• Stand Still
• There is nothing worse than a speaker who dithers and wanders aimlessly about the stage
• Standing still makes you feel more grounded…

…which gives you more confidence…

…which helps you to earn more money

• Be Strong, and Calm, and Centered. It makes you audience feel more comfortable with you.

• When you are doing a presentation you must stick to time
• At a multi speaker event if you over run, the promoter will not be happy.
• The speakers after you won’t like it either
• You can perfect your presentation timing by practice, practice, practice
• If you haven’t started to close by about 60-70minutes your close rate will start to fall off rapidly.

• A really effective way to establish credibility with your audience is to use testimonials
• If you can get a testimonial from a known name in the industry then it will go a long way to establishing you as an expert in the mind of your audience.
• Written testimonials are OK – but video testimonials are better

In Part one of this 2 part series I looked at why to use success stories in your presentation and in this, the second part I’m expanding on how to use success stories in your presentation.  Remember, there’s nothing more influential than hearing how someone else has become successful to inspire people to action.

The “HOOK” to grab your audience from the get-go!

The best way to start a great success story is with an audience-grabbing opening question. It’s a fantastic way to engage your audience.  An obvious opening question would be,  “Does anyone here know Joe Bloggs?” 

Painting the Picture

The next step is the details of the story. When I met the person, here’s what their life was like before they joined my program.  Let the audience know the biggest challenge for that person that they needed to overcome.

Prove Success

Here is where you will explain how the tools were applied to create proven success. We are going to want to know those skills and lessons.  And then you show the results:

• Increased his closing ratio from his presentations three times
• Has more clients that he knows what to do with
• Is enjoying the financial rewards of that with his partner..

Good OR Good?!

Before Picture: My biggest challenge was!

After Picture: Ultimate benefit!

It’s key that you get into the details of the story by following these steps:

• Does anyone know …?
• Acknowledge that – “I wish you did…” or “Brilliant, you’ll love…”
• When I first met them – their biggest challenge was…
• What happened was…
• What that meant was…

Multi-Sensory Language

To take your success stories to another level, you can use multi-sensory language. This is what I call VAK:

• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinesthetic 

Provide a visual picture of what he/she looks like.  Include something he/she told you ‘She was telling me the other day..” which is the auditory part of the story. And kinesthetically, a real sense of power (you would act this one out a bit). So we get to know him/her even more.

You’ll love this TIP!

If you don’t have any success stories, go to your clients.

• Ask them what successes have they had.
• Find out what people have been up to or get on the phone to your clients.
• You can run “The World’s Greatest Testimonial Competition!”

Summary

By now, you know why and how to use success stories in your presentations!  So, if you still haven’t got any success stories, why don’t you make it your focus this week to gather as many as possible so that next time you give a presentation you can inspire  your audience to take the next step with you.

I have a real gem of a tip for you today. It’s about reconnecting with your passion. I get so many people asking me how they can find their passion I thought I’d give you this little nugget.

• Passion is that driving force – that oomph that enables you to just keep doing what it is that you do
• It enables you to connect with your audience because if you speak from your passion your audience will feel an emotional connection with you
• If you don’t have passion – you won’t inspire passion in your audience

Reconnecting with your passion

• Every week – for the next 12 weeks
• Take 2 hours per week and do something you loved as a child
• Just you – no family, no friends, no spouse, no children
• Just you and your inner child
• Connecting with your passion is not something you will figure out in your head – it is something you will feel with your heart

There’s nothing more powerful than using a success story in your presentation to prove what you say is true.  And there’s nothing more influential than hearing how someone else has become successful to inspire people to action.

Why You Need To Use A Success Story In Your Presentation

This is a bit of a no-brainer but I thought I would spell it out anyway.  Why do you need to use success stories in your presentation?  The key benefits of using success stories are:

• They hammer home your credibility.
• They convince your audience that you do what you say you do – that you can deliver; the bigger the results the better.
• They prove you have market trust in you – this makes your audience more receptive to putting their trust in you.
• It uses social proof perfectly – other people have risked their time and money investing in you.  It worked for them so it could work for you.
• By using someone else’s words to promote you, and not just you saying how good you are, it’s a compelling call to action.

What Makes A Good Success Story?

A good success story in a presentation should be brief and to the point. It should be a balance of enough detail and enough emotional impact and yet still be nice and clear.

The lesson in the telling of success stories of other people is take them back to the place where they were emotionally.  Paint out that journey from struggle to success. Share these stories with your audience as faithfully as you know them.  This is a really key point – be honest in your success stories because if you aren’t, this lack of honesty will come back and bite you.

The 5 Keys of How To Make A Good Success Story In A Presentation

• The “hook” to grab your audiences’ attention
• Painting the Picture
• Prove Success
• Using Multi Sensory Language
• A Success Story for when you don’t have a Success Story

A success story in a presentation is not about proving how good you are at what you do, although it certainly does that. It’s about opening up the emotional place and allowing people access to it. And then of course, you give them the tool that allowed you to make the shift. It’s this change that makes all the difference in the world.

In my next article, we’ll break this down and examine the 5 key components in more detail.  So in the meantime, if you don’t have any success stories why don’t you ask your clients and ask them what they’ve been up to.  Get on the phone to them and see what successes they’ve had.  You could even run the world’s greatest testimonial competition!

Good luck!

• You need a Niche an inch wide and a mile deep
• You must start with a small and specific group of people
• Once you become the King or Queen of that niche – Then you can expand
• If you try to go too wide at the start you won’t get anybody
• The smaller and more specific it is – the better you can be
• “The riches are in the niches“
• Your Niche will help you find your target audience and decide where to speak

How To Make An Impact

Public speaking is very much about improving our communication skills, for when we know how to communicate effectively (to one person or to an entire room full of people) we also know how to inform, inspire and persuade others.

Each and every time you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are.  People form opinions about us, based not only on our appearance but also on our communication skills. And while many people go to great lengths to look good, dress professionally and so on, very few people take any sort of action to improve their communication skills. And believe me, there is nothing more effective than standing on stage for improving your communication skills!

Many of the world’s most successful people are also highly developed communicators. They have taken the time and energy to develop and hone their communication skills. As a result, they know how to inform, persuade and inspire others.

Public speaking is a sure-fire way to improve your communication skills.

Do You Want To Be In High Demand?

Strong communicators are in high demand.  Next time you pick up the newspaper have a look at the careers section – regardless of whether you speak on stage or not. Virtually every job listing requests that applicants have good or excellent ‘communication skills’. Your success lies in your ability to communicate your message – regardless of which platform you speak from. If your message is unclear and you appear unconfident, this dramatically impacts on your end result.

But just like any other skill, public speaking is a skill which must be learned!

So, why don’t you make a point to practice your presentation and hone those communication skills even further?  You can never stop learning how to communicate more and more effectively – and this will serve you in almost every walk of life, be it professionally or personally.

This is the third and final part in a series of 3 Behind the Scenes tips on influence. In this tip I talk about the third step to influence – inviting your audience to take action. This content is taken directly from my Presentation Profits Intensive seminar.

• Once you have involved your audience and met them where they are at and you have…
• …inspired them by painting out a vision for them of their dreams. Your next step is to…
• Invite them to take action
• Come from a more permissive (not submissive) place
• Your product is the vehicle to take them from where they are to where they want to be
• You can always come back to these three steps:
  1. Involve
  2. Inspire
  3. Invite

In this video I discuss how we can use speaking as a great strategy for leveraging time.  Why say the same thing over and over to 100s of clients?  Why not get 100s of clients in a room and say it once?

For more great  public speaking tips and how to put together an effective presentation that ensures your audience take action, come to our 1-day training event.  7th and 8th of May in London.  Details here:

www.ShiftPresentationSecrets.com