June 2021

Jun 04

Lose the Agenda for Your Next Powerpoint Presentation

By aaron Coaching & Training, Uncategorized

Read on to learn how to help your audience retain the key points of your presentation or demo by losing the agenda.

Lose the Powerpoint Agenda

When delivering a large Powerpoint presentation, it can be difficult to stay on task. One way to avoid this is by keeping your opening agenda in front of you at all times. That way, If you forget what you were supposed to talk about, the agenda will come in handy at those critical points. Another trick to keeping transitions smooth and easy to follow is utilizing a slate when delivering your message

Use a Slate in your Presentation

New best friend alert! Do you want to have your key points remembered without running through a long recap of everything? The Slate is an innovative new tool for saving your presentation.

A Tip from Video Production

When production companies like ours are shooting a video, we offer three tips on making your video shoot go smoother. We slate throughout the scene at the beginning and end of each take for editing purposes.

We do this because it makes it much easier for the editor to put the information together in the right order and create a complete story without losing key information. Your audience will benefit greatly from this same approach.

Slate at the beginning and end

When you slate at the beginning of a production, it has the episode title, the scene, and any pertinent information that the editor might need in order to piece together the story. You want to do the same thing at the beginning and end of each of the topics during your Powerpoint presentation or demo.

For example, If I was presenting to you on how to look amazing presenting remotely, I might decide that I had more topics I wanted to cover with you:

Camera engagement
Basic lighting
Background curation

The episode is “How to look amazing presenting remotely“. The scene, (or the smaller topic that I want to share) is “Camera engagement”. The moral (or key takeaway) is “Quickly build report and trust with your audience”.

This should come at the beginning and the end of each of the small stories that you tell during your demo or presentation. That way, your audience always knows where they are, where they’ve been and where they’re going.

Conclusion:

Give it a try, use a slate in your next Powerpoint or demo. It will give your audience better guidance on the topics you want to discuss. Also, through the value of repetition, they’re able to store in their neocortex, the information and the key takeaways that you want them to have. They’ll retain this information long after you’ve completed your demo or presentation.

Start using a slate at the beginning and end of each of your story scenes. Your audience will be much more engaged in your Powerpoint and, even more importantly, retain your key points long after you finished presenting or demoing.

OMH, a boutique creative agency that nourishes enterprise software companies (Microsoft and SAP) and their partners with marketing services and training that drive sales.

For more Online coaching, video production, and training tips, and virtual events. Check out our premium Storied Teams courses. Make sure to take advantage of our free mini-course. In 30 minutes or less, you’ll feel a lot better about how you look and present on camera!

Jun 03

Woo-Woo That Helps You Sell-Sell

By aaron Uncategorized

Read on to learn how a little woo-woo can help you prepare to really connect with your audience in your next presentation, demo, keynote or webinar.

Capture your audience

Today I’m going to get a little woo-woo with you because it’s going to help you form an intention. An intention, a strong intention, can be the difference between your audience being pulled in or just not connecting with you. You want your audience to feel pulled in.

Speak with authenticity

We’re going to get a little Martha Beck at the moment and go through an exercise that you can do over and over again in order to put yourself in a great place when you’re doing a demo, a sales presentation, a keynote at a conference or even your next webinar. There are three ingredients you need to have for this exercise, your authentic confident self, a specific intention and compassion for your audience. Don’t worry, I’m going to step you through the whole thing, all I need you to do right now is give me a little bit of trust.

Ok, close your eyes. This will take a minute or less. The first thing I want you to do is think about your authentic confidence self. And to do that, I want you to imagine now that your eyes are closed, that you’re in front of your closet or dresser, where you normally get dressed. Imagine your favorite outfit, the thing that you wear when you are in front of an audience, or when you’re presenting or demoing, that would make you feel like yourself. It’s your favorite outfit. It just happens that this favorite outfit has just gotten back from the dry cleaner, it’s pressed and never looked better. It is ready for you to put on. Go ahead and put that on. Feels great, right?

”There are three ingredients you need to have for this exercise, your authentic confident self, a specific intention and compassion for your audience.

Present with intention

Now that you have that on, I want you to think about the second ingredient which is a specific intention. You are about to turn on your camera, but before you turn on your camera to present to your audience in this situation, I want you to think of a specific intention. What is your intention that you want to imbue your presentation or your demo with, that would help your audience? Do you want to inspire them? Do you want to challenge them? Do you want to convince them? What do you want to do?

Now, I want you to think of that keyword or phrase before you start your presentation. I want you to divide all of this on top of a bedrock layer of compassion for your audience. You are here in the end whether you’re demoing, presenting, doing a keynote, hosting a webinar. You’re here to serve your audience in some way. And if you come from that feeling of compassion for them and genuinely feel that there’s something that you can do to serve them and help them to have a better day, make their life better, their business better in some way, you will be amazed at the connection you can make with them.

Conclusion

Again, authentic confidence self, a specific intention (you maybe even write that word down so that you can see it before you start) and compassion for your audience. Super simple, right? A little woo-woo! This maybe pushed a few of you out of your comfort zone, but you’ll be okay. My intention was to inspire you with this. When you close your eyes before your next demo or presentation or keynote, this will take less than 60 seconds, but really authentic confident self, set an intention and come from a place of compassion for your audience. You’re going to be amazed by the results that you get in making a connection with your audience.