bring the energy.
your audience feeds off of you. no matter how smart your content or how pretty your slides, if you don’t bring the energy your presentation is going to be a total snooze-fest.
get excited about your topic. then, make me feel as excited as you are.
i’ve come to observe that good ideas have a very short lifespan to work out.
you might have someone stay behind to ask questions after you give a presentation, have someone approach you after reading a whitepaper, have someone respond to an online posting, etc.. in all cases, though, it seems as though there’s a very short amount of time to actually do something with that attention.
if you wait too long, don’t follow up, or spend your time asking for permission you’re going to lose that person and your idea isn’t going to spread. don’t ask permission: JUST GO (and apologize later)
i recently finished up a very busy three week stretch of travel which included two industry conferences i was invited to present my wares at. both of those conferences followed a working group format with a lot of quick presentations about a lot of different topics in a very short amount of time. from working group to working group, albuquerque to monterey, one thing stayed constant: i had no idea what people were talking about.
what was worse than being stranded in denver’s airport after a redeye flight cancellation fiasco was being stranded in presentation after presentation filled with slides of information and no real message. for some reason, it seemed to me that people forgot a very key aspect of any presentation: a clear, understandable purpose.
there’s no doubt in my mind that those people who presented their work at these conferences are smart, talented, ambitious people. i was honestly surrounded by some brilliant people — leaders in their field with more certifications and degrees of higher learning than they have the wall space for. but knowing what you’re talking about and being able to pass that information on to others is an entirely separate matter.
it’s imperative that you reach your audience. why are they there? what’s in it for them? you have to convey what you’re talking about, where is it going, and why they should spend the next 30 minutes listening to you speak. you have to connect.
each of my presentations started off with a reason for listening ['this is going to solve these specific problems that our clients are having'], and each ended with a call to action ['this is just one example, and it's only the start. let's build on this together']. i was shocked to see just how few followed the same approach and just how many presentations i felt lost in.
we’re better than this, and there’s no shortage of resources available to help us improve.
even if you don’t give presentations in your day-to-day work, read these books or any of the hundreds of articles online devoted to making presentations better. at some point in time, the lessons you learn are going to be valuable; i promise you that.
bill mccreary image from nhl.com
some nights in hockey — especially if your team has a reputation — referees will blow the whistle a little more than usual. it just happens that other games are merely called tight with little room to interpret the rules. whatever the cause, you never want to have your players cutting ruts to the penalty box.
on the bench during those kinds of games, there’s a common saying that gets passed around among coaches and players: “don’t give them an excuse to put you in the box.” it’s a simple message. even if what would normally not be called an infraction earns you a 2 minute trip to the sin bin, as a player you have to be smarter than that and adapt. you can’t give the referees any excuse to call you for it. keep the sticks down, keep both hands on your stick, and watch the play along the boards.
business can be much the same with clients instead of referees. some might love everything you develop for them or the kinds of services you provide, but others may be insatiable still and find flaws with anything you bring to bear. if you know you’re dealing with the latter, follow the same simple rule: don’t give them an excuse.
don’t give your clients a reason to question the validity of your statements; be sure to practice each and every one of your presentations and always perform the proper amount of due diligence in defining answers to their questions.
don’t give your clients a reason to believe that your products are broken; test, retest, and test some more until you’re absolutely certain that your products or services are programmed properly, or mathematically sound, or have multiple research studies to support them.
don’t give your clients a reason to feel like they can go elsewhere and get the same service; go out of your way to prove your organization’s commitment to them by answering their phone calls promptly, replying to their emails the same day, and generally making them feel like you give a damn about them as customers.
if you’re dealing with a difficult client, don’t complain if they’re bitchy or a hard-ass or they’re calling bad penalties. just don’t give them an excuse to call one in the first place.
i’m going to be brutally honest in this post, and because of that i think you’ll feel either one of two ways at the end of this: (1) fired up and completely on board, or (2) totally offended. Continue reading
sometimes work is really difficult. you spend hours upon hours of time dedicated to solving yours and your client’s challenges. but — every now and then — those issues don’t seem to want to go away, no matter how hard you try.
it might be a complicated spreadsheet, or a really demanding client, or a piece of programming that the person before you built without any documentation. every time you feel like you’ve won, it comes back at you — like a final boss battle in a video game — taunting you, keeping you from getting to what you really want to accomplish.
but the thing about boss battles is that there’s always some kind of a trick.
next time that devil of a task comes back at you: survive when you need to, push back when you can, and look for the weak spots. find the critical piece of your spreadsheet (hint: it’s probably obvious), understand your client’s tendencies and tricks (hint: it takes more listening and less talking), and don’t be afraid to hit the restart button on that piece of programming code (hint: starting from scratch isn’t always a waste of time).
find the weakness, then attack. just remember to hit the ‘a’ button.
i have really been enamored with a certain blog — pardon me — bolg this summer for many reasons, namely the brand its creator has been able to forge using microsoft paint and 140 characters.  it really hit me a few weeks ago when fox saturday baseball did a mid-inning exposé on a shirt that an impetuous phillies fan bought from the zoo with roy online store and mailed to colorado rockies manager jim tracy’s office.  this national exposure followed after zwr himself already appeared on espn’s first take.  talk about local celebrity; in philadelphia circles, zwr isn’t just a celebrity — he’s a folk hero.
i wanted to do a quick and dirty case study on the “i want to go to the zoo with roy halladay” brand to see if we can figure out how all of this national exposure came to a simple bolg that someone created on blogger.com (it has since been moved to its own domain).
image by michael seljos, flickr artist
two years ago when i was laid off, a good friend of mine visited and gave me a book to read. that book was paulo coelho’s the alchemist. it’s a great tale about a shepherd who gives up the life he knows in search of a lost treasure.
at that time in my life, it was a story that i needed to hear. now, two years later, i find myself re-reading it to remember the book’s lessons, and hopefully to learn a few new ones along the way. while it’s easy to be wrapped up in the story of the main character and his journey, the secondary characters hold lessons just as important, like the lessons learned from the crystal merchant.
in the alchemist, santiago takes up a job with a merchant, cleaning the crystal in his shop. with his help, the merchant—who had run his shop in the same exact spot for 30 years—begins to earn more business. it’s when santiago begins to propose some changes to the shop to help increase business even more that we gain a better understanding of the merchant.
image by sarahkim, flickr artist
i wrote not too long ago about the keys to an effective presentation. Â it’s strange how sometimes you don’t listen to your own advice, though, john… seriously.
guilty as charged.
i found myself this week in a situation where i had three briefs to deliver to three different audiences all within the span of a few short hours. Â it’s hard to ‘get up’ for those kinds of meetings, have a short break in between, and then recapture that tough mental focus again. Â (oh, and then repeat that once more for the last brief of the day) Â i was feeling confident, however (i usually do), especially since i was closing it out with the same marketing brief i had given dozens upon dozens of times already. Â but i should have known better than to take things lightly.
image from mypartyshirt.com
with some recent events in my life, i’m reminded of the final lesson that mr. feeny taught me growing up. he said,
mr. feeny: “believe in yourselves. dream. try. do good.”
topanga: “don’t you mean ‘do well?’”
mr. feeny: “no, i mean do good.”
life never plays out the way you want it to—but the best that we can do is to do good, no matter what the situation. we might lose our jobs, our loved ones, our marriages, or we might just find ourselves in a town or place we no longer want to be in. despite what ills may befall us, doing the right thing is something that we should always try to do. there really is no excuse for not doing good. there are always ways that we can help people—you just have to believe in yourself, dream, and try.
grandmom clara, grandmom theresa, pop-pop frank, pop-pop anthony .. uncle cholly, aunt rosie, aunt lena, uncle domenic..
i’m trying to live as best as i can. i want, when people see or hear my name—the name you gave me—to say, “you know, that scardino is a good guy.” i certainly hope that i’m making you proud. even though i know you’re looking down on me, i wanted you to know that i’m doing good.
i love and miss you all.