to your presentation, it is a waste of effort. Think of the extra effort to use one of these techniques as an investment in your audience and the effectiveness of your message. Challenge yourself try your next presentation without PowerPoint and use these techniques to connect with your audience.

Keenan Patterson is a manager at Infra Consulting LC in Jefferson City, Missouri. In addition to consulting and he provides training to nonprofit and association boards, governing boards of municipalities and special purpose districts, and regulatory commissions, and speaks to diverse audiences.

How to Organize a PowerPoint Sales Presentation - 7 Easy Steps For a Perfect Pitch

2009-04-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

Like any good performance, a presentation must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Plus, it must be easy to hear, so your audience "gets it" and responds positively. Let's be clear; you present to sell.

To deliver a winning sales presentation you must:

* differentiate yourself from your competitors
* convince your audience you are worth listening to--by being easy to hear
* deliver information so that it is understood and appreciated
* keep your audience listening and engaged from the very first word.

Too many presenters waste their most important opening minutes with the standard "Thank you for inviting us" quickly followed by the "My name is..." and sailing right into the "I'd like to introduce you to our team." If that's what you do, you are achieving the exact opposite of what you intend. First, you sound like everybody else. Secondly, your beginning is instantly forgettable. And finally, you have given your audience good reason to disengage right from the get-go. Indeed, you are seriously out of tune with the needs of a listening audience.

When you want to win, you need a perfect pitch. Here's the how and why in 7 easy steps.

Step 1

Begin with your Big Message--the one you have polished until it sings.

Benefits

Research tells us that most people confronted with a stream of information forget almost all of it. In fact, you'd be lucky if your audience remembers two or three specifics from your presentation. In reality, the details you present are not the essential factor in making the sale. Your Big Message is. Open with your message and your audience will remember it.

Your Big Message is the main thing you want your audience to know about you. It is the strong statement of fact that sets you apart from your competitors and resonates with your audience so they listen up and respond positively.

Your Big Message is the big reason--in sentence form--that convinces your audience they need you. Polish it, refine it and open with it before you get to a word of content--even before you introduce yourself. Once you state your message--if it's a good one--your audience is engaged. Now you may introduce yourself.

Step 2

Organize and deliver your content around three--maximum four--main topics. These are the topics or subjects that support or prove your message.

Benefits

People understand information only when they can organize it into a coherent structure so it makes sense. Make remembering easy by organizing information into three distinct topics.

Imagine your message is something like: Our equipment is better built, more reliable and easier to use than any other on the planet. The topics you then choose must support or prove that message. So let's say for this message your three topics are technology, design and return on investment. That's it. The rest of your content must go under those three headings.

Now, whether you are asked to present at warp speed, or are expected to speak for twenty minutes or considerably longer, you can bet your audience will forget the detail, the minutia, the facts and the figures. Short or long, a well planned presentation follows a three-topic structure. The difference between them is in the amount of detail you put under each heading.

So--and this is the kicker--no matter how long your presentation is, when it is structured in three sections--or maximum four--your audience remembers your message because you opened with it. What's more, even if they forget all the details, they will remember you talked about three big concepts that prove your message: technology, design and return on investment. And after all, that's what is really important.

Step 3

Reinforce your big message with a visual metaphor.

Benefits

Pictures are more memorable than words. Pictures can instantly engage your audience and subliminally reinforce the message you want to convey.

Words matter. Visuals make a difference. The more careful you are in tieing everything together with an underlying theme, the more memorable your pitch becomes. If, for example, your big point is that you are the best at putting all the pieces together, you might use a carpentry image as a background throughout and reinforce your message with titles that tie in to the image--titles that begin with words like Building or Crafting or Cementing. Or if you want your audience to know you have a specialized team to work on their behalf, you might use a sports metaphor with a team picture as the background on your slides. Your topic titles should then fit with the sports theme.

Picking appropriate titles to match your theme adds a touch of creativity while highlighting your underlying message.

Step 4

Use your slides as a visual aid, not a reading exercise; eliminate as much text as you can.

Benefits

Good eye contact is the key to connecting with your audience. You cannot connect when everyone is reading from the screen. If you must, use bullet points to keep yourself on track or to point out key features or benefits. Eliminate sentences or anything else that requires reading.

Do not give your audience text to read while you speak. Research explains that people process visual material and verbal material in different areas of the brain--on separate channels. Listeners can digest information on only one channel at a time--which means that if they are reading, they cannot listen to you.

Research also reports that the more senses you can stimulate, the more you improve information retention. If you can stimulate the visual cortex with a striking picture while you orally deliver information to stimulate the hearing sense, you have doubled the chances of your audience remembering anything you say.

Don't worry about forgetting something. This is your stuff and you could talk for hours about it. What's more, if you do leave something out, your audience will never know.

Step 5

Do not print your PowerPoint slides to use as handouts. Create separate, reader-friendly documents.

Benefits

A well written handout is proof that the presentation you delivered is valid and true. PowerPoint slides are designed to be visuals--the exact opposite of reading documents. Slides are horizontal; documents are vertical. Slides are on dark backgrounds; documents are on white paper. Slides use huge fonts; documents use reading fonts no bigger than 10-12 point because bigger than that is actually harder to read on paper. There's lots more, but you get the idea.

And while Microsoft suggests you use your slides as a handout, it's a big mistake to do so. Handouts that look and read like real documents provide a huge advantage because they are readable and people actually read them. Imagine that! Feel free to include all the facts, data, detail and minutia you want, and distribute them before the Q and A.

Step 6

End your presentation by returning to your opening Big Message.

Benefits

Your Big Message is the hook on which everything else hangs. Once you finish delivering content, repeat the Big Message you began with--to remind your audience what sets you apart. What's more, when you end where you began, your presentation has the seamless and satisfying quality of a good performance.

When that's done, it's time for Q&A.

Step 7

Practice with a coach to be sure you present with warmth, energy and real language. It's all about your "likability factor."

Benefits

A good coach can make the difference between an amateur performance and a professional one. Remember, your goal is not to be slick, it is to be likable--which requires a careful blend of confidence, energy and enthusiasm.

It's hard to assess your own performance. It's nearly impossible to gauge how likable you are to an audience. A coach will check to be sure you make good eye contact and speak conversationally, that your body language is open and welcoming, that you appear warm and friendly. A coach will make sure your voice is pleasant, that your passion shows, and that your delivery hits all the right notes.

When making the sale is important, you want a professional's insightful feedback to help polish your delivery.

Follow these 7 steps and become the likable, memorable, easy-to-hear presenter you know you can be. That's a perfect pitch!

When companies need a dynamite coach to help them reinvent or polish their presentation, they call Fern Lebo--because it pays off big time. Author, consultant, trainer and coach, Lebo is President of FrontRunner Communications, adjunct faculty at Auburn University and a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, retreats and meetings.

For nearly 20 years, Lebo has helped Fortune 500 companies create and deploy star performers. In seminars, workshops and individual or team coaching sessions, participants master the skills they need to compete and win more often. Whether it's a presentation renovation, strategic business writing, or improving presentation delivery, Lebo's clients learn the secrets that set them apart; they master the professional techniques they need to achieve outstanding success. Find out more at http://FRcommunications.com

PowerPoint Tip - Create a Video Effect

2009-04-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

You think of most presentations as being made up of slides, and most presentations look like that. But you can create a presentation that looks like it's all one slide. You do this by making the end of one slide (after animation) the same as the beginning of the next slide (before animation). It can be a black background, for a fade to black effect, or an image that covers the entire slide.

The technique is time consuming, because you need to get the timing just right, but it's not difficult, and it's a lot cheaper than making a video. It's excellent for sales presentations.

The key is animation and timing. In essence, you create a presentation that could be on one slide, but you use several slides for ease of animation. Then you add timing to the slides to move the presentation to the end automatically. Usually, you add narration as well.

You can use many techniques; here are the steps to create a fairly simple video-effect presentation:

1. Decide on a story line and photos to illustrate the story. The story I used is a plane trip from Iowa to California and I took the photos from the plane. In my case, the photos drove the story, but you could start with a story (let's say, about your company), and then find visuals to match.

2. Write a script and decided which photos would match with each section. Then divided the script into about 4 or 5 slides. This would work for a presentation lasts a few minutes. Add more slides for a longer presentation.

3. Attach a mic to your computer and open a sound recording program. I used Audacity, a free audio recording and editing program. I highly recommend it; it's used by many professionals. It's also easy to use. If you download it, be sure to also read the instructions for, and download, the LAME MP3 encoder, which lets you save files in MP3 format.

4. Record and save a separate MP3 file for each slide.

5. In PowerPoint, insert the appropriate MP3 file for each slide, by choosing Insert> Movies and Sounds> Sound from File. (In PowerPoint 2007, Insert tab> Media Clips group> Sound drop-down list> Sound from File.) Choose the Automatically choice when you see this dialog box. The sound will start to play as soon as the slide appears. Drag the sound icon just off the slide.

6. In Windows Explorer, right-click the MP3 file, and choose Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the Details tab to find the length of the sound.

7. Once you know the length of your sound file, decide at which point you want your images to appear. You can double-click the sound on the slide, listen to it with a stopwatch, and find out the timing for each word that you want to introduce a new image.

8. Open the Custom Animation task pane by choosing Slide Show> Custom Animation (Animations tab> Custom Animation in PowerPoint 2007). You'll see the sound there. If you add other animations, the sound will stop as soon as they start, so click the sound's down arrow in the Custom Animation task pane, and choose Effect Options. In the Stop Playing section, choose After Current Slide, so that the sound will continue throughout the other animations on the slide.

9. If you want the first slide to fade to black as it goes to the next slide, right-click the slide and choose Format Background. Choose a solid fill background of black and repeat for the second slide. If you want instead to use an image, format the background of the 2 slides with the same image, or insert the image on the 2 slides and send it to the back of the order. (Right-click, and choose Order> Send to Back, or just Send to Back.)

10. Insert the images that you want to use for that slide. Move them (stagger them) so you can select them individually. Click the first one. Generally, you want it to take up the entire slide, but it doesn't have to; resize it if desired. Choose Add Effect> Entrance, and add an effect. Change its Start option to With Previous. For a slight delay instead, choose After Previous, click the item's down arrow in the task pane, choose Timing, and set a delay.

11. If you want this image to disappear before the next one enter, choose Add Effect> Exit and choose an effect. Set the Start to After Previous and set the delay equal to the time when you want the next image to enter.

12. Select the second image and add an entrance animation. If you want it to enter while the previous image is exiting, set the Start to With Previous. Otherwise, set it to After Previous and set the delay according to the times you worked out in your script. You want it to enter when a specific word is being spoken. You may have to try the result and make adjustments.

13. Continue until you've animated your images, exiting them at the end, so you see the background color or image.

14. Set the timing for the slides. Choose Slide Show> Slide Transition (in 2007, Animations Tab> Transitions to This Slide group). In the Advance Slide section, check the Automatically After check box and enter the number of seconds, which should be equal to the length of the sound. Again, you may want to adjust the timing slightly after viewing the result. Do this for all the slides.

Ellen Finkelstein, is the best-selling author of How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 (and previous editions for PowerPoint 2002 and PowerPoint 2003) Her award-winning Web site features loads of free tips on PowerPoint, the monthly PowerPoint Tips Newsletter, and the PowerPoint Tips Blog - http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com

5 Ways to Develop Presentation Skills

2009-03-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here are 5 Ways that will help you develop your skills of presentation.

-Confidence is the Key

Before anything, develop a certain degree of confidence about your own abilities. Don’t go out there with the feeling that everyone is your enemy and is just waiting to rip you apart.

You can also build a certain degree of confidence by being well prepared for the presentation. Don’t leave any facet out, and make it a point to have a script that is tightly edited. Even if you don’t make all the information at your disposal, a part of the presentation, make sure that you have an in-depth understanding of the topic.

-Be Engaging and Do Not Lecture

Develop an interesting presentation. This is a significant aspect of developing presentation skills. Learn to interact with your audience while giving a presentation. Don’t just stand and dump your data on them.

Be compelling enough, so that the people hear your presentation, without giving you a bored look or without showing disinterest in the presentation. It’s important to understand that, you don’t know more than the audience, and even if you think you do, you are giving the presentation for their benefit and not yours.

-Knowing Your Audience

Make it a point to know your audience. Meaning, you must know the basic characteristics of the audience. You must also know the number of senior people that would be a part of the audience, or what would be the initial attitude of the people vis-à-vis the topic.

If the people in front of you are intelligent and well-informed, you must be prepared accordingly and try to mold your presentation skills accordingly. Each presentation is different, and needs a few common skill sets in conjunction with skill sets that have been developed for a particular audience.

-Keep it Short and Simple

Don’t go in for a lengthy presentation. A simple and short presentation does not mean a presentation that falls short of expectations or does not provide important information.

If you try and integrate simplicity, you will develop an orderliness, and will also know what to select and in what amount. You will also become better organized, and not meander away from the topic.

-Anticipation

You can develop presentation skills by learning to anticipate any eventuality, especially with respect to the questions asked. If you do not learn to expect the unexpected, you might just lose your credibility in the process.

Always identify the questions or problems that your might face, and form an adequate response for the same.

The Time and Patience Factor

Developing presentation skills takes time and no one is born with such skills. You need to practice, and hone your skills, by not shying away from the thought of giving presentations. After a period of time and due diligence you will develop presentation skills that will give you unmitigated success.

How Do You Reach Everyone in the Room?

2009-03-01T07:05:00.001-08:00

Presentations or speeches can be a wonderful experience for the person talking at the front of the audience and for the audience as wee. This is a technique usually used to get information to people and also to entertain people in some circumstances. There are many ways to do this such as Powerpoint, hand outs, or using writing on boards which are the visual aspects of presentations. But let's face it, most of the time it is talking and the audience listening to many words.

Because any group is composed of different types of people with some who listen well, others that are visual learners, some that talking puts to sleep, and others that just want to talk, different ways may be used to attempt to reach everyone.

If at all possible to not get behind a podium. This separates the speaker from the audience and gives a feel that the speaker is unreachable. In this scenario it is unspoken that the audience role is to listen only. It may be untrue but it is an unconscious feeling and interpretation.

Walk around a little. This makes the audience follow you and keeps there attention. At the same time eye contact with different members of the audience shows that you are engaged with them. Don't linger too long on one person though but it is OK to see if you can get a nod or a smile.

Bodies make a lot of expression so to use your hands is great. A cordless, hands free mike would be best for this. There are many places using these now and is a good investment. A good one even picks up a whisper.

The voice when speaking should change in tone and emphasis at time but there is no need to shout. It is much like a conversation though one sided mostly but people listen to conversational tone better than feeling it is simply orders. It is also terrific to smile and tell some related stories. Stories people remember and this gives a reference for the information given.

Presentations are meant to help people so give it in a manner that says exactly that.

Liz Cosline- Life Ownership Coach - Speaker
Author of:
Transcendental Sojourn - Arrival to One Journal (xlibris.com)
One Voice (publishamerica.com)
Unexpected Knowing (publishamerica.com)
Notice for Arrival (publishamerica.com)

In business management for over 23 years.

The Two-Hour Sales Presentation Vs. A Seven-Minute Attention Span

2009-02-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

The average decision-maker has an attention span of just a little over seven minutes. I’m convinced that adult attention spans have been carefully programmed by network television, by the seven to eight minute time segments of entertainment, wedged between commercial breaks. On the other hand, the average sales presentation in the United States runs from one and a half to two hours in length. As a sales manager, you should easily figure out what’s wrong with this picture.

Those of you with complex products or services, or with large product lines may be saying to yourself, that it takes at least an hour to demonstrate all of the features and benefits of what it is you sell and another 20 to 30 minutes for questions and answers, right? Well, if you want more sales, help your staff to cut the length of their presentations down appreciably.

The $elling Edge®, Inc.’s Sales Success Strategies workshop, teaches a six-step selling process that can be completed, no matter how complex the product or service, in 30 minutes or less. We speed up the selling process, not only because of a decision-maker’s lack of attention , but more important, so that a sales professional can make more presentations in a given time period. And, the more presentations made over time, the more sales that are consummated.

You do the math. If a sales representative averages one and a half to two hours for each presentation as compared to an average of 30 to 40 minutes, how many more presentations can your staff make each year? How many more sales?

The six-step selling process, taught in the Sales Success Strategies workshops, is outlined in detail in a self-directed learning manual of the same name. You can learn more about it at: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/manual1.htm

VIRDEN THORNTON is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. an Ohio consulting firm specializing in sales and sales management training, personal coaching, advisory services and publishing. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Service Linen Supply, Bank One, Jefferson Wells International, and Wal-Mart to name a few. Virden is the author of the “best selling” Building & Closing the Sale, Prospecting: The Key To Sales Success and Close That Sale, a video/audio tape series published by Crisp Publications a division of Thompson Learning. He has also authored a client acclaimed Self-Directed Learning series of sales, coaching, telemarketing, and personal productivity manuals. To obtain a substantial discount on two of Virden's latest books, 101 Sales Myths or Organizing For Sales Success, go to: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Virden_Thornton

Presentation Planning - 5 Easy Ways to Streamline the Process

2009-02-10T07:53:00.001-08:00

Practicing for presentations can waste more of your key personnel time then almost any other business activity. The possible exception being useless meetings! To maximize your planning efforts just follow these 5 easy steps. You will find that you can streamline the process and make Presentation Practice much more productive.

- There must be One Person in Charge. This person has responsibility for scheduling, coordinating and, perhaps most importantly, communicating with all of the presentation team members. Preferably this is a staff position working in Business Development who can be assigned the job. Never put a busy executive in charge of the day to day process.

- Select the Presentation Team Early. Be sure to determine who is required to be a presenter. Almost always the client wants to meet and hear from the people working directly on the project, not just the sales group.

- A detailed presentation schedule is mandatory. Everyone must understand what the plan is. At a minimum the schedule needs to show the following: Presentation date and time. Team practices and who needs to be present along with where and when practices will be held. A block of time needs to be allocated for preparing visual aids. They can be power point slides, presentation boards, handouts, leave behinds, or anything else that may need to be created for the presentation. The schedule needs to be distributed to all team members as quickly as possible to allow maximum time for individuals block out times in their personal schedules.

- When practices are scheduled everyone must be prepared to practice. This sounds redundant but I can't tell you how often I have heard people complain over what a waste of time a practice session was. Having a room full of people waiting for someone to finish the power point presentation slides is not where you want to be.

- Communicate everything pertaining to schedule with everyone as quickly as possible. Again, numerous times I have seen practice sessions rescheduled without letting everyone know. The result is always a conference room of senior staff with nothing to do! They didn't know the practice had been rescheduled.

Try these steps and you will be surprise at how much more productive your Presentation Planning will become.

Allen Jossim is a retired executive and freelance writer with much presentation and public speaking experience. Please go to his blog Public Speaking - You Can Do It! Where helpful information is always available.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Allen_Jossim

Better Presentation Skills - Don't Care Too Much About What Happens!

2009-02-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

Caring about your audience and how you do as a speaker is a good thing. If you don't care about what you do, how well you do it, or what the audience takes away from it then you are just apathetic and probably shouldn't be speaking to this group.

However, caring too much can be just as bad as not caring enough. By caring too much you actually reduce your ability to perform well. It sounds ironic, but the more importance you put on succeeding, the less likely you are to succeed.

Caring too much is the number one reason people feel nervous before they speak. There are many reasons you can care too much: you are afraid of being embarrassed, the speech is important to your career so you want to do well, you think the audience is hostile, etc.

Allowing these nerves in makes it very hard for you to perform your best. It is hard to speak naturally when you are freaking out!

This happened to me in my early speaker days, during one of my first "big" speeches. I walked in to the event with my speech prepared. However, before my speech I spoke with several of the attendees. I found out that the year before that had a world champion boxer as their speaker. Here I was, this young guy going to do this little comedy speech, when they were used to speakers who had been on the world stage! "There is no way they are going to like my stuff," I thought.

On top of that, I started discovering that a lot of these people were very successful. Way more successful than me. Also, this was my first "big" speech and I wanted to do really well so I could get referrals and follow up business. I was counting on it.

I got up to speak, but it was too late. I cared too much, and psyched myself out. The speech was ok (they didn't ask for their money back or anything) but I got zero referrals or follow up. Nada. Zilch.

I realized afterward that the problem was that I put too much importance on what the audience would think. I wanted to do a great job and give great value to the audience, but I realized that all I could do was worry about doing my best, and if they didn't like it, too bad.

Now, whenever I start to get nervous about a speaking engagement, or anything else for that matter, I remind myself to do my best and not care so much about what the audience thinks. When I do this, my nerves immediately calm and I am able to perform much better. I encourage you to try this before your next presentation.

To read about six more mistakes speakers make, and to watch a free 20 minute video on how to be authentic and natural as a speaker, and to download a one-hour MP3 on how to be a better speaker, check out http://www.avishparashar.com/speakingschool/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Avish_Parashar

Public Speaking - Five Awful Ways to Open a Speech

2009-01-20T06:23:00.000-08:00

The opening of a speech is one of its two most important parts. There are many great ways to begin, and for each great beginning, there is an equally awful opening.

Here are five awful ways to begin a speech:

"Hi there, I'm happy to be here..." Please! This is the most bland, boring, badly overused speech opening. By the time you reach the word "here", half of your audience is already asleep. The other half is looking at their watches, wondering "When is this going to be over?" Don't waffle: just start!
"I'm very nervous right now..." Who cares? Why do you think it's so important for us to know that you haven't prepared, you haven't practiced, and you aren't ready? The audience does not need to know how you feel. When you announce that you aren't at your best, you are automatically setting expectations that you will be bad. It doesn't matter how well you perform. If you do the best speech of your life, they will leave while thinking to themselves: "I wonder how much better it would have been if he/she had been feeling good."
"Did you hear the one about..." Oh boy! Whenever people start their speech with a joke, it's usually sign that they are just following "public speaking rules." These "rules" allegedly state that you must start a speech with a joke. The problem is that jokes are rarely related to the topic at hand. They are only there to make people laugh. Nothing wrong with getting people to laugh, as long as it doesn't seem forced. Otherwise, after the laughter, people will wonder: "What was the point of that joke?"
"Here is a story you all know..." Ugh! The starfish story, anything from Chicken Soup for... any story you received over the Internet, all have the same basic issue: many people have heard it already. Stay away from stories that everyone has told, unless you bring a twist to it. For example, I once heard the story of the tortoise and the hare which contained, not one, not two, but three different endings to the story. Now, that's a twist!
"The great philosopher A. Nonymous once said..." This is another one of those public speaking "rules": start with a quote. Avoid this, once again, because it sets up your audience with the wrong expectations. The expectation is the following: this is going to be another boring speech filled with information we already know. Use quotes, just not at the beginning of your speech.

The two most important parts of a speech are the introduction and the conclusion. The introduction sets the tone for your speech, while the conclusion determines how the audience will feel when they leave. Don't set yourself up for failure from the start: drop these awful openings from your repertoire.

Laurent Duperval helps professionals become influential communicators. He publishes the "Bring Out The Speaker In You" electronic newsletter, which aims to help readers improve their public speaking and communication skills.

You can reach him at http://www.duperval.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laurent_Duperval

Motivation Presentation - It Wasn't Only the Egyptians Who Built Pyramids!

2009-01-19T06:22:00.001-08:00

When giving a motivation presentation, audience analysis is essential. You must think of your presentation from your audience's viewpoint. Chances are your audience has been asked to attend your presentation (they have not come along voluntarily) and many well be thinking: "What's in it for me?"

Don't take that personally. When giving a motivational presentation, that "What's in it for me?" question should be your call to action. For your presentation to succeed, that is the question you need to answer. A motivational presentation should be structured in a way that takes your audience from where they are now to where you would like them to be. You first must engage your audience's attention at their current level, and then demonstrate through your presentation how you can fulfill their natural desire to move up to the next level of motivation. Depending on the goals of your presentation and the intended audience, whether a sales force, production personnel or a football team, you must give them a reason to listen to your presentation. A reason that relates to, and builds on, their own experience.

Way back in 1954, American psychologist Abraham Maslow developed the idea of a hierarchy pyramid of human needs. That hierarchy pyramid has been the foundation of motivation presentations ever since. He demonstrated that there are five basic levels of needs that all people have in common: basic, safety, social, self-esteem and achievement. These can be visualized in a pyramid-type structure with the basic level at the base, up to achievement at the apex.

In the business environment for example, Maslow's hierarchy from the basic level upward is:

Basic needs, which can be met through, attractive salary, holiday entitlement, etc.
Safety needs, met by safe working conditions, good pension, health cover.
Social needs, such as company fitness and sports club, planned social events such as office parties (my favorite!)
Self-esteem needs, by prestigious job titles, sales-person-of-the-year award, etc.
Achievement needs, through promotions, interesting job assignments, and so on.

Maslow suggested that people can only be motivated to move up to the next needs-level when they have satisfactorily met the main requirements of their current level. In other words, you are unlikely to have much success in your motivating presentation in telling you audience they have been selected to work on a prodigious new project (self esteem) if their pressing concern is their cut in bonuses (basic).

Interestingly, Maslow found that that when the lower-order needs have been fulfilled, the desire to reach the higher-order needs (self-esteem and achievement) dramatically increase in strength. The ideal motivating presentation should therefore focus more on the higher-order needs. Needs that excite people to develop their talents to the best of their abilities and enable them to finding greater meaning in their work.

A Certified Technical Trainer, Ian has over 10 years experience in the coaching, training and development of personnel in the hi-tech sector.

For more presentation tips, ideas and resources, visit http://www.presentation-power-tips.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_W_Hay

How to Give Great Presentations at Work?

2008-12-18T07:44:00.001-08:00

What is a great presentation? As you might have already seen on the Internet, or read in books, there are many definitions of great presentations. Nevertheless, they all emphasize one point - a great presentation is one which, ideally speaking, completely holds an audience enthralled. It is not entirely true that only great personalities can give great presentations. To develop great presentation skills, which you will need, especially if you are a Six Sigma professional, you need to understand the anatomy of a great presentation.

Anatomy Of A Great Presentation

Unlike written reports where you have a chance to correct mistakes, presentations are a sort of 'get it right the first time' business activity. So, a considerable amount of preparation is necessary to make a presentation great.

1. All Great Presentations Are Well Researched and rehearsed in advance. You must determine how much information or statistics needs to be given in proportion to a plain lecture. Too much statistics defeats the purpose of your presentation and makes it boring.

2. Encourage The Audience To Have Confidence in you at the beginning by greeting them and briefly explaining the points you are going to cover during the course of your speech.

3. Presentations Are All About Scoring Points and winning over others to your opinions. Delivery skill is a vehicle of driving a point home. Statistical information should be presented in logical sequences and in the right doses.

4. Make The Presentation A Light-Hearted One wherever possible but without compromising on the seriousness of the matter. All great presentations are made in simple language using industry specific jargon, but not words that are too hard to understand.

5. Great Presentations Use Audio-Visual Aids for greater impact. This is based on the principle that a picture speaks a thousand words. Even a budgetary speech or an accountant's presentation can use slide pictures.

How To Give Great Presentations

Begin with greeting the audience; end with asking their feedback and then thanking them. Announce that you will answer their questions later at the end of your speech. Apart from the apparent benefit this provides you, you get their undivided attention to your speech which is vital to your success.

Proven Steps To Give Great Presentations

Whether it is a formal speech to a large audience or an informal briefing, knowing your audience is vital to your speech preparation and helps you to relate it to them. Here are a few steps to making the actual presentation.

1. Judiciously Use Examples from everyday life or from past events to make your point quickly understandable. But don't let examples occupy center stage.

2. Don't Forget, Your Audience may have come from different departments within your organization. Each of them has different interests and different levels of understanding on your topic. Strive to address the needs of the entire audience, not just a select few.

3. Grasp Audience Responses that show whether and how much they like your speech. Make midcourse corrections to the tone of your speech if necessary. At this point you can engage them to lift their moods.

4. Extemporaneous Presentation goes a long way to make it interesting as this obviously eliminates the 'report reading style' and gives your speech a natural touch. You can use notecards if necessary, so that you don't forget them.

5. Using Body Language Effectively. Make eye contact with members of the audience. Make gestures like hand waving, nodding and voice. Using body language in this way helps to break the monotony of a possibly long speech.

Giving a great presentations at work is not limited to just benefiting your organization. Use this vehicle to travel that extra mile to reach your career goals.
Source: Free Articles

Hidden Tips on Public Speaking Revealed

2008-11-23T05:32:00.003-08:00

Whether you have to address your company shareholders or maybe you local PTA, knowing some hidden tips on public speaking is really going to help you out. Starting with preparation is the key. Knowing where you are going to speak, to whom you will be speaking, and the time you have allotted to address your messages is information you will need to know. This article will offer tips on public speaking that you may not have considered before.

Your audience and the speaking engagement location are very important. Get all the information possible about who will be attending your presentation. Find out if these people be experts in the matter you will be discussing, will they have little information about your subject or are they a mixed group. This information will determine how you will prepare your speech. It will help you decide if your presentation it to teach, train or to provide your view point on the subject matter. If you have the opportunity, visit the location before the time of the talk. It will help you visualize as you prepare your outline and will ensure you are not caught off guard by any peculiarities of the space.

Once you are sure what your main message will be, get it down on paper as an outline. Write down the main sections and subsections on what you are going to talk about. There is no need to go into detail on the outline, as you do not want end up reading your speech from your outline. If you end up reading your presentation you will bore your audience to death. Keep in mind the time you have been allotted for your presentation. Knowing what you are going to say, when you are standing in front of your audience will be the most important of the secret tips on public speaking.

People will rarely want to listen to you for longer that the time you have been allotted. Do not assume you are one of those speakers that the audience cannot get enough of. Remember, rap up your presentation on time. If you notice you are loosing your audience's attention, you probably have gone overtime, end your presentation quickly.

You have been chosen to speak because you are an expert on the topic you are presenting. Make sure your confidence and enthusiasm reflects this. Never apologize for what you do not have with you or what you do not know, instead, focus on what you do know and do it with confidence. If you portray yourself as being an expert on the topic you are presenting, your audience will assume you are, and will pay more attention to you. People like hearing from people that portray confidence.

So, knowing your audience, preparing an outline, keeping on time, and portraying confidence are the secret tips on public speaking. You will learn many more secrets as you grow in your abilities in speaking in public. The most important thing know is to concentrate on theses four tips on public speaking, and implement them in your next speaking engagement and you will see tremendous personal growth.

A Public Speaking Nightmare

2008-11-23T05:32:00.001-08:00

Recently, I attended a keynote presentation by a major radio executive in Toronto. Which, may sound interesting enough but, what happened at this event may make you think twice about how fine tuned your public speaking skills really are!

It all started innocently enough when a representative from the hosting organization got up to introduce the keynote speaker. What happened next can only be described as a complete public speaking meltdown and a humiliating nightmare.

After taking the stage and nervously placing herself behind the podium, she immediately launched into a twenty minute litany about herself, her quirky mother, nine rooms in her house, her alcoholic father, her trip to Boston, her move to New York etc. And, as she rested her elbows on the podium she held tightly to her face two goose-neck microphones. (I know you can picture this in your head!) And, while this looked obviously inappropriate she also never got around to mentioning anything about the keynote speaker.

With growing frustration, chairs around the room started to shift, people started to moan, and people began to give hand signals to hurry up and get off the stage. Yet, despite all the warning signs, she just kept going. Then, it happened. She got heckled by the audience! "Get off the stage for crying out loud, let the speaker speak!" said one. "That's enough!" said the other. And, this was not just any audience! This was a prominent well-to-do money making business audience.

Not only did she never even get to the point but, but she failed completely in her duty to introduce and honour the keynote speaker. After realizing her professional blunder (due to the loud heckling from the audience) she politely said "well it looks like I've run out of time". Though she tried to regain her composure, she sheepishly began reading the guest speaker's credentials off a page in a monotone voice like she was reading names from a phonebook.

I can honestly tell you that it was truly painful to be in that audience and watch such a complete and utter self-destruction! The whole room was not only uncomfortable but some audience members were clearly angry! This is just one example of the many potential public speaking mishaps that I witness on a regular basis.

Other common public speaking mistakes include...

When the speaker fails to build trust with his/her audience

When the speaker tries gimmicks or jokes that interfere with their message

When the speaker fails to effectively communicate their message and/or product/service benefits

When a speaker puts the audience to sleep

When a speaker manages to exclude their entire audience by focusing all of their attention on one member (or target members) of the audience

Have you ever heard ineffective speeches or pitches by politicians or by business leaders and colleagues? Did it garner your trust or lose your trust? Have you ever heard sorry speeches at weddings that made you say "yikes"? Have you ever attended a seminar where you were filled with so many statistics that you were bored after ten minutes? Have you ever witnessed an amazing seminar and wished you could do the same?

You may be interested to know that public speaking is an art that can be taught. In fact, everyone can learn the basic template for a winning and successful presentation. Learning public speaking can be a fun and stimulating experience that will empower you in any boardroom or public presentation. It can give you the confidence you need to achieve the higher success that you want! Simply by learning the secrets of powerful speakers you can make affect great change in both your professional and personal life! Avoid the professional pitfalls and public blunders altogether. Public speaking training is not only a great investment in your professional career; it's a great life investment that will reward you again and again.

Can Public Speaking Hypnosis Help You?

2008-11-23T05:31:00.001-08:00

It seems that at some point almost everyone experiences some anxiety about public speaking. Hypnosis can be a useful tool to help many people overcome this fear of speaking in front of an audience, and become relaxed, confident speakers.

Although there are several ways to treat a fear of public speaking, hypnosis is often one of the most successful. Hypnosis deals with the "programming" in your subconscious mind, and can affect changes on a deeper level than we are counsciously aware of. Why is this important?

Your subconscious is trying to protect you by maintaining everything in your life the way it currently is -- both the good and the bad! Your subconscious doesn't really concern itself with concepts like happiness or unhappiness. It deals with basic survival, and the way it sees it, you have survived up to now the way you are, so you shouldn't change anything and put yourself at risk.

You can see a therapist that uses hypnosis to overcome your anxiety, or you can use a public speaking hypnosis recording. Self hypnosis, like using a pre-recorded mp3 session, can in some cases be just as useful as seeing a therapist, and you can do it in the privacy of your own home. Public speaking hypnosis mp3s are available to use over and over until you feel that you have completely overcome your fear. They are also usually a cheaper option than seeing a hypnotherapist.

As with most other types of treatment, hypnosis works best when you are able to repeat it over and over. Owning a self hypnosis session allows you to use it every day, until you have successfully "brainwashed" yourself to the point where you have overcome your mental obstacles and re-programmed your mind.

Undergoing hypnosis, whether with a therapist or using a recording, usually begins by getting really relaxed and calm, and entering a pre-hypnotic state. Once hypnotized, you are usually still both awake and alert, but your mind is more receptive to suggestions. The hypnotherapist will guide you by giving you suggestions that will help your subconscious mind to change its habitual responses and replace them with new, more beneficial ones.

You subconscious does not understand negatives, so a suggestion should not be "I am not afraid of speaking in public," but rather something like "I feel calm and relaxed when I speak in public," or "I enjoy speaking in public."

Using hypnosis to treat phobias has been proven effective in many research studies, and this includes treating fear of flying, fear of spiders, social phobias as well as fear of public speaking.

The concept of ypnosis has been around for a long time, but there are many misconceptions about this technique. For one, a lot of people think you are unconscious and not aware of what goes on around you when you are hypnotized. This is not correct; under hypnosis, you might feel like you are in an altered state of mind, but you are still aware of what is going on and nothing can be done to you that you do not allow.

You can not be hypnotized against your will, and you are still in control when you are under hypnosis. If you feel insecure about what the public speaking hypnosis tape will "do to you", listen through it without focusing on following the suggestions, or read the script before you start your self hypnosis session, just for your own peace of mind.

Working Voices - Presentation Skills, Communication Skills, Interpersonal Skills

2008-11-09T04:13:00.001-08:00

Working Voices - Presentation skills, Communication skills, Interpersonal skills Working Voices teaches interpersonal communication skills. Everything from Presentation Skills to Leadership Development, Voice Coaching, Writing Skills, Image Management, Cultural Diversity and Memory Techniques. You’ll learn more about our courses in a moment.

Our USP is:

• our content (relevant, up-to-date, PRACTICAL)

• our style (high energy, high interactivity, FUN)

• our people (expert, experienced, EFFECTIVE).

Established in 1998, Working Voices delivers courses in the UK and abroad and engages a hand-picked team of trainers to meet the needs of a client list that includes some of the world’s most prestigious companies. You’ll learn more about our people in a moment too.

About our courses

If you’ve been on a course that was dull or uninformative; if delegates left it ill-equipped to put the fundamentals into practice from that moment forward – the “takeaways” as we call them – then the course was NOT one of ours. Groups, seminars, one-to-ones: here’s what we teach.

Presentation Skills

Presenting ourselves, our company, our case. It’s what we’re all doing all of the time. This comprehensive suite of courses is about doing these things properly and confidently – and getting the results we want.

• Presenting

• Pitching Skills

• Body Language

• Anger Management

• Assertiveness Training

• Essential Communication Skills

Leadership Development

Working Voices’ leadership development programmes focus on your managers – the people who hold the key to making your business successful and profitable. Ours is a suite of UNIQUE and proven one-to-one coaching techniques and team-building exercises.

• One-to-one Leadership Programmes

• The Chi * of Success

• Leadership Unplugged

• Coach the Coach

( * The circulating life force whose existence and properties are the basis of much of Chinese philosophy and medicine.)

Voice Coaching

Your voice says masses about you, face-to-face, on the phone or by voicemail. It might say good humour, energy, gravitas. It might say dull, uninterested, impatient. And, of course, it might say nothing at all if it is unclear or unintelligible. These courses deal with all the pitfalls.

• The Perfect Voicemail

• Speaking English Clearly for Business

• Making The Most Of Your Voice

Writing Skills

Today’s business writers write for the screen – and good screen-writing requires a new set of skills. We show you how to make your writing “screen-friendly”: easy to scan, easy to grasp, easy to action, easy to archive.

• Effective Business Writing

• Effective Report Writing

• Writing Effective Emails

Image Management

Look the best you can, every day. The clothes you wear, the way you wear them, the colours you choose. Savvy women realise that it’s part of their workplace weaponry. Savvy men realise that good grooming is a perfectly legitimate “male thing”. We’ll show how looking good is easy.

• Visual Impact in the Workplace

• Exclusive Personal Image Day

• Image Management

Cultural Diversity

No two people or businesses are the same. Our cultural diversity courses highlight how diversity within and outside your organisation can create opportunity and not division, when it is handled and managed properly.

• Communicating Across Cultures

• Cultural Awareness

• Embracing Diversity

Memory Techniques

The better your memory, the greater your ability to think on your feet and the greater your confidence. Think about it – then think about your performance at meetings or when you make presentations. We teach brain-training strategies that will give you the memory you want.

• Total Recall

• Power-up Your Memory

• Memories Are Made Of This

About our people

Nick Smallman is founder and Managing Director of Working Voices. He combined a classical acting and business career until asked to set up the company specifically to meet the interpersonal communication needs of the UK and overseas banking communities. Since then the client base has widened year-on-year and now includes the legal, media, fashion, distribution and pharmaceutical sectors. Nick trains in a variety of disciplines both in the UK and abroad (Europe, USA, China and Russia, principally) and is a sought-after motivational speaker.

Our trainers are expert and experienced; motivators as well as educators; high scorer’s against client feedback.

John Mabberley: A city Banker for 30 years, John’s enthusiastic and motivational style has given him a great track record for team and confidence building. John specialises in delivering all of our Presentation Skills courses except Anger Management and Assertiveness Training.

JC Mac: Chevron, Citigroup, EMI Music, BP/Amoco, Orange, Universal and the British Museum are just a handful of the major corporates which have benefited from JC Mac’s holistic approach to Leadership Training. He handles all our Leadership Development courses and is in demand both in the UK and abroad.

Paul Hill: A graduate of English from Cambridge University, Paul is a trained actor and highly qualified voice coach. His Voice Coaching courses are a favourite with our global-company clients but he’s also part of the Presentation Skills team, delivering all courses except Anger Management and Assertiveness Training.

Kate McGoldrick: Kate’s background in radio and print journalism and the theatre -and an infectiously enthusiastic style – mean her Writing Skills courses are in constant demand. She also delivers the Presentation Skills suite including Anger Management and Assertiveness Training.

Sara Hollamby: Sara's combined careers in the fashion industry and presenting on TV have spanned 27 years and made her a seasoned and popular group and auditorium speaker. She takes all our Image Management courses, which, just like the rest of our portfolio, are available “one-to-one” as well.

Jo Rice: Author of over 50 books including “How to do Business in Japan”, multi-lingual Jo lived and worked in the Far East for many years and is now a leading expert in all – ALL – aspects of cultural diversity training. He delivers our Diversity Training courses – as much abroad as in the UK.

Paul Mabberley: Paul acquired his grasp of the art of presenting via, at one end of the spectrum, the UK’s creative design sector, and, at the other, university guest lectureships. He coaches our Presentation Skills courses (except Anger Management and Assertiveness Training), as well as Memory Techniques.

Genevieve Grant: Born in the USA, Genevieve came to London for post-graduate studies, and stayed. Her background has a wide span – political activist to charity organiser – and she brings the technique she’s gained to our Presentation Skills courses (excluding Anger Management and Assertiveness Training).

About our clients

Here are just a few of them. Channel 4; HSBC Group; Barclays Group; Deutsche Bank; Lovells, Credit Suisse; BAFTA; Swarovski; Morgan Stanley. With or without the 50 others, we believe these names speak volumes about the quality of our client base.

Please visit www.workingvoices.com for more information on our company, our courses, our people and our clients. Then contact Tina at info@workingvoices.com.

The Importance Of Life Skills Coaching

2008-11-03T07:21:00.001-08:00

Giving yourself to other people and offering your expertise and/or skills to help change their life in any positive way is a profound way to effect the world we live in. Whether you are a coach, a teacher, a counselor, or if you just have wealth of knowledge to offer people you can help shape the our society.

Not only that, it can be very healthy for you as well because let's face it, it feels good to genuinely help others and know that you are making a difference in their life.

Due to the stress and pressure of most people's lives there is much need for people with skills in the area of life coaching. However, if you want to become a life coach you need to be in a good place yourself, as there is nothing more annoying than people who don't practice what they preach.

To Become a Great Life Skills Coach You Must Train First

If a person wishes to become adept at life skills coaching, it may be necessary to first take life skills training, which is the study of behavior in humans. People are generally known to have their own behavior patterns that can lead, in some instances, to negative turns or choices in their lives. People are all very different and you need to be aware of these differences and how they do or don't affect people's behavior.

This is where life skills coaching comes into play. Your job is to:

* Monitor your client's behaviors

* Help them make the right choices

* Recognizing the wrong choices

* Gain back control of their life

* Set realistic goals for them

Specializing Your Life Coaching Skills

You also want to specialize your life coaching expertise. Most people who are good at counseling are usually great at coaching in one area and only good at others. Stick to what you are great at because in order to make a profound difference in someone's life you need to be a great life coach, not just a good one.

For example if you are trained and knowledgeable in business coaching your specialized skills in this area will help others succeed in the entrepreneurial or corporate world, but don't go trying to help a mentally ill person who is contemplating suicide. Leave that up to those who specialize in mental health.

One thing that is actually a little ironic about this is that once you start to specialize in one area you will find that you are also improving that part of your life as well. By teaching others you will learn even more about yourself. Let's face it no one is perfect and even life coaches can still improve on their life skills.

One thing that is for certain is that to be a good life skills coach you need to have conviction. This means that you have the power to motivate others by your words.

Motivation is the only way you can lead someone to change. You Can't change someone for them, you can only motivate them to change. I learned that a long time ago and it was exhausting trying to help other people who don't really want to help themselves.

There is one thing to watch out for, however if you are currently a life coach, or pursuing the profession. Don't get too emotionally attached to your clients. Yes you want to help them, but you don't want to hurt yourself by trying too hard or investing so much of yourself into them if they continue to make poor choices.

The Secrets to Generate Income Online by Teaching Your Own Expertise

2008-11-03T07:20:00.003-08:00

What can you do about the hyper inflation going on? There is more and more data shows that inflation condition is going worse. Do you know the hidden message? It means your purchase ability is going down! You can not have the same quality life as today in the future, if you don't have methods to earn more money!

What can I do? You may ask. The answer is simple; you need to have second income sources, such as what this article tells you!

For instructors, students and everyone who wants to have a main or second income source, ForteMall is the perfect place to introduce the online learning and training market. Start-up investment is minimal and there is virtually no risk involved. Everyone with their own unique skills and know-how can make money through ForteMall platform easily. It is better than the business activities that sell goods on normal auction sites, you don't have to prepare money and time to buy the inventory, all you sell is your knowledge, your brain. You can create the courses once, and sell forever! Without extra cost to do that.

If you want, you can start by opening a course to teach your native language to foreigner. Online learning market is also wide open to experimentation. You don't need to be an expert when you begin. What could be easier or better?

So pursue your passion and discover your own special niche, in any category you want. It's your choice. Let Your Knowledge Makes Money for You!

This article provides everything you need to build a profitable online learning/training business, the business of your dreams. This article shares the extensive knowledge, experience and expertise in this article, reducing your learning curve to almost a flat line.

The Income Generating Paradise!

Online teaching is the simplest way on this planet for the "ordinary guy" to make money. There are several reasons for that :

1. No inventory, just your brain - It is not necessary to prepare money to buy inventory of goods; all you need is your brain. You can make real money by your experience, knowledge, and expertise by offering courses on ForteMall. The course can be reused unlimited, created once, sell forever. There is no inventory cost, no COGS.

2.No Shipping handling - The course materials can be delivered directly to the students through ForteMall in real-time. Instructors and students can even interact with each other on ForteMall. ForteMall includes a rich learning management system; you can use these tools to interact with students in synchronous and asynchronous way. There is no shipping handling effort and no time limitation.

3.There are no start-up costs -- Can you name any other business that has no start up costs? For example, if you want to build up adult English education school, how much cost you need to pay? Employees, rent, government regulations, incredible paperwork, the constant threat of lawsuits, grinding responsibility and twelve hour days... phew! With an online teaching business, you have none of those expenses. All you have to do is register a ForteMall account for free and you are now the proud owner of an online teaching business. What a contrast!

4.There is no financial risk - ForteMall adapts freemium business model, which offers most services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features; it means you can start your business without any financial risk.

5.You can start-up in 5 minutes -- Just fill out a registration form on ForteMall and register a payment account (for example, PayPal, this is the place where you get paid) or prepare your offline payment account, you can begin selling your expertise.

If you like this article, you can find more information from the source : http://www.fortemall.com/...-to-Generate-Income-Online-by-Teaching-Your-Own-Expertise&auction_id=159

The Teaching Cover Letter: Out Of The Classroom And Into Reality

2008-11-03T07:20:00.001-08:00

A teacher has a great job to do: he or she must be mentor and supervisor in the classroom, and counselor outside of it. Such a job requires people skills, passion, enthusiasm, and a lot of patience. Such a job is actually in great demand: there are thousands of schools all over the world with so many students, but with very few good teachers.

If you are looking for a job as a teacher, then you might be preparing your documents right now. Your resume will probably outline all your educational and career achievements, and will show all the awards you received, all the work you had peer-reviewed or published, and all the workshops or seminars you participated in and attended. Your transcript will show all the wonderful grades you got. Your cover letter will act as the complement to both these documents, and showcase your personality.

But wait, you think: can the cover letter be so important? How can one sheet of paper hold so much power? Do prospective employers actually read the cover letter?

Believe it or not, a cover letter is actually the most important part of your job application. Your teaching cover letter can show your passion for teaching, as well as your enthusiasm in dealing with different people. Your resume and transcript can only go so far in providing your prospective employers a glimpse of your personality.

So what goes into the great teaching cover letter? Your cover letter has to grab your reader's attention, and make the attention stay there. There are so many ways by which you can do this - but there are also so many ways by which you can get it wrong. First, you need to use direct, terse language that does not alienate your letter's reader. Stay away from deep English words, long paragraphs, or run-on sentences. Check your grammar: if you are careful about how you write your letters, you can be careful with how you handle your job, and your prospective employers can sense this.

Don't make your letter boring: use language that is conversational and exciting, but be polite and tactful. You want your teaching cover letter to be bold, and to show your passion. You want to be a personality in the classroom, not a cardboard cutout reading lessons to a bunch of sleepy students. Your letter should reflect this desire, so make every word count.

Your teaching cover letter should also be relevant to the school's mission and goals. State your experience as a teacher, and make sure that you align all these experiences with how you want your career to progress, and how this career progression is in line with the school's own aims. Show that you can offer the school something, and that you can make its students better than ever. You have only a few sentences at your disposal, however, so avoid gushing about what you can do and what you want to do.

Lastly, use an active, exciting voice in your letter. State that you are looking forward to being interviewed, and that you anticipate a positive response from your prospective employers. Provide contact information, and make sure that all the information is valid. Don't make any promises that you can't keep: wait for the phone call or email from the school, and respond immediately. If you don't hear from your prospective employers, make a follow-up call. Show persistence and dedication at this stage of the job application, and chances are, you might be hired as a teacher.

Your teaching cover letter should show what kind of a teacher you will be. You have to show personality and be exciting, but you have to be mature and professional at the same time. If you can show your passion and make your teaching cover letter matter, then your teaching career may soon blossom into the kind of career that you really want.

Presentation Design - The Right Graph

2008-11-02T01:15:00.003-07:00

Microsoft does not know a heckuva lot about presentation design, but one thing they do correctly in PowerPoint is to make available different types of graph so that you can match the graph type to the point you're trying to make with your data. There are twelve different graph types available with PowerPoint 2000, but few of those styles work well in the low-resolution world of computer-based presentations. With few exceptions, here is how you want to use the following types:

• Pie Graphs for Share
• Bar Graphs for Comparative Amounts
• Line Graphs for Trends, Time

Pie Graphs

Pie graphs (commonly misnomered pie charts) are one of the more overused, and hence misused, types of graphs, primarily because they are so easy to make, and easy to make look good. They are misused when chosen to show amounts rather than share. The beauty of pie graphs is that they show so clearly what they are supposed to show, i.e., how much of the whole each element contributes. In most cases the actual amounts - in this case percentages - are actually secondary to the area of the slices in terms of telling the story.

When you look at a pie graph with five or fewer slices, your brain can quickly ascertain which groups dominate. We often see pie graphs with more than 5 elements, but they then become more difficult to comprehend in short order. In most cases, consider whether your story needs to include details about all the players, or whether a group of insignificant contributors can be grouped as "others".

If you want to show how much volume each element contributes, rather than what fraction, you'll want to use a bar graph.

Bar Graphs

To show relative sizes of different segments as well as the actual amounts, you'll want to use a bar graph. Bar graphs are designed to show volumes against a y-axis that clearly delineates the units of measure. By having a series of bars next to each other, we can see how each element compares with the others as well as what absolute volume the element represents.

There are variations on the bar graph, such as a stacked bar, where different elements are stacked on top of each other to form a series, or a 100% bar graph, where all the bars are the same height but are split to show what percent of the whole the volume reflects. In a presentation environment, esoteric options are best to be avoided.

Line Graphs

Line graphs have the unique advantage of speaking to inherent right-brain prejudices about information. That is, when typically conditioned western minds see a graph with no labeling, they automatically assign "volume" to the y-axis, with "up" meaning "more", and a time-line to the x-axis, with the left side meaning most recent. Just as we read from left-to-right, rightward motion subconsciously means positive motion.
You would want to use a line graph, then, to show a progression in amount from one point in time to another. The elevation of the line at any one point represents the quantity of the tracked data at that moment. Audiences, wanting to be the first-to-know, will automatically make assumptions about the types of values x-axes and y-axes represent. Don't disappoint them.

Data labels

Graphs are a great way of making complex information easily understood. But graphs work best only when you properly integrate words, numbers and images. Whenever possible, label the elements of your graph directly on the elements themselves, rather than relying on the ever-popular clarity killer, the legend. Legends require too much effort on the part of listeners to discern exactly what each data point is. Just be certain your labels don't clutter up the otherwise clear "picture" a good graph can make.

If you have a number of graphs in your presentation, you'll want to avoid dumping a data overload on your audience by over-labeling each one. In fact, in many cases you can tell your story forcibly enough by only the size of your data elements, without burdening their minds with numbers that they're likely to forget by the end of the presentation. However, it's also not a bad idea to have what we call "reference slides" that do contain all the data attached to the end of your main slide deck. To really impress your crowd, install hyperlinks to these slides from the ones in your main show, and when some vice-president makes a stink about wanting to know the whole story, zap to your total-info slide and give him what he wants. He probably won't ask again.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is? Using Math to Make your Presentations Sizzle

2008-11-02T01:15:00.001-07:00

The agenda states an end time of 2:00 pm, and yet it is 2:10 and the guy is still droning on with only 52 more slides to go in his presentation!

You are told that you will have 30 minutes to present and now you show up and find out your time has been cut to 20 minutes because the person before you went over time.

As the band, Chicago sings, “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care about time?” Start your next meeting with this song and then share this mathematical formula to help the speakers for the next time.

The average person speaks 150-200 words per minute. During a presentation we should slow that pace down to about 125 words per minute to allow for better enunciation, interaction and clarity. If you are asked to speak for 15 minutes, do the math…15 times 125 equals 1,875 words…period! Type up what you want to say and then do a word count (go to TOOLS menu and select WORD COUNT). This will let you know how long you will need to cover this information.

When people ask me how many slides they should have in a 15 minute presentation, I say, “It depends.” How many words are you going to say on each slide? Sit down at your laptop and type out verbatim what you think you will say with each slide. Of course you are not going to bring this typed transcript up and read it, but it will tell you where you need to cut or add more detail.

If you have 30 minutes of material prepared, ask yourself what you would cut if they took you down to 20 minutes. What would you cut if you had only 15 minutes? This is a great exercise in editing and really drilling down to your point.

A little planning ahead of time will really make a big difference when it comes time to present, and a little math ahead of time will make a huge difference to your audience. And when you hear Chicago singing, “Does anybody really care about time?” You can answer “I DO!” (ps. This article would take someone approximately 3 minutes to speak!)

The Five Minute Business Presentation Ideas

2008-11-02T01:14:00.001-07:00

Most of us feel that making a five minute Powerpoint presentation is like putting an elephant into a small refrigerator. It is just a metaphoric example to express how difficult to cut-sized your product launching report as your product has several important features. It is extremely a challenge to make your audiences listen to your product promotion within given short period of time.

Why it has to be done within five minutes?

No other reasons. If your product is good, it can only take few minutes to mention. It is like TV and radio advertisements - the delivery of the main messages counts, not the total amount of the presentation slides.

How to make a slide that can promote your product fast and simple?

For instance, let's say we want to promote various of associated computer mouse products.

In the beginning, you need to have high resolution pictures of the computer mouse products. Avoid using low resolution pictures as your audiences will not able to see your products clearly even though it is within viewing distance.

Creatively align these pictures on your slides. You do not have to enlarge these pictures on one slide. It is possible for you to include several pictures on your slides. For better view, include three to four pictures on your slide. After adding pictures into your slide, start using simple effects on these pictures. In this case, choose "Grow/Shrink" for "Emphasis" custom animation. This particular animation will enlarge each of the picture within customizable sizes. In this example, once you click on the slide, the picture will enlarge by 400%. Once the picture is enlarged, you can take this opportunity to elaborate your product during the actual presentation.

Since you have added all pictures with custom animations, you need to make it disappear after you need to proceed with the other picture. Basically you need to create "Now-You-See-It-Now-You-Don't" picture appearance for your audiences. Take note that no text-contents are included in this slide. Within the custom animation task panel, earlier you will see the "Grow/Shrink" effect that you have added earlier. Add "Exit" effects on the selected pictures and choose "Box" exiting effect.

Finally, manually arrange the sequences of selected effects earlier ("Grow/Shrink" and "Box") in order to create an "Now-You-See-It-Now-You-Don't" picture appearance. Now, you are ready to fascinate your audiences with your new product launching.

Make a Charming PowerPoint Presentation - 2 Powerful Secrets Revealed

2008-10-20T01:26:00.000-07:00

Many people try hard to make a great presentation, but sometimes they make it wrong. Be unique, that is the only thing to make your PowerPoint presentation stunning the audience, not only unique in your presentation material, but also the way you present in front of audience.

1. Unique Presentation Content

Pick a colorful and unique PowerPoint templates to keep your audience eyes open at your powerpoint slide, this is very important thing but most people do not aware about it. After that, compose your presentation material into a friendly and clear looks, the purpose is to keep your presentation simple but interesting for your audience. Complex slide looks will make audience bored and feel headache. Do not forget to include some related interesting images or pictures on your powerpoint slide to convey your presentation point more effectively

2.The Way You Present

Do not starring at the floor or at the sky but keep starring at your audience. Eye contact will give them special experience, but do not only stare at one audience, stare from the left side to the right side of your audience slowly, remember, slowly, and then keep staring at the center side of your audience, repeat it again after five minutes. Control your speech, do not speak too fast or too slow, speak with best fit volume which is clear to your audience, so they can understand what is the message you want to deliver. Tone, also hold important part, do not speak with flat tone or monotone, because it will make your audience feel sleepy. Make a difference intonation between important part, introduction part and ending part.
Unique is different, but it still follow the rules.

We do not encourage you to make some thing out from the border to become unique, just keep on the track and give a touch to make it different and attract your audiences.

Sayid Aksa is the Author of Powerpoint Presentations Resources.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sayid_Aksa

Executive Presentation Training - The Seven Deadly PowerPoint Sins

2008-10-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

Business executives everywhere know the power of a PowerPoint® presentation. PowerPoint® is the predominate presentation tool used in the world today. It can also be the most assured way to lose an audience's attention and kill your message.

Why? Because PowerPoint® is the most misused presentation tool used in business today.

When used correctly, PowerPoint® can enrich a presentation and make the message more memorable. The problem is most people don't use this terrific invention even remotely effectively.

With proper executive presentation training, you can avoid the common mishaps many executives make when using PowerPoint®.

Below are the top seven mistakes people make when using PowerPoint®. If you are guilty of any of these, make changes to your presentations immediately. Your reputation as a speaker will improve and your message will be more memorable.

1) Too much content on a slide. Use only a few key words or phrases on each slide. Think 4 X 4: No more than four words per line, no more than 4 lines per slide.

2) All words, no images. Use fewer words and more images. Use an interesting picture or a key word on a slide to launch your talk about each topic or message you want to deliver.

3) Too many slides. Do not use a slide for every point you want to make. The main focus should be on you, not the slides.

4) Wild and crazy animations. Swooshing sounds and flying words are distracting to the audience and weaken your presentation.

5) Using the slide presentation as the handout. Sorry, but that is the lazy way out. Prepare separate handouts with as much detail as you want. Use simple PowerPoint® slides to enhance your oral message, not serve as the leave-behind.

6) Reading from the slides. Don't turn your back to your audience and read the slides. Instead, maintain eye contact with your audience while delivering your key points in a conversational tone.

7) The Star Wars "laser saber" show. Leave the laser pointer home. The piercing red beam probably won't really take an aircraft down, but it will definitely kill your audience's attention.

Carmie McCook, the president of Carmie McCook & Associates, is a nationally recognized expert on effective communication skills, specializing in media interview, public speaking, presentation, crisis communications, and executive media training

For more information, visit http://www.carmie.com

Picture Perfect PowerPoint - Presentations That Sell

2008-10-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

When it comes to putting together the PowerPoint slides for sales presentations, presenters usually sit down and type in everything they want to say. When it's all there in black and white, they pass their slides on to a colleague or team member who will also share the stage. That person adds a few slides--making sure to include all the text, all the graphs, all the charts, and all the bullet points they don't want to forget.

But that's not all. Marketing is alerted and they send you a few more essential slides. Then your manager reminds you to please include the one you used last summer at the meeting that everyone loved. Before you know it, you've got a presentation that grew like Topsy--without consistency, without flair, and without a coherent message.

PowerPoint slides are a visual aid intended to support your oral delivery--not to replace it. Good slides are good pictures. They are a visual representation of what you are saying, attractive to look at and easy to understand just by glancing at them. They are an enhancement, a simplification or an addition. They don't require interpretation, explanation or reading.

A presentation is a performance and you are the star. Your slides should help you tell your story--not tell your story for you. That means you must cull your slides; eliminate all but the most essential. Any slide that is just a bunch of text must go. Any slide you've included "just in case" must be discarded. Delete any slide that needs a long explanation, a slow read or a magnifying glass. If you must include some text, eliminate full sentences and use key words only. Use bullets sparingly and make sure they are grammatically parallel.

The fact is, you are the presentation; your slides are not. If everything you want to say is on your slides, you lose your animation, your spontaneity and your ability to connect with your audience. What's worse, your audience loses you--so you lose the sale.

Of course, it's important to pick an appealing background and here are some suggestions to help you get it right.

Professional tips for high-impact slides:

choose a dark color--never use a white background
look for a background image that adds dimension and depth to the screen
use pictures that are a metaphor for your message
photoshop an appropriate image and use it as background for the whole slide--not as a little insert
use the biggest font you can--72 points is best, 36 points is minimum
don't use cheesy clipart images
aim for consistency--pictures that help you tell a coherent story
get professional help or buy professional images when professionalism is important to you.

Too many people spoil a potentially good presentation with too many words. Good slides are simply an artistic visual that captures your words in a compelling image. Just picture it.

Author, consultant, trainer and coach, Fern Lebo is also president of FrontRunner Communications, adjunct faculty at Auburn University and a frequent keynote speaker. A respected communications expert, Lebo focuses on presentation and writing for sales. For nearly 20 years, she has helped Fortune 500 companies create and deploy star sales performers. Whether it's reinventing a sales presentation, discovering how to write strategically, or improving presentation delivery, Lebo's clients learn the secrets that set them apart; they master the professional techniques they need to achieve outstanding success. Find out more at http://FRcommunications.com