The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Dr. Greg Story

When you see someone do a very good presentation, your faith in public speaking humanity is restored.  There are so many poor examples of people killing their personal and professional brands with poor public speaking skills, it is refreshing to see talks done well.  It is not that hard really, if you know what you are doing and if you rehearse and practice.  This is where the majority of lousy, boring and uninspiring speakers trip up.  They don’t rehearse or practice. Instead, they just unload on their poor unsuspecting audience.  Here is a pro hint.  Never practice on your audience!

The global CEO of a major pharma company jetted into town recently and spoke at a chamber of commerce event.  The presentation was well structured and flowed in a way that was easy to follow.  The slides were professional and clear.  He spoke fluently, wasn’t reading from any script and instead was talking about the key points up on screen.  When we got to Q&A, he repeated the question, so that everyone could hear it and then answered it.  He did that while addressing the entire audience, rather than just speaking to the inquirer.  When he did not have the information referred to in a question, he admitted it straight up, without trying to fudge it.  This is not an admission of weakness, rather it builds trust and credibility.

I doubt he did any rehearsal for that audience, because it was a stump speech he has given so many times he was entirely comfortable with the content.  Could he have done better?  Yes, he could have added more stories into the presentation.  A few vignettes from the exciting world of white lab coats, where they were developing new medicines to save humanity, would have been good.  He could have delivered it with a bit more passion.  It was professional, but it came across as a stump speech.  He was supremely comfortable delivering it and that is one issue we have to be alert to.  When we are too comfortable, we can sometimes slip ourselves into cruise control mode.  We should keep upping the ante each occasion, to try and see how much further we can push ourselves as presenters.

Another function I attended was an industry awards event and the main VIP guest made some remarks before announcing the winners.  Humour is very, very hard to get right.  For every professional comedian we see on television, there are thousands waiting tables and trying to break into the industry. When you see humour done well by a public speaker, you are impressed. 

You need to have material that is funny for a start.  Then you have to be able to deliver it so that people laugh.  This sounds easy, but as professional comedians know, the timing of the delivery is key.  So are the pauses and the weighting of certain key words.  It has to be delivered fluently, so no ums and ahs, no hesitations, no mangling of words.  Getting the facial expressions to match what is being said is also tricky.

Our humorous VIP was delivering some lines that he had used a number of times before, so he knew his material worked.  It is always good when big shots are self depreciating.  We can more easily identify with them, when they don’t come across as taking themselves too seriously.  “I am good and I know it”, doesn't work so well with the rest of us.  How do you become humorous as a speaker?

Where do we acquire our humorous material?

We steal it. Our speaker had probably heard those jokes somewhere else and just topped and tailed them for this event. Very cleverly, he made them sound personal, as if these incidents had really happened to him. This is important in order to build a connection with the punters in the audience. So when you attend an event and you hear someone make a good joke or tell a humorous story, don't just laugh and reach for another Chardonnay, quickly write it down and later start using it yourself.

The secret though is to practice that humorous telling on small audiences to tes

We don’t get the chance to do so many public presentations in business, so it becomes a hard skill set to build or maintain.  The internal presentations we give at work tend to be very mundane. Often we are just reporting on the numbers and why they aren’t where they are supposed to be or where we to date are with the project.   These are normally rather informal affairs and we are not in highly persuade mode when we give them.  We should be clear and concise, but we probably don’t really get out of first gear as a presenter.
Obviously, giving public talks is a lot more pressure than the internal weekly team meeting report.  We need to be operating at a much higher level and the complexity index is much, much higher.  This translates into pressure and often comes with a big dose of self-doubt.  This is called the imposter syndrome. Should I be the one talking on this subject?  What if they have questions I can’t answer?  What if they don’t like it or me?  What if I underperform as a presenter?   What if I white out and forget what I want to say?  The scenes of potential disasters are played out in our minds, as we talk ourselves into a panic.
How do we stop that negative self-talk and get a more positive view on our potential to do a really first class, impressive, professional job?  It is not a level playing field. We need to realize that the world of business presenters is full of people who are quite hopeless and boring, so the audience has been trained to expect very, very little.  We don’t have to be a super star, we just need to be competent and we will automatically stand out from the crowd of losers murdering their presentations out there everyday.
What does competent look like?  It means we are well prepared.  This doesn’t mean we have fifty slides in the slide deck ready to rumble.  It means we have thought about our talk in the context of who will be in the audience and what level of expert knowledge they have of the subject, so that we know at what level to pitch our talk. 
It means we have designed it by starting from the key punch line we will deliver in the initial close and then we have worked backwards to select the “chapters” that will bring home that point we have selected.  We have seized upon an opening that will grab the attention of our increasingly attention deficit audience They are all armed with their mobile phones, ready to escape from the speaker at any hint of unprofessionalism or potential boredom.
It means we will have rehearsed the talk at least three times, to make sure it flows well and fits the time slot we have been allocated.  We will make sure the slides are supporting us, not hogging all the attention and upstaging us.  They will be so clear that our audience can deduce the key point of each slide in two seconds, because of how we are presenting the information.  The slides provide us with the navigation of the speech, so we don’t have to worry about what comes next. We also have our talking points in front of us, if we need to refer to them as a backup, reducing our stress levels.
   It means we are not head down the whole time, reading from the printout or the laptop screen.  We are eyes up and looking at some of the members of our audience.  We are looking precisely at those who are either nodding approvingly or at least have a neutral expression on their face.  This builds our confidence on the way through the speech. We are avoiding anyone who looks obstreperous, negative, hostile or angry.  We do this to keep our mental equilibrium under control and positive throughout the talk.  We keep all of our doubts, fears, insecurities and worries to ourselves as a secret.  We definitely don’t show any of these to our audience.  We are fully committed to the idea that the “show must go on”, no matter what unexpected things may occur during our speaking time.
Those whom we have chosen to look at, are getting about six second

We can speak to a group. Then there is another level, where we try to totally captivate our audience.  What makes the difference?  The content could even be the same, but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner.  Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life.  We see this with music.  The same lyrics, but with a different arrangement and something magical happens. This new version becomes a smash hit.  Speeches are similar.  A boring rendition is given a delivery make over and suddenly has the audience sitting on the edge of their seats fully enthralled.  I am sure we would all vote for the enthralling version, so how to do we do that?
The quality of the argument we are going to present is important.  We definitely need to design two powerful closes, one for the end of the speech and an extra one for after the Q&A.  It sounds counterintuitive, but we should start from the close when designing the talk.  We work hard to clearly define what is the most compelling message we want to leave with our audience.  Only then do we start to work backwards, structuring the rest of the speech from that point. 
Once we know what will really resonate with the audience, we begin gathering evidence to back that assertion up.  We have to remember that broad statements are too easy to make.  This is the Era of Cynicism, “fake news”, so the listener will need a lot of convincing.
We now do a rough sketch of the key points and attach the supporting evidence.  In a thirty minute speech, there won’t be so much time, so we might get through three or four of these key points and that is it.  We must make sure that the evidence is super, super strong.  We need really compelling proof, in order to build solid credibility for our argument.
The next stage is vital, especially in this Age of Distraction.  We have to wrangle a dynamite blockbuster opening.  We have to compete with all the things running through the minds of our audience.  The things they were doing before they got to the venue and all the things they have to do after this speech.  The hand held device is a modern day siren call.  It so silkily diverts their attention away from us, as they check email and social media. 
We have to smash through all that obstruction.  We sweep all before us and clear a path so that the audience will actually hear our message.  The first words out of our mouth had better be super compelling. If not, we will lose the battle for people’s modern miniscule attention spans.  We need to carefully design what that will be, because it won’t happen by itself.
 We want our visuals on screen to be clear and instantly comprehendible within two seconds.  It used to be ten seconds, but now we are down to just two, so really take a cold hard look at what you are putting up on screen. If it is taking the viewer longer than two seconds, then the slides are too dense. 
Let’s keep the colours to an absolute maximum of three.  Photos are great with maybe just one word of text added or just kept as they are.  This intrigues our audience to learn more.  We can then talk to the point we want to make. If we use graphs, we should have only one per screen wherever possible.  If we are going to use video, it had better be short and really, really hot. The transition from slide deck to video, back to slide deck must be seamless, so none of that tech fail we often see on display.
Every five minutes we need to be switching the energy levels right up, to keep our audience going with us.  This is key because they flag.  Classical music has its lulls and crescendos and so should we.   Naturally, we have tonal variety right throughout the talk, but we need to be hitting some key messages very hard, around that five minute interval.  This should be synchronised with some powerful visuals on screen, to further drive home the point.  This is not a result of chance, good fortun

We have many images of negotiation thanks to the media.  It could be movie scenes of tough negotiators or reports on political negotiations with lunatic led rogue states.  Most of these representations however have very little relevance in the real world of business.  A lot of the work done on negotiations focuses on “tactics”.  This is completely understandable for any transactional based negotiations.  Those are usually one off deals, where there is no great likelihood of any on-going relationship continuing between buyer and seller. This is false flag. 
The aim of sales is not a sale.  The aim is repeat orders.  If you want to be permanently in 100% prospecting mode, then transactional selling is fine.  That gets tiring and is tough, as you have to spend all of your time hunting because you can’t farm.  Now there will be some cases with buyers, where that is how it rolls and there is not much you can do about it.  The majority of salespeople though are trying to strike up a lifetime relationship with the buyer, so that the orders keep coming rain, hail or shine.
The style of negotiations for this business play are completely different to the one-off, transactional occasion.  In this world “tactics” are only partially relevant.  Going one up on the buyer, getting the better of them, isn’t sustainable in a continuing relationship.  They remember what you did to them and they definitely don’t like it. They either dump you completely as the supplier or they even it up down the road.  They don’t forget and they don’t forgive.
Technique has a role, in the sense that there are certain best practices in negotiating, which we should observe.  The philosophical starting point though is key.  What are we trying to do here, what is our purpose?  Are we trying to build an on-going business relationship where we become the favoured supplier or are we after a one–off smash and grab deal?  If you highly evaluate the lifetime value of the customer and this is your main consideration, then you will have a lot of commitment to win-win outcomes.
The consideration of the communication style of the buyer is another important negotiating consideration.  How we communicate with the buyer will vary, that is, if we know what we are doing.  Clueless salespeople will have one default mode – the way they personally like to communicate and that is all they have in their tool box. 
Professionals understand that if the buyer is micro focused, we go with them on facts, detail, evidence, testimonials, proof etc.  If they are the opposite, then we talk big picture and don’t get bogged down in the smaller details.  We describe what future success looks like.  If they are conservative, self-contained and skeptical, we drop the energy level to match theirs.  We don’t force the pace, we spend time having a cup of tea to build the trust in the relationship.  We mirror what they like.  If the buyer is a “time is money” hard driving, take no prisoners type, then we don’t beat around the bush.  We get straight down to business.  In rapid fire, we lay out the three key reasons they should buy, we get their order and then get out of their office pronto.
With this analysis in mind, we prepare for the negotiation by analyzing the buyer’s perspective.  We use what we know about them and their situation to build up a picture of what they will need from the deal we are negotiating.  We match that with what we can provide and we amplify the value we bring to the equation.  We now set out our BATNA – our “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”.  This is our walk away position. 
We have analysed the potential of this client, by looking at their lifetime value as a buyer.  This can have a big impact on how we see the pricing.  When negotiating with a big multi-national buyer, I had to take a painful hit on my pricing.  I only agreed to this though, because the volume in the first year

Sales people are always under pressure to meet their targets.  In high pressure situations, this creates certain behaviours that are not in tune with the client’s best interests.  We know we should listen carefully to what the client wants, before we attempt to suggest any solution for the buyer’s needs.  We know that by asking well designed questions, we can possibly come up with an insight that triggers a “we hadn’t thought of that” or “we haven’t planned for that” reaction at best.  At worst, at least they know whether we have a solution for them or not.  Under pressure though, salespeople can temporarily become deaf toward the buyer.
Even assuming they are smart enough to ask questions in the first place, they may fall over when it comes to carefully listening to the buyer’s answers.   They can hear some buyer white noise in the background while they are thinking about their own interests.   They are self absorbed and are not plumbing the depths of what the client is trying to achieve.  In fact, they are ignoring the hints and nuances in the sales conversation.  Well then, what are they doing?  They are fixated on their own needs, their own target achievement, their own big bonus and their job security.
The client may have outlined what they had in mind at this stage, but that won’t scratch because the salesperson needs a bigger sale to make target.  They need to expand what the client wants, regardless of whether the client needs that solution or not.   Upselling and cross selling are legitimate aspects of sales, but the purpose has to be very clear.  It is not about making the salesperson more money.  It is serving the client in a deeper way.
The client may not have the full view of what is possible, because they will never know the seller’s lineup of solutions as well as the salesperson.  They will also not have had deep conversations with their competitors.  They won’t have been allowed behind the velvet curtain, to see what their competitors are doing and how they are doing it.  They will not have had a broad exposure to what other firms and industries are doing in terms of best practice.
This is the value of the salesperson, because they are constantly doing all of these things.  They are like butterflies, skipping from one sweetly fragranced flower to the next. They are collectors of stories, problems, breakthroughs, successes and can connect many, many dots together.  In this sense, they can see possibilities the client may not know exists or may not have thought of.  This is where the cross-sell and the up-sell add value, because the salesperson can expand the client’s world and help them to become more successful.  That is a long way from ramping up the number value of the sale, to make target.
 

It is rare to see a presentation completed well, be it inside the organization, to the client or to a larger audience.  The energy often quickly drops away, the voice just fades right out and there is no clear signal that this is the end.  The audience is unsure whether to applaud or if there is more coming.  Everyone is stuck in limbo wondering what to do next.  The narrative arc seems to go missing in action at the final stage and the subsequent silence becomes strained.  It sometimes reminds me of classical music performances, when I am not sure if this is the time to applaud or not.
First and last impressions are critical in business and in life, so why leave these to random chance?  We need to strategise how we will end, how we will ensure our key messages linger in the minds of the listeners and how we will have the audience firmly enthralled, as our permanent fan base. 
Endings are critical pieces of the presentation puzzle and usually that means two endings not just one.  These days, it is rare that we don’t go straight into some form of Q&A session, once the main body of the talk has been completed.  So we need an ending for the presentation just given and we need another ending after the Q&A.  Why the second one, why not just let it end with the final question? 
The pro never lets that happen.  Even the most knee quivering, voice choking, collar perspiration drenched, meltdown of a speaker is in 100% control while they have the floor. The audience usually let’s them speak without denunciation or persistent interruption.  Life changes though once we throw the floor open to take questions.  At that point speaker control is out the window and the street fight begins.  Now most Japanese audiences don’t go after the speaker, they are too reserved and polite.  Western audiences are less docile and big bosses ask difficult and potentially embarrassing questions.
When we get to the Q&A, the members of the audience are able to ask rude, indignant questions, challenging everything you hold to be true.  They can denounce you as a charlatan, scoundrel, dilettante and unabashed poseur.  Sometimes, they even launch forth into their own mini-speech, usually unrelated to whatever it was you were talking about.  Or they move the conversation off to a new place, which has nothing to do with your keynote content.  Suddenly your message is lost.
The original topic of your talk is now a distant memory.  That is why the pros ensure they bring it all back together with a final close to the proceedings.  Let the masses wander hither and thither with their questions, the pro never worries.  After the last question is done, the last word is now with the speaker, not some provocateur who happened to turn up to the event.  Surprisingly, many speakers don’t claim this right and allow the last question from the audience member to set the tone for the whole proceedings.  Don’t ever let that happen.
There are a number of ways of bringing the speech home.  In the first close, before the Q&A, we might harken back to something we said in our opening, to neatly tie the beginning and end together.  Or we might restate the key messages we wish to get across.  Another alternative is a summary of the key points to refresh everyone’s recollection of what we were saying.  We might end with a memorable story that will linger in the minds of the audience, that encapsulates all that we wanted to say.  Storytelling is such a powerful medium for increasing the memory of what has been said, you would expect more speakers would use it.
When we do this wrap-up, we should be picking out key words to emphasise, either by ramping our vocal power up or taking it down in strength to differentiate from the rest of what we are saying.  Speaking with the same vocal power throughout just equates the messages together. The messaging is not clear enough and makes it hard for the audience to buy what we are selling, Bland doe