Technology is having an extraordinary impact on the marketing world. And that is sometimes evident in unexpected ways.
Take presentations and other formal communications platforms. Today, most of us present our biggest, greatest ideas in the most difficult forums: logging into webinars and conference calls. Those venues are incredibly vexing, thanks to garbled connections and distracted participants. (We laugh every time we see this video about the joy of conference calling.)
So everybody’s riding the wave of improved economics and greater opportunity. They rely on their smartphones, email, ichat and social media to connect.
Whatever happened to the old school ways of human to human contact? Don’t you sometimes long for the Mad Men days, when you had to sell yourself in order to sell your gizmo?
Well, we do. We think solid verbal communication skills are a thing of the future, not the past. After all, there is nothing worse than being in a meeting and feeling completely uncomfortable for the person who is presenting. It takes a lot to fail epically while you present. But it can be done.
In our business, we’re frequently asked to commandeer a group of folks and convince them we know what we’re talking about. And while we don’t always “kill,” we do always take those performances seriously. Rusty about your stand up routine? Here’s a cheat sheet, based on our experience:
- Follow the directions. It worked in middle school, and it works in life. Be sure you know what’s expected and deliver that. Some people in the room are there to check boxes; give them what they want.
- Be comfortable in your skin, or be good at faking it. A presentation is a conversation. It’s a connection between humans.
- Practice, practice, practice. We’ve been in presentations where it seemed the power point was constructed on the ride over. Presenters have forgotten their colleague’s names, gone way off the rails, and spewed deeply personal information that made the audience uncomfortable. Better preparation could probably have solved all those problems.
- Avoid Power point abuse. Speak, don’t read. If you simply recite what’s on the slide, well, who needs you?
- Know your product or service. Really. You’d think this was a given. Think again. Potential customers ask the darnedest questions, and no doubt, you’ll need to be quick on your feet.
As Don Draper says, “smart is sexy.” We’d add that original thinking is charismatic. Humanity is endearing. And finding the right mix of all that makes you memorable (for all the right reasons).