The real McCain the real McCoy
by Graham Davies

It was the best of speeches and it was the worst of speeches. Worst in the sense that he made most of the mistakes that is was possible for a public speaker to make; best in the sense that it was a true reflection of the determined character of the man.

Ironically, the shear brilliance of Sarah Palin’s speech gave McCain licence to play safe. This is just as well, because ‘safe’ is the only item on his public speaking menu. He also suffers from an incurable disability: an almost total inability to use his facial muscles. His face looks like it has been nipped, tucked and bolted back on again with an extra layer applied by Madame Tussauds. The only time he breaks through the botox barrier is when he smiles. Unfortunately the smile is so stiff and forced that you are not sure whether it is showing amusement or constipation.

The speech was certainly noticeable for what he did not say. He never said the two words that could be fatal to his campaign: George Bush. He has become the President whose name they dare not speak.

It was also nearly 45 minutes into the speech before McCain mentioned God, which must be an all time record for a Republican Politician.

The opening was a torrent of bland pleasantries. We only saw a hint of warmth under the waxwork when he responded in his clunky but spontaneous way to some heckling. The core message, that America needs change but change with a safe pair of hands, was a good one. Mind you, it was rather disturbing when he said that they also needed to get back to basics. Essentially this meant that he was not only stealing ideas from Obama but also John Major as well.

However, the determined solid fighter did shine through when he again told his story about being a prisoner in Vietnam. It may well be a familiar story but when you see it told by him you can get a measure of his genuine character. He comes across as a hard but sensitive man who can fight when he has to but can also compromise when he has to.

The last ten lines of the speech was a sequence of highly polished one liners that were clearly provided for him by a team of writers. They worked so effectively so that he had to keep talking though an ever increasing storm of applause and cheers. The smile he came out with at the end said to me “I’ve survived five years of Vietnamese torture and I am even more pleased to have survived fifty five minutes of public speaking.”

McCain will never enjoy public speaking and he will never be more than adequate performer but he is the type of guy who can grit his teeth and get through something because he just has to. This might be the type of guy that would make rather a good President.

PowerPoint Palsy
By Graham Davies

PowerPoint encourages exhaustive detail that in turn causes audiences to twitch with exhaustion. There is always just one more bullet that you can add on to that slide…and always a few more slides that you can create.

The feeling is seductive: “I’ve created loads of slides, with loads of words on them, so I must have prepared properly. In fact, that is all I have to do. The exact words that I need to say will just come to me when I am actually speaking.”

Some presenters are actually proud of their reputation for length and detail. They wear the mark of the serial PowerPoint criminal as a badge of honour. They feel it is the fault of the audience if they can’t quite find the message inside the maze of slides. This type of presenter is quite happy to facilitate the tyranny of PowerPoint: a one party state where Big Brother Is Boring You.

This is submission to software. The presenter is surrendering his central role to the words on screen. He is abdicating from his role as a leader.

A presentation only works where human-to-human contact is maximised. Slideware can get in the way.

I once saw a presentation delivered by a high ranking IBM executive. Some technical foul-up occurred just before he started, so that he was forced to present Commando (i.e. without slides). Mysteriously, his laptop started working again about a minute before he finished. Showing remarkable mental agility, he managed to immediately access and display his summary slide. This acted as a superb overview, bringing together and focusing everything that he had said in the previous 15 minutes.

He then experienced an audio-visual epiphany. He paused, looked at his laptop, looked at the audience, looked at the screen, back at the audience, paused again and said, in a dramatic whisper:

“Maybe that’s the only slide I needed in the first place.”

I managed to restrain the urge to leap up from my seat and shout, “Hallelujah! Amen, brother!”

In the bar that night, his was the only presentation that people were talking about. The previous eight presenters had used over 150 slides and about 700 bullet points between them. I asked some of the people in the bar which of the day’s slides they could remember. And they could only remember the IBM guy’s 3-point summary slide.

This is the best way to use bullet-point slides: just one notch above total disappearance.

Dump the Queen's English
By Graham Davies

"To boldly go where no man has gone before" is the most split infinitive of them all, but it has also made the opening sequence of Star Trek probably the most quoted in TV history. Hamlet's unforgettable slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are part of an equally incorrect mixed metaphor.
You don't need good grammar to communicate well. The key to success is to make your message memorable.

"Gillette: the best a man can get". No verb, no sentence and no doubt about the message. Even grammatically correct phrases can be misleading. Charles Kennedy recently referred to the liberal democrats as “The Third Party". I assume the other two are Fire and Theft.
You can't abandon grammar entirely. But use it as a platform, not a straight jacket. The best political speeches contain phrasing that is hard to forget (mind you, John F Kennedy's "Ich bien ein Berliner" actually means "I am Jam Doughnut").

Don't worry about grammar, worry about grabbing them. Colourful phrasing stimulates the memory. You want to be remembered for your message. Your message is what you would say if you only had 10 seconds in which to say it. It is the core, the essence of your speech, what you want the audience to remember above all else.

You should spend more time formulating the message than on any other part of your preparation. If you don't have a clear message, you don't have a clear presentation.

In a business speech, the message must clearly encapsulate what your audience needs to know. You don't need Churchillian poetry, but you need clear, concise, plain English. "John Bull Building creates unique homes for families who value space, light and quality".

In politics these days, memorable phrases are commonplace. Even from William Hague: "The powers of this country are being taken away slice by slice with our own Prime Minister wielding the knife."

If you can mix your metaphors so effectively, then your business presentations will become a whole new kettle of ball games.

Audience Analysis
By Graham Davies

Most people start preparing for a presentation by thinking, "What shall I say?" What they should be thinking is "Who am I saying it to?"
Any communication is only as good as your understanding of the people you are trying to communicate with.

Even through you may have presented your product dozens of times before, the presentation must be tailored to cater for the specific needs of this audience. Everyone likes to hear something which feels bespoke rather than off-the-shelf.

Find out as much as you can about the audience. These are the basic questions you must ask:

· Who are they? (Salesmen, accountants, managers, children, convicts)
· What is the age range and the nationality split?
· How big is the audience?
· Do they expect to have an extended Q & A session?
· Will they be having any other presentations from other people before or after you?
· How long do they expect your presentation to be?
· What do they already know about your subject?
· What do they need to know about your subject?
· What are the main business concerns that this group has?
· Will there be any particularly important decision-makers present?
· Is there a way of ensuring the attendance of a crucial decision-maker?

It should be very easy to find out the answers to these questions. Simply ask the organiser of the event or your contact at the client company. They should be impressed by your desire for in-depth knowledge.

Don’t just rely on your primary contact. Speak to members of your audience several days before hand if you possibly can. Ask them what they would like to get out of your presentation: most people are flattered to be asked.
You may also know someone who has addressed this group in the past. He may be able to tell you about any disturbing audience quirks e.g. a hatred of visual aids or humour.

When the audience is very small (4 people or less) you should be able to find out the names of each person and talk to all of them in advance (or their PA). It is very unlikely that a potential audience member will say to you, "No – I don’t wish to give you any guidance on what I need to get from your presentation."

Only after asking the right questions is it possible to prepare the right presentation for your audience. It is in their interest to help you.

American Business Presenters
By Graham Davies

Americans are exposed to high pressure presentations at an early age: their so called “show and tell” presentations at school. I think that toughens them up.

In general, Americans are better presenters. They are:

1. Well-prepared
2. Confident
3. Concise

Here, 1 leads to 2 which leads to 3.

No presentation has ever failed because of too much preparation. If you know you haven’t prepared well enough, you are right to feel less than confident. And, if you are confident you have selected the right material, you will be appropriately brief.

America is the home of the sound bite and the 10 second commercial. Americans know that they cannot keep the attention pf a business audience for long.

Some European presenters say, with a sneer, “American presenters are too slick, too polished.”

Frankly, this is just jealousy. European audiences have sat through too much PowerPoint Prozac. They would love to see some American Polish.

Immediate Apology
By Graham Davies

The Bellagio Casino is classy in everything that is does including the way its staff communicates. I got back to my room at 11:30 one night to discover that the air conditioning was not working and the room was uncomfortably warm. I immediately phoned Housekeeping to ask them to sort it out. They told me that they would inform Maintenance. Twenty minutes later, I was still sitting in stifling heat so I phoned Housekeeping again and asked to be put directly through to Maintenance. The lady at the other end of the phone said, “It’s not our policy to put guests through to the Maintenance department.”

This annoyed me, so I asked to speak to the Duty Manager. Once I described the situation, he immediately said, “I really am very sorry for the inconvenience you have been caused. I realise that you must be sitting in a very warm room and all you want to do is get some sleep. Would you please accept with my compliments a $100 credit on your room account? I will get someone to your room immediately.”

Four minutes later, a very chirpy fellow with a big box of tools appeared at my door and it took him about 90 seconds to solve the problem.

The Duty Manager had done everything right:

· He immediately acknowledged that the service I had received was not good enough.
· He graciously apologised for this.
· He took immediate action.

As far as I was concerned, he did not need to offer me the monetary compensation, but I was delighted by the gesture anyway.

When you are at the receiving end of someone presenting a genuine grievance, immediate acknowledgement and sympathy are vital…unless you do not wish to admit that you or your company are at fault in any way. Lack of acknowledgement will inevitably mean that the conversation will become a confrontation.

I suggest that the communication style of the Bellagio is something that most companies should aspire to.

Are You Choosing the Best Speaker?
By Graham Davies

Good Guest Speakers are expensive – mainly because there are so few of them. Despite your many years of business experience, a speaker may be a commodity you have never even thought of purchasing before. But you must ask yourself: “How can I be sure he is worth the money I am paying?”

The only way to ensure that you get a positive answer to this question is to book a truly professional speaker.

There are hundreds of people who speak for money. Very few are genuinely professional. A professional speaker is someone who takes the business and craft of speaking very seriously. It is not someone who has stumbled into speaking for money because he is famous for something else.

Here are the questions you need to ask yourself:

“Am I attracted to this speaker because I have seen him on TV?”
Speaking and TV presenting are very different activities involving fundamentally different skills. A speaker does not have the safety net of an auto-cue, an ear-piece and on-site script writers. There are no re-takes or commercial breaks. He is on his own. What may have seemed amusing through a camera lens may have been artificially boosted by canned laughter. Remember that the “spontaneous” wit of “Have I Got News For You?” and “ Never Mind The Buzzcocks” has all been carefully rehearsed and then read off a tele-prompt. A speaker must be able to perform without the magical illusions of the TV studio.

“Am I attracted to this speaker because he is a famous businessman?”
Chief Executives earn their money by being good at running companies. They are not necessarily good speakers. Some are very poor indeed. (even if they have a knighthood). Many famous Captains of Industry are only capable of presenting a sequence of corporate clichés and tired anecdotes. Business credentials are not the same as speaking credentials.

“Am I attracted to this speaker because he is a famous sportsman?”
Professional sportsmen are remarkably focused. They impose a brutally Spartan regime on themselves, sometimes over a 20 year period. Without this focused commitment, they have no chance of success. But it is the same focus that often means that communication is a real challenge for them. Kicking a football or sailing a boat do not involve speaking to an audience. Several sporting speakers have successfully made the transition to paid speaking. Are you sure that their speaking skills are as focused as their sporting skills?

“Does he have a track record?”
Make sure that he has both a long term and a short term track record. By that I mean a sequence of recent engagements as well as engagements in past years. Ideally, you should have a speaker who has some years of experience combined with current popularity. Your chosen speaker should be able to list 20 blue-chip clients that he has spoken for within the last 12 months. Make certain that these were speaking engagements and not just personal appearances or making a corporate video.

“Does he have a good collection of testimonial letters?”
Actually, I mean a brilliant collection of testimonial letters. Clients are always very happy – and relieved – when a guest speaker performs well. They are usually very happy to express that gratitude in writing. Your speaker should have dozens of these letters that you can look at. Again, make sure that they refer to speaking engagements. Ask whether you can phone 3 recent clients for a frank chat. If the speaker is defensive about this, your alarm bells should start to ring. A truly professional speaker will be proud to give you access to previous ecstatic clients.

“Is there a video available?”
Yet again, I do mean a speaking video. An extract from his appearance on “Wogan” is no evidence that the speaker can captivate your salesforce. A video may be the whole of one speech or an edited showreel of the speaker in several live corporate presenting situations. An edited showreel is preferable because it shows:
1. Adaptability;
2. A track record;
3. That the speaker is doing well enough to afford several thousand pounds to create the showreel.

I do not recommend asking the speaker if you can go to another corporate event to see him in action. It is always awkward for the speaker to arrange this with the other client. Also, when he is performing, he should only have the needs of that client in his mind. He should not be thinking of “auditioning” to satisfy you and your company’s needs. A professional video is an excellent illustration of a speaker’s professionalism.

Booking a great speaker does not have to be a process which relies mainly on luck. Whether your potential choice is relatively unknown, famous, or infamous, you must check that he has:

An impressive client list;
Brilliant testimonials;
Outstanding video footage.

Only then will you have the evidence to decide in his favour. Otherwise, you will be guilty of leaving too much to chance.