How to Make Your Presentation Hit Harder.
Want to make a big splash with your audience? You need IMPACT! This article will give you some hints on how to do just that, using six strategies forming the word: Investing yourself, Mercilessly editing, Practice, Asking yourself what change you want to make, Capturing attention, and Theming your presentation.
Not long after Super Bowl XLII, where the New York Giants defeated the up-until-then undefeated New England Patriots, I stopped into a smoothie store. While my order was being made, I noticed that there was a sports show, and the lead commentator asked one of his panelists “What will be the legacy of the Patriots now that they’ve lost the Super Bowl?” The panelist replied, “Tom, I’m not going to mince words. The Pats could’ve left a big footprint in history. Now they’ll be just a footnote. They won’t be leaving a lasting impact on the game.”
Fellow Toastmasters and guests, this is not a speech about how critics are mean or wrong. This is not a speech about how great the Patriots really are. It’s not even a speech about how it’s okay to lose. It is a speech about leaving a lasting impact with your audience. And to help illustrate how to do that, we’ll be using impact as an acronym.
Let’s get started with the I in IMPACT, which stands for “Invest yourself”. Ever have a teacher that loved their subject and had a passion for making sure that their students didn’t just pass on through? I remember one — she was my middle-school science teacher. As part of the curriculum, we would do lots of actual experiments, but one memorable time, she came into class dressed in a full SCUBA suit. Needless to say, I still remember the event to this day, and even that she recommended using toothpaste as an anti-fog agent for diving masks (it works on shower mirrors too, by the way).
Investing yourself in a presentation has a two-fold meaning. First, it means that you need to have passion and care about your subject. As many other writers and speakers have noted, the difference between having this enthusiasm and not makes a huge difference in being able to impact your audience. Many of us have had to sit through a speech (or often, “Powerless Point”) where the speaker is only there to regurgitate information. Boring!
Second, investing yourself also means using your stories and experiences in your presentation. I’ve already put in two of these. Personal stories are great, because in all likelihood, your audience has never heard them, so they’re going to be fresh and new. They can often help humanize you and help you relate to the audience. The classic advice is “tell a story, make a point”.
Investing yourself in your presentation will pay dividends when it comes to getting your message across to the audience. What else will help you in this endeavor? It’s time to move on to the next letter, M. M stands for “Mercilessly Edit”.
So many times, I’ve heard speakers try to cover far too much material in a single speech, or they have points that don’t add up to a single line. They’ll have a dazzling opening, and perhaps two points that are good, then, suddenly, it’s violent tangent time. The only solution I’ve found to this dilemma is to be merciless about editing out content that doesn’t expressly add to the main thrust of the speech.
There are, of course, other problems that can be addressed through mercilessly editing your drafts. As has been said by others, “The best speeches are not written, but rewritten.” If you take nothing from this suggestion, try writing out your next presentation, then print it out. Give it a run through. Stop every paragraph, and make notes on what doesn’t seem to work and what does. Repeat for all of your paragraphs, then work on the second draft.
After editing, it’s time for practice. There’s not much to elaborate on here — we all know we need to do it, even if it’s a pain. I will reiterate Darren LaCroix’s maxim though: “Stage time, stage time, stage time.” Not only should you be rehearsing a speech, you should be rehearsing “that thing that just popped into your head five minutes ago”. There will be times when being able to speak off the cuff is needed — Q&A sessions, interviews, or just asked for your opinion on something are examples. If you’re a member of a Toastmasters club where speakers are in short supply, guess what? They have a need, and you have a supply.
How much practice is enough though? Jeffrey Gitomer suggests that there is such a thing as too much practice, the point where your presentation becomes done by rote and thus, loses its vibrance. He suggests that “owning” the speech, whether that takes a lot of practice or just a little, is more important. If you have a grasp of the points and can get those across, that’s the most important point.
One last note on practice: record yourself, and watch it later. Even at Toastmasters, where you’ll be evaluated on a prepared speech, you know you best, and watching and listening to yourself present can provide invaluable feedback.
Before I move to the next segment, I must confess that I arranged these tips according to the word, and not necessarily the order they’ll come in. The A in our IMPACT statement is “Ask yourself: What change do I want to produce in the audience?” Darren refers to this as “if your speech was a book, what would the back cover state?”
For me, teaching others something new and useful is usually highly involved in my Ask Yourself statement. Others enjoy entertaining in some fashion. Others enjoy persuading, or inspiring. Whichever works for you, set out to make that your Ask Yourself statement. It will provide solid direction in the process of crafting your speech.
C is for Capture attention. If you want to make a major impact, plan on capturing attention early, and often. As many speakers have noted, if you fail to capture the attention of the audience within the first 30 seconds, you’re going to spend much of the rest of your time trying to get them back.
How do you capture attention, anyway? You already have one strategy with Investing yourself from above – using stories. This is a subject all its own, but here are a few ideas:
- (Good) Audience participation exercises
- Surprising statistics
- Asking questions, rhetorical or not
- Props
- Quotes
- Calls to action
- Humor
There are several more ways; these are only presented as a few ideas. As a rule, you should have something that brings back and refocuses the attention on you in your opening, your conclusion, and for each of your points. One way to do that lies with the last letter of our IMPACT statement.
Finally, we get to the last letter of IMPACT. T is short for “Theme your presentation”. I remember a speech by a fellow Toastmaster who talked about the subject of trusting themselves by “using the Force”; a Star Wars theme. His opening and conclusion made use of this, and in my evaluation of this speech, I wanted to know why this wasn’t used in the body. (It was a fantastic speech otherwise.)
Writer and speaking coach Mark Wiskup in his book Presentation S.O.S. notes that themes don’t have to be so dramatic, and can take the form of a single “power phrase” to be used throughout the speech as a common thread. “I have a dream” is still remembered as one of the most powerful power phrases of all time. These phrases make it easy to remember a speech with just a few words.
You don’t need to be a Super Bowl winner to make an impact on your audience. With these six strategies for improving your audience connections, you can make an impact whether or not you’re a pro football player, or any other sport for that matter. There is always more to the subject of course, but hopefully this article has stimulated your thinking on the subject. Now go out there and win for your audience!
