By Corrie Miller In our last blog post we talked about why your presentation might fail to meet its objective (connect with your audience, convert the sale). One of the biggies: Bad slidedecks. If your visuals don’t add anything to your talk, you’re wasting your time and your audience is tuning out. Let’s address this and show you some examples of what [...]

The great thing about long weekends? They give you a little more time to play without the guilt. From the previous blog post “How to Build a Presentation – Step 1″ I created a Haiku Deck. It’s a little different than my style—busier and the colour palette is mixed. What do you think? Here it is in SlideShare (update some [...]

Don’t put pen to paper. Don’t put a Sharpie™ to whiteboard. And absolutely do not open up PowerPoint. To build a presentation that will have your audience savouring your nuggets of wisdom like Tootsie Rolls Pops™ begin with brainstorming. The fun stuff. Especially for those of you, who, like me, are lovers of sticky notes, coloured felt pens, and a [...]

Would you have thought that it is listening?   It is.   The pivotal point when public speakers move from good to great is when they listen to their audience and understand what they (the audience) need to hear. This sounds counter intuitive doesn’t it? Our natural tendency is to share what we know (often cramming in far too much). [...]

  Have you read a book that you wished that you had written yourself? My colleague Jeremy Donovan has done just that. Jeremy is the author of “How to Deliver a TED Talk, Secrets of the World’s Most Inspiring Presentations”. His book although unassuming in size is an insightful perspective from a well-respected speaker and speaker coach. As I read [...]

Do you want to be an excellent public speaker? Then you must be a good listener as well as a powerful and articulate speaker. Not only before and after your presentation but during as well. You must be a human antenna attuned to your audience at every stage of your presentation from content development, while presenting, and post speaking. Julian [...]

Presentations should only be used when you have something important to communicate. Information or ideas that solve a problem or answer a question needs to be a presentation developers mandate. So, ask yourself, is it really necessary to gather a group together for a presentation? If 40 people attend a one hour presentation it equals one person working a 40 [...]

At the end of a session with a client I ask, “What did you learn today that had the most impact?” One common response is “Staying on Message”. It is easy to become enchanted with your knowledge and to share all you know. Or go off on tangents because the content is remotely related. Or even worse interject a story [...]

My go to public speaking and presentation resource treasure trove (aka learn from the experts – no need to rinse and repeat the mistake cycle): Duarte Design: Nancy Duarte and her team generously share their deep and broad presentation knowledge. Nancy is the author of slide:ology and resonate – two go-to-guides for building professional presentations. The Duarte team showcase the [...]

Often executives receive a script from their Communication Department with messaging that is convoluted and hard for their audience to listen to. The point of gaining media exposure is to engage and persuade your audience, not to alienate them with PC talk or messaging that those in the ranks of Mensa can’t tease apart. Mr. Media Training aka Brad Philips [...]