March 2010 Newsletter
To Win a Pitch, Show How Much You Care.
There’s a saying among sales people that goes, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
But when you’re one of two or three firms delivering a presentation for a big piece of business, I don’t think it’s quite right. I think it should read, “In a beauty contest, no one cares how much you know. They only want to know how much you care.”
In other words, when you’re on a short list competing for an opportunity, your expertise is irrelevant. Everything in that final presentation needs to be focused on one thing: showing that you care about the client.
Negative Moods Might Make You a Better Speaker.
It’s been one of those weeks. You’re feeling low. You’re burned out. You’re ready to give up and become a professional fisherman. And you’re certainly not looking forward to giving that presentation tomorrow to the board of directors.
At least you can take heart in knowing that you may be about to give the best presentation of your life.
That’s one surprising implication from a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
According to the study, our ability to think and communicate clearly actually increases when we’re in a negative mood. Apparently, negative moods make our minds more attuned, more attentive, and better able to communicate, says Prof. Joseph Forgas, of the University of New South Wales.
Is There a Code Against Smiling at Work? Sometimes It Seems that Way and It’s Too Bad.
“There are some people who raise their upper lip so high, or let the lower lip sag so much, that their teeth are almost entirely visible. This is entirely contrary to decorum, which forbids you to allow your teeth to be uncovered, since nature gave us lips to conceal them.”
Those words are from a 1703 book entitled “The Rules of Christian Decorum and Civility.” But to look at the serious faces in corporate boardrooms today, you’d think it was an excerpt from an employee handbook.
Never Start Your Presentation with an Apology!
“I’m not accustomed to speaking. So please bear with me since I'm a little nervous.”
Ugh!
Instead of starting your presentation with an apology, start with a simple relevant statement that goes to the heart of your message. For example, “Today, we’re going to focus on how to make everyone here extremely rich with very little effort.”
Now that’s a good beginning.
Apologies, on the other hand, make the audience nervous. Here’s what goes through the listeners’ minds when they hear an apology at the beginning of a presentation: “Oh no! This person is a terrible presenter and I have to sit here and listen to this.”
Why Do We Get Nervous When We Speak? Maybe Public Speaking is an Unnatural Act.
Public speaking is the number one fear of the average person. It’s a statistic that’s repeated constantly. But the question remains: “Why?”
There are plenty of psychologists that will give you a theory. But here’s another thought. Could it be that we fear public speaking because it is an unnatural act for the human species? Put another way, if you look at the evidence, humans were not designed to stand in front of large groups and speak. As a result, most of us feel uncomfortable doing it.