I was at a BNI chapter last Friday, listening to the member that was delivering his 10-minute presentation. I say I was listening – that’s actually completely untrue: 3-4 minutes in, I had developed something of a trance-like state, and I was thinking about what I was doing that weekend (a visit to the in-laws, since you ask).
I then checked myself – I must concentrate on the presentation! Looking round the room however, I noticed that about 25 other people (out of 30 in the room) were also staring into the middle distance in various trance-like states. This got me thinking: why were just a small minority of the room paying attention? As BNI members, they will have spent time building relationships with the speaker – he had a 5-year member badge on – so he clearly should have had the respect of his fellow members.
I started to analyse his presentation. He was dressed professionally. He had plenty of experience in his field. He had plenty of credibility as a businessperson. His body language indicated that he was a comfortable presenter. The way he modulated his voice suggested he’d had some presentation skills training. He had clearly prepared (he was using little note cards as a reminder of his various points). And yet he’d completely lost the room. Why?
Essentially, he was delivering his message in just an auditory style. This means that he was simply standing at the front of the room, talking at his audience. That was absolutely fine for the small number of people in the room who are auditory learners – they had no difficulty engaging in his message, because that’s the way they like to take in information.
However, for the rest of us as Visual/Kinaesthetic learners – his delivery wasn’t engaging us at all. Some form of visual stimulus – like using a flip chart, or perhaps physically demonstrating his service would have made a massive difference to how we took in the information he was giving us.
Have a think about the last presentation you made or saw – did you or the speaker make allowances for the learning styles of the audience? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section below…
Charlie Lawson – BNI National Director and Word of Mouth marketing expert, whose passion is to see BNI members succeed in their businesses.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article Charlie
Ten minutes only come round once or twice a year and we need to make the most from them. Often we spend so long on what we need to say that we create ourselves scripts almost to read and present from and forget that interaction really helps. Some of the best presentations I have seen have involved a good mix of information, visuals and audience interaction. Those are the ones I personally remember most and stick with me making them easier to refer to.
Thanks for sharing.
Absolutely – appreciate you commenting. Out of fairness, since this blog was on a poor 10 minutes, my next blog is going to be on a good 10 minutes – and surprise, surprise – the mix of information, visuals and audience interaction rate highly…
My interest is held much firmer with a power point presentation. Just wondering what the next picture will be keeps me focused. I am preparing my first 4 and 10 minute presentation and I intend to use this tool. I think a couple of giggles from the audience will help too
Thanks for commenting – sounds like you’re pre-dominantly a visual learner. Just remember to have a back up in case your technology fails you!
Good bit of advice Charlie.
Also worth thinking about DISC profile of the audience. In a mixed room worth varying speed and amount of detail. I tend to give a bit of detail at slowish pace and then summarise quickly with bullet points.
Include a couple of fun bits and ways people can help you and you have the entire DISC profile covered.
Hope this helps
Makes sense, thanks for commenting John. Personality profiles like DISC are certainly relevant here – I’m going to be doing much more research into how they interact with Learning Styles.
Great article Charlie. I love listening to great presentations where the BNI member helps me to find them more referrals by presenting in an interesting and engaging process which not only sings to my learning style of visual, auditory or kinesthetic but also to my language through DISC! By the way I am more visual and also a high I or Promoter in Referral Institute language.
The best presentation I saw recently was at BNI Warriors in Worcester. It was by a new member Simon Beaumont of The Flying Sound Company who operate Silent Disco’s for corporate and personal events. He put together a silent disco at 8am in the morning for the members so we had the lights we had the music – all being listened to via head phones that we could touch! He then had his powerpoint presentation which we then listened to him through the headphones. It helped me so much to understand his product and service, along with his target market so that I could talk with confidence on what he does to find him great referrals!
I wasn’t in the room so I might be way out of line here but I’ll guess that if 90%+ of the audience had tuned out, the problem with the presentation was more fundamental than delivery style. I do agree however that VAK / DISC style will have been an important factor.
I’ll stick my neck out further and guess as to the subject of the presentation (again, I wasn’t there and I may have this completely wrong) My guess is that the presenter was talking about himself, his company, his innovative range of products / services the key features and (perhaps) some of the benefits of those, his competitiveness, his great levels of customer service and his experience and reputation in his marketplace.
Now if I’ve guessed correctly, this kind of presentation is entirely typical of what I hear at networking meetings and indeed when I ride along with new clients at sales presentations with their prospects. If so, it’s no wonder most of the audience went to sleep with their eyes open. If that’s what happened, here’s why, in my view.
In today’s technological l world, we are bombarded with sales messages and they all the say the same thing. “We can save / make you money, we are the cheapest / best / both, we have been in business since 1953, we have great customer service, etc. etc” . As prospective buyers we have learnt to tune out these messages. We’ve had to otherwise no work would ever get done! Let me paraphrase the attitude of most prospects that I and most of my clients face on a daily basis, and I’m guessing (again) the attitude of most your fellow audience members Charlie. It’s “I don’t care about you, your company, your products, your experience etc. what I do care about is me, my company, my goals and objectives, and my problems and challenges” Now of course I’m being a little black and white for dramatic effect and of course, the real world is shades of grey (50 apparently!!) but what we have found over thousands of examples is that you can dramatically improve your chances of making an effective presentation if you change your focus from you and what you have to your clients and the problems you have addressed for them.
I’ll end this overly long response by providing some kind of context. I run the Manchester branch of an international salespeople and sales management development agency. Let’s assume you are a business owner, you are doing reasonably well but growth is not where you would like it to be and the forecast for this year is flat. It’s my turn to deliver a “10 minute pitch” and I spend that time telling you
“My company has been training salespeople for over 40 years, that we have over 220 training centres in 12 countries,( for the Visuals I have a nice “map of the world slide” with all our offices marked on – seen that slide before?). We have some really innovative training material around prospecting, selling, sales management negotiation and closing etc (over 1000 hours of it in fact – care for some details?) . We’ve worked with Dell, Microsoft, Oracle and HP, with Nationwide, Prudential and Guardian Insurance, and with thousands of small and medium sized business etc etc (how many times have you seen “The logo slide”?) .
How much of your interest do I have at this point? Do you really care about any of this stuff? I would guess not. Why would you? You’ve heard it all before countless times and you didn’t care then.
Now, instead of that suppose I were to say something like…..
“Most of our clients engage us because they are concerned for the long term viability of their business because they (or their teams) are getting in front of fewer and fewer new qualified opportunities. They are often worried about the cashflow implications that arise from sales taking longer to close than ever before. Many of them are frustrated by the fact that whatever business is closed, is closed only after significant discounting. Those of our clients that run sales teams are typically sick and tired of hearing excuses from those teams about “the economy”, “the competition” or “the lack of leads from marketing”
Now let’s suppose you (as our fictional audience) share some of these concerns. How much of your attention would I get from this pitch? After all who am talking about ? – YOU! your concerns, your issues etc.
If you care more about yourself, your business and your problems than you do about anyone else. – So does your audience ! So reframe your product pitches in the language of your clients and their problems and keep ‘em awake !
Thanks for sharing. I hear this all the time. Yesterday, I sat down with someone who said they found most networking meetings boring. It’s about building enough interest during a presentation for people to be compelled to accept your offer of a mutually beneficial meeting thereafter.
Health and Safety can be the driest subject on the planet and as a trainer in the subject you learn to make it relevant and not what they expected! The same goes for other peoples’ presentations when you AREN’T in the market to purchase it – ie a 10 minute talk at silly o’clock in the morning or just after you have eaten lunch!
Charlie, I absolutely take your point that you need to provide material for different learning styles and different behavioural styles but you only have 10 minutes to make that big impact and be the person they remember most for the next week – think outside the box, dress up, sing a song, shock them! then give them an easy to read short list of what your target markets are and how people can get you in to the people you are looking for.
I believe a presentation is about me presenting my story to you from my “stage”.
You can read a book on a topic, or download some slides, or skim through some internet sites.
But when I present, I entertain and I include you – and that is what is getting my message through.
If I just “talk” then you may as well just download a podcast.
In some chapters your 10 minutes presentation comes around but once a year. To this end it still amazes me (nearly 9 year member) how many members choose not to prepare for this sales pitch – MADNESS!
When doing my verbal 10 min presentation last week I made sure I had a slide show, not of my business, but of things that make it all worth while for me to carry on. In my presentation I explained that everything i do is for my family (which was on the slide). Added to this whilst speaking I handed a pre prepared mailer out (this is my business – I stuff envelopes) which included many different tools (which explained) which will find me business.
By doing these three different types of presentation i feel that i connected well with all parts of the audience i.e my sales staff. To this end I totally agree with Charlie and wish members would take the approach of planning and thinking about how they want their message to be heard, instead of doing it the way they want to and saying what they think is important.
When presenting its important to cater for all kinds of learners, not just one type as that way you may only be talking to yourself (which I do a lot anyway)
I remember a 10 min presentation given about 7 years ago now – it was from a young lawyer, who was great at his job. He took the mickey out of the perceptions of lawyers by strutting in with 2 hot girls, one on either arm, to Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to love’. The girls turned out to be his colleagues on the same level as him, and they did part of his presentation too, so we were listening to different voices.
Can’t for the life of me remember the subject matter, suffice to say we used his firm then ourselves and recommended him to others. Plus it’s one of the few 10 mins I can recall…
Actually Charlie, you might know him…!