Success Secrets and Stories
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Success Secrets and Stories
The Power of Clear and Compelling Business Presentations
Ever struggled to keep your audience engaged during a presentation? Discover the secrets to making your presentations not just informative, but also captivating and audience-focused. In this episode of Success Secrets and Stories, we unpack Jeff Joyner's strategies from his book "Say it Like it Matters, When it Matters," and show you how to transform your presentation skills. Greg's cautionary tale about a finance professional will demonstrate the pitfalls of failing to connect with your audience, and John will introduce you to the 'two and four' concept, ensuring your message is always tailored for maximum impact. Plus, get ready for some practical tips on capturing and maintaining your audience's attention.
We also shift gears to discuss effective communication strategies in business settings. Learn how giants like Hallmark keep their greeting card inventory relevant and profitable, and take a deep dive into Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle, a game-changer from McKinsey for organizing your presentations. Greg illustrates how this technique can deliver clear and compelling messages. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, this episode is brimming with actionable insights to elevate your presentation game and make a lasting impression.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Well, hello everyone and welcome to our podcast, success Secrets and Stories. I'm your host, john Winoloski, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Powell. Greg, hey everybody. Yeah, so today we wanted to discuss the power of giving a good presentation, regardless of the audience, and the skills and your approach in terms of communicating of the audience and the skills and your approach in terms of communicating. To communicate to a large group really takes some skill sets and in my preparing for this podcast, I had the opportunity to listen to Jeff Joyner and he wrote a book called Say it Like it Matters, when it Matters, and his subtitle is Communication with Power, effectiveness and Authenticity.
Speaker 2:It's a great audio book. I didn't get the book. I actually found it interesting that Jeff was recording the audio book himself recording the audio book himself and I'm working on an audio book and I'm not too sure I want to be the speaker, but Jeff did obviously a very good job in being a professional trainer and presenter and going through school to be in that kind of competition for presentations. He's very skilled in terms of being able to get an idea across and it came out very well in his audio book. I wanted to share some key concepts. But I want to encourage you to look at Jeff Joyner's book. It is a very good format to understand the mechanics of giving a presentation.
Speaker 2:And what does that mean? Well, presentation skills are not just telling facts, because facts are boring. Simply put, no one wants anyone that's giving a presentation to read the presentation. Good grief, that's like suicide sitting in front of a group and reading what they can read and there's nothing worse than putting up the Excel spreadsheet and saying I know you can't see this and it looks like an eye test. Jeff's comment was right on the point Don't put it up If they can't see it. Why are you putting it up for them to read it? Facts are good for a presentation, but facts should never be the presentation. And then a little bit about what that kind of means. It makes sense in the story that Greg and I were kicking around. Greg, why don't you tell them the story that you had about presentations?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, john. Thank you. This goes back a little while, but we had an individual in a company in our finance organization, aspiring to be much higher in our finance organization and really kind of got caught up in their own material. What I mean by that? They were given the details to a project that had financial implications and they were getting challenged regarding support for the conclusion, how they got to the end, how the numbers add up and, to put it simply, really the audience was asking what does this mean? You've given us a bunch of numbers here, and so this individual again, just thinking so much about getting to that next level, repeated the data, just said it again, maybe even said it loud, hoping that the audience would get it, assuming that the concepts and the actions that were listed out there were obvious. Well, clearly the data was not as clear for the rest of the audience and, when pressed, the audience explained that hey, we should be doing something different here. Let's take a look at these results before we present them again, and right now your presentation is essentially garbage.
Speaker 2:Very, very embarrassing situation that happened. The word garbage came up in the meeting that it just wasn't, wasn't. Yeah Well, there's nothing more than the editorial commentary with the word garbage to get your attention.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. And so this person really sharp, really sharp accounting finance professional, highly educated, confident in their presentation, could have used the skills of a CPA to talk about how the data is telling a story and this individual's experience. They could have used sales trends, talk about a bell curve or product life. The data could have been used to show the decline of product future sales. Again, all kinds of tricks and techniques could have been used to make that recommendation much more salient to the audience and much more of a successful presentation. Much more salient to the audience and much more of a successful presentation. They're looking for an increase in research and development budget. Next step would have been to, you know, get this thing approved and move forward, trying to get ahead of the competition. But identifying the R&D projects the competition is currently investing in would be helpful. So, again, missed opportunities because they didn't personalize the presentation. They just read it, thought it was numerically accurate and it just fell flat on the audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when we were talking about this, jeff Joyner's concept his next concept, I think, rang true for a lot of these presentations and it's kind of interesting how he described it. It's the two and four concept and if you think of the numerical numbers of the two and four, it's no, no, it's to help someone for someone. It's the English application. If you think about a presentation, it should be for the audience, not to the audience. Now you hear that all the time, but if the presentation is going to have an impact, it has to be written for the audience. They need to receive it to get their attention. What's in it? For me as a listener, what are you going to tell me that's unique or helpful? And one of the interesting applications of that concept was when I went for my MBA and most of the teachers at the end of the class would ask what's the take home value?
Speaker 2:What did you receive in this class today that had value, that you can use on a job and maybe help the company or your department? And it really did a very good job of pulling my attention to something that has some benefit for the people who are listening. And start from that point of view and if and if I can condense it, the shorter the better, because your hearing ability is good for a presentation for 5 to 15 minutes. It's probably 5 minutes if it's really poorly put together. 15 minutes if you have something of value, but it's not never-ending and giving an hour presentation is a challenge. Some tricks I've used is three 15-minute talks so that it has some point that you're trying to take it somewhere.
Speaker 2:Another example of value, I think is an interesting example from my MBA class that they talked about Hallmark cards. Now, what a Hallmark card means for a customer is something that, greg, you actually worked for Hallmark. So instead of giving an example of what Hallmark does, why don't you talk about really what they taught and how it was designed to impact the audience or, in your case, the customer buying a Hallmark card?
Speaker 1:Thanks, john. Yes, hallmark Cards was my first company opportunity employer when I got out of college and I was working in the production center making packaging cards and gift wrap and all that sort of thing as a supervisor and I worked my way over to sales and so when you think about greeting cards, this has been a few years but I think it still holds up today. Cards create a moment, they make you feel good. John and I have talked about handwritten cards for recognition and that. But greeting cards still are special and what a lot of people don't realize they're the highest per dollar value per square foot.
Speaker 1:In a grocery store, for instance, we used to say 50% gross markup. So if the card would cost you $5, as far as a retailer, they would sell it for $10. And clearly a lot of profit opportunity there. And there are also. There's so many opportunities. There's changing seasons, there's changing occasions, so so many ways to capitalize there. And now, of course, over the years, cars have adapted to language changes and local catchphrases too, just to make them more special. But Hallmark also when I was a sale guy, so I know this we would come in and give the store credit for some of the unsold inventory. We would do a kind of a reset. We called it. We'd do a restock, put in some new cards, buy back some of the old cards and keep that kind of momentum going for the store owner. Store management loved the profit potential and the reduced risk of seasonal waste and they had loyal customers because of it. So again for those customers, that end customer that bought the card, tremendous value for the merchandiser, for the retailer also, great value, john.
Speaker 2:And the part about a card is a perfect expression of communicating a concept quickly and having value. That two and four, I think, is a very example of a card that you want to spend money on, and it has to be a very well-written, not a generic. You don't want to say happy birthday and then just open up the card and sign your name at the end of it. You want some kind of message that's going to be received, and it reminded me now this is. This is about presentations and what Jeff Joyner kind of started our whole conversations when I was giving a presentation and I wanted to make sure I got through to new employees and I've had unfortunately or fortunately, I've had a number of different jobs, jobs and in that process I would have to introduce myself to a new staff and I wanted to make sure that the message was clear and therefore I always condensed my first meeting to make sure that it was hitting the point. I had two messages. One was we all make mistakes and we should learn from the process. The secret is don't make the mistake twice. The bottom line is that failure happens. Simply learn from it and move forward.
Speaker 2:I wanted to make sure that people understood it. I waited for questions, what that means. A typical question I would get is what if an electrical system would require shutting down the electrical source to the department and have to have an actual stoppage of work? Stop the work. Your safety is more important than our production. I have to ensure that you're safe and it rolled usually very well into my second point. My second point was everybody goes home the way that they came physically in for that work that day. Safety was my number one requirement. There is no acceptable risk to put yourself in harm's way. Safety was not negotiable.
Speaker 2:The clarity of those two messages made it easier for them to understand a little bit of who I am. Rather than waxing eloquent about my background or what the department's expectations were going to be as we move forward under my administration, I wanted them to hear two messages about how my values are trying to be translated to them and make it as clear as possible that I was there to help them. Now we give all different kinds of presentations and we want to make sure that we're getting through. Jeff Joyner talked about the two-in-four concept. I love the idea of making stories personalized. That's a little bit of what I like to do during the introduction to the staff. Greg, you have another example to help in a corporate approach in terms of communication that feeds off of the same concept. Yes, I do.
Speaker 1:John. So some years ago, but not so many years ago, I was working at an organization and we were looking for something, a more creative way to tell that story that John and I have been talking about, and we were introduced to a concept. It was from McKinsey Incorporation, that famous consultant. They had an individual that worked there many years ago by the name of Barbara Minto. Barbara's one of those folks that started off as a secretary at a railway company. She graduated from Harvard Business School in 1963. She was the first female MBA hired at McKinsey. She spent 10 years there until she started her own training hired at McKinsey, and she spent 10 years there until she started her own training business after McKinsey. And she's still active today and her business was around the concept of the mental pyramid principle.
Speaker 1:So think about it this way Instead of trying to maybe build up a story and build up to a crescendo and then hit them with, okay, here's the ask, here's the money, tell people up front what it is you're talking about. What is the concept, what's the main purpose here, what is the answer? And so imagine a pyramid and the very top of that pyramid, that first section is the answer. The next section of that pyramid is what I would call the supporting arguments for the answer that you came up with. And then the third piece, that very bottom layer on that pyramid, is the supporting data or facts for those arguments to get to your answer. So let me give you an example. My daughter would love this because she's into composting. So, if you can imagine yourself the concept, you should compost. That's it Flat out. It's the right thing to do. I'm just telling you compost is the way to go. So you would have maybe that next level, that next tier of what are the benefits to you for composting, like that kind of conclusion. And then on the other side you might say, or even two or three others, what's the benefits to the community to compost? So again, at the top, you've already said you should compost. Now you kind of come down to a conclusion what are the benefits for you personally, what are the benefits for the community? And then you go down one more layer, that bottom tier, that third layer, that talks about the supporting data for, for instance, why composting benefits you. For instance, the city will convert your organic waste into compost, you can use in your garden, or you'll be able to enter in a raffle for a gift card at a local gardening store.
Speaker 1:Then you look at another example. We talked about composting benefits for the community. Using compost in our gardens will reduce greenhouse gas emissions Wow, that's pretty powerful. Or also, composting will divert our organic waste from landfills. So instead of filling up the landfills, it'll actually be useful and helpful. So when you think about the mental principle, it really just says let's cut to the chase. Here's the money shot, as we used to say, here's what we're trying to recommend, here's what the answer is. And then you build up the supporting story behind it.
Speaker 2:And what I've seen presentations, executive presentations how many times have I seen them turn to the last page to see the answer? How much is it going to cost me for fill in the blank? And by starting with if you give us, you know, $50,000, we can give you a return on investment of $280,000 in less than five years. Conclusion peaks their interest. You have them for the rest of the presentation and I've seen it done both ways. This is a very good way to keep their attention. Said they listen to all the detail. Said I have some. I don't know if compost seems good to create the same effect. That might be harder, but the the principle is sometimes you do something that you build up to the answer. Like one of our earlier presentations, I talked about the SBAR report situation, background analysis and then recommendations. But it's meant to be done on one page. It's basically taking this format and everybody reads it from the bottom up what is it that you're recommending? But being an eight by 11 sheet of paper, you usually can get past that. But people want to know what's in it for me and if you can keep them in the conversation as you're trying to communicate and say okay, there's a value for me to listen. Now you have your audience. Don't waste that opportunity. And, as Greg showed in this example, the Minto principle is something that is taught and it's helping executives understand it.
Speaker 2:So let's review what we talked about today. We talked about communication from a formal presentation the two and the four. We talked about a simple meeting, a communication to your team to make sure that you're making a communication for them, and we talked about a corporate committee and that communication is necessary for the two and four. You can kind of give them that peak concept right at the beginning. So a lot of what we're trying to do on this podcast is share ideas that we think can help you as a leader. I hope these ideas have helped. So, if you like what you've heard, yeah.
Speaker 2:The music is my cue. Building your Leadership Toolbox is a book that's available on Amazon and Barnes Noble websites. You're obviously listening to our podcast, thank you. It's also available in other popular formats like Apple, google, spotify. The person I based my book on was the teachings of Dr Durst. His program and his MBR program is available on successgrowthacademycom and if you would like to contact us, our email address is.
Speaker 1:Mine is wando75.jw at gmailcom and Greg I can be reached at gpowell374 at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:And music is brought to you by my grandson, so we want to hear from you. Drop us a line, and this show has been modified because of your input and we appreciate it. Well, greg, thanks.
Speaker 1:Thanks, John, as always.
Speaker 2:Next time, next time, yeah.