A great resource for executive presentations can be found on CNBC’s web site under their video section. Regularly updated, it features short interviews with leading executives and commentators. Take a look at some very good and some not so impressive interview. Link to the video section here.
- The new iPad
by Rebecca Hong
Steve Jobs is my favorite presenter for his ability to get his message across so clearly and effectively. I love listening to his commencement speech in Stanford University entitled “Stay Hungry Stay Foolish”. This morning I listened to Steve’s iPad product launch presentation. Steve Jobs proves himself to be a great presenter again. I would like to evaluate his presentation from a presentation skills perspective. I won’t touch upon the technical side even though I am fully sold that iPad is a phenomenal gadget.
Let me tell you why I think Steve Jobs is a great presenter.
1. Well-designed Structure/Organization
A great presentation starts by having a well designed structure/organization. So let’s first look at the structure of his presentation; the opening, body and closing. Please pay special attention to some very good transitions in between points.
Opening
Steve Jobs first overviewed of the company status-mainly good news about product sales and the large customer base. Then he threw out a question: “Is there a 3rd category device between a smart phone and a laptop?” The answer is: iPad.
Body
- Overview of what iPad can do.
Transition: “So that gives you a little overview of what the iPad can do, but it’s nothing like seeing it. So I’d like to show it to you now.”
Demo of what iPad can do.
- web surfing: New York Times, Buy movie tickets, National Geography
- emails
- photos
- calendar
- address book
- maps: Google Map
- video: Youtube, TV, movies,
II. Hardware features of iPad
III. 3rd party software features of iPad: App Store (presented by Scott Forstall, Apple Senior VP of iPod Software)
Demo of online game
Demos from several 3rd party software developers/content providers
IV. New App: iBooks (Steve Jobs back to present)
Overview
Demo
Transition: “Now, something very exciting: the iWork.”
V. App: iWork for iPad (presented by Phil Schiller, Sr VP Product Marketing)
Overview
Demo
- Keynote
- Pages
- Numbers
VI. Sync with iTunes (Steve Jobs back to present)
VII. Wireless networking in US and internationally
VIII. Pricing
First gave the product benefits: what iPad can do, Apps, iBook App, iWork App.
Then gave a price in pundits’ opinion: $999
Then shows the actual price: $499 and the more expensive models with higher capacity
IX. 3 Accessories
- a dock to view photos
- a key board dock
- a case for protection and serves as stand
X. Video of iPad
Closing
Echo the opening
Call for action: get your hands on it to feel it.
2. Subtle Salesmanship
Steve Jobs utilized this product launch opportunity not only to introduce the new product but also to persuade the audience to own it by adding many salesmanship lines. Let’s see how he made his sales pitch subtle but effective.
Example 1. After the demo of what the iPad can do, Steve said, “I have to say, though, watching it is nothing like getting it in your hands and feeling it right underneath your fingers.” This is to tell the audience that you need to own this gadget to really feel its charm.
Example 2. When it’s time to unveil the price of iPad, Steve first recapped the product benefits: what iPad can do, Apps, iBook App, iWork App. Then he didn’t tell the price right away. But to build some suspense and also contrast, he gave a price in pundits’ opinion: $999. Of course, the actual price is much lower: $499 for the most basic model and higher prices for other more advanced models. Here Steve used two skills. The first one is to mention benefits before the price so that buyers are reminded of the wonderful benefits of this product first and then are more likely to accept the price. The second skill Steve used is to give a higher price first and then the real lower price. This contrast of prices naturally makes the buyer feel the actual price is really low and it’s a great deal to get it at this price.
Example 3. At the end of the speech, Steve called for action to own this product. “So we’ve got a hands-on area next door, we’d like to get you to get your hands on an iPad because when you feel all this power, and this much fun and the internet in your hands, you will never want to go back.” This call to action is effective because it is not a hard sale. Rather it appeals to the emotions: the desire to feel, to have fun, and the need to try something cutting-edge.
3. Echo between the Opening and the Closing
When you first listen to the opening of the presentation, you might think that it seems a bit irrelevant to the main topic of this presentation, the iPad launch. But when you listen to the closing of the presentation, you will realize that actually the opening is well structured to serve as a set up for the closing. The opening’s main message of Apple having a massive customer base links to the closing message that this massive customer base is exactly the customer foundation for iPad and why iPad will take off strong in the market.
Let’s have a close look of how the opening and the closing echo with each other.
-
Opening: “Everybody uses a laptop or smart phone… Is there a room for the 3rd category of device in the middle? Something between a laptop and a smart phone?”
Closing: “So let’s go back to the beginning. Do we have what it takes to establish a 3rd category product, an awesome product that’s in between a laptop and a smart phone…We think we got the goods. We think we’ve done it.”
-
Opening: “A few weeks ago, we have sold our 25millionth iPod.”
Closing: “Because we’ve shipped over 75million iPhones and iTouchs, there are over 75 million people already know how to use the iPad.”
-
Opening: “A few weeks ago, we announced that a user downloaded the 3 billionth application from the App Store.”
Closing: “Users have downloaded 12 billion products from these stores (iTune, iApps and iBooks), so we are at scale and we are ready for the iPad.”
-
Opening: “We’d like to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today.”
Closing: “Now the iPad, if you can sum it up, is our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”
4. A Strong Tagline
A good speech, no matter how long or short it is, should be able to be crystallized into a sentence or even a phrase, which we call a tagline. Steve Jobs gave this iPad a clear and strong tagline:
“iPad is a truly magical and revolutionary product.”
(Short version, used in the opening)
“iPad our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”
(Longer version, used in the closing)
This longer version tagline perfectly crystallized the features of iPad: advanced technology, magical, revolutionary and the affordable price.
However, I do have some recommendation to make this tagline stronger. The problem with the current tagline is that it puts the focus on the most advanced technology, which is too technical oriented. I would recommend to change it to focus on its emotional appeal:
“iPad is a truly magical & revolutionary device with our most advanced technology at an unbelievable price.”
(recommended tagline)
The changed version puts the emotional appeal of “a truly magical & revolutionary device” as the focus in this tagline to make it more user oriented rather than technology oriented.
5. Well Paced Speed and Great Use of Pauses
If there is one thing that differentiates Steve Jobs from other great speakers, it is his speaking speed. Steve’s speaking speed is about 100-120 words per minute while a normal English speaker’s speed is about 210 words per minute. This means Steve is 50% slower when he speaks. Why does Steve Jobs speak slowly? Because he enunciates each word clearly and he takes time to emphasize the key words and messages. The effect of his slow pace is that audience will feel very comfortable following him without being rushed or missing anything he said. As a result he gets his message across successfully.
Here is an example of how he uses pauses effectively. When he made the statement that “Now the iPad, if you can sum it up, is our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price”, Steve puts three pauses in this sentence to let the audience hear and get the three features clearly:
“Now the iPad, if you can sum it up, is our most advanced technology [pause] in a magical & revolutionary device [pause] at an unbelievable price [pause].”
6. Beautiful Selection of Words
Listening to a speech with beautiful words is like listening to a masterpiece of music. Steve Jobs is one of the speakers who carefully selects his use of words. He uses many adjectives in his presentations and metaphors to create mental pictures in audience minds.
Example 1. “This is around 18 months since its inception, 3 billion applications from App Store.”
Example 2. “The e-book app. Amazon has done a great job of pioneering this functionality with Kindle and we are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little further.”
7. Show of Emotions
A good presenter connects with the audience on a personal level by expressing his own emotions. Steve Jobs is such a presenter. Here is a good example: “We just ended our holiday quarter, our 1st fiscal quarter of 2010, with $15.6 billions of revenue. I don’t even believe that!”
8. Repetition of Key Lines
Steve Jobs knows the power of repetition to strike his main messages in the audience minds. Here are two examples:
Example 1. “By revenue, Apple is the biggest mobile device company in the world now… Apple is the #1 mobile device company in the world.”
Example 2. “Now the iPad, if you can sum it up, is our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.” (repeated once)
9. One Message per Slide
In all Apple’s presentations, you will see what it means to have one message per slide. Besides, the most important message is put in bigger font while narratives in smaller font. Here is one example:
Sample slide:
50,000,000
Visitors last quarter
10. Never Forget to Promote the Company/Brand
Steve Jobs smartly utilized the product launch opportunity to promote the company and build up its Apple brand. Here are two examples.
Example 1. In the beginning of the presentation, Steve Jobs gave a positioning to Apple: “Apple is a mobile devices company. That’s what we do.” If you think Apple is just a digital appliance company, then after listening to this speech, you know that to be specific, Apple is a mobile devices company.
Example 2. At the end of the presentation, Steve Jobs reiterated the competitive advantage of Apple: “We’ve always tried to be at the crossroad of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of the both.” This is what differentiates Apple from other technical companies.
So the above ten skills were demonstrated by Steve Jobs in his 1.5 hour iPad product launch presentation. Steve is a role model as a highly effective technical presenter. But only seeing is believing. So go to www.apple.com to see it with your own eyes and listen with your own ears.
While I am coaching senior executives, I often mention that an audience’s attention span is around 10 minutes. This means that when you deliver a business presentation you need to continually engage and interact with the audience.
Here is an article in the Times of India that shows another reason why younger audiences’ suffer from short attention spans. Read more.
I have written before about six word stories and today I saw an example of one from the Department for schools, children and families in the UK. They have launched a campaign on internet safety which intends to teach young children how to stay safe while using the internet. Their tagline is “Zip it. Block it. Flag it.”
My first impression was that it could be a little confusing. When I think of ‘zip’ in relation to computers my first thought is ‘zipping files’ so that they are compressed into a smaller file size. But then the target audience for this campaign might not have that perspective. “Zip it” in English slang means to be keep quiet and not disclose information .
So ‘zip it’ means do not give out any personal information. ‘Block it’ means use the blocking feature on social media sites or IM tools (like MSN). ‘Flag it’ means talk to a trusted adult if you are harassed online.
This tagline will not doubt be promoted heavily in schools and after a while will become a well-known catchphrase. The creators hope it will be about famous as the Green Cross Code.
What do you think? Will it stick or be quickly forgotten ?
Vary your energy
Even a well framed and messaged presentation delivered in a monotonous and disinterested manner will be poorly received. Executives (and all presenters) have a bubble within which they are comfortable. It has been successful to get them to where they are today. However, I am often asked to help executives with strong technical backgrounds to make the step up to senior positions. This requires coming out of the comfort bubble which means overcoming deeply engrained habits. Common habits include being too softly-spoken, projecting a constant (often low) stream of energy and little variety in voice and energy throughout a presentation.
I don’t believe you need to be an extrovert to be a good presenter. Steve Jobs is regarded as one of world’s best business presenters without being a hyper-energetic speaker. However, regardless of your starting point, you do need variety in your presentation.
The most obvious is to bring enthusiasm for your subject. When you are enthusiastic, energy levels increase and this is very attractive to the audience. Think about how you talk about your hobbies to your friends. What gets your energy going? Talking about the sports results, mentioning your toddler’s latest developments or sharing your knowledge with others? A good resource for enthusiastic presentations can be found at TED Talks (www.ted.com). Pick a topic and notice how the passion of each speaker is very engaging.
Examples of Lifeforce:
Take your next presentation and after you have prepared all the content (including messages), practice delivering it out aloud a couple of times. When you feel you are starting to get familiar with the flow, take the opening one minute and deliver it as though it was the most boring topic in the world. Then, go straight into delivering the same one minute as though it is the most interesting topic to you. Record both rehearsals. Playback and observe the main differences in your delivery. Pace and intonation of your voice. Energy delivered. Which one would your audience prefer to listen to? Which one would be more engaging and persuasive?
Use your energy and lifeforce to put a sparkle into your presentation delivery. Variety is the key to keeping your audience engaged.
Tagline them
Have you ever been asked to prepare a 40 minute presentation and then just before you come in to deliver it, be asked to ’slim it down’ to 20 minutes?! I mean what are you meant to do? Speak twice as fast? Cut out the verbs?
A way to be always ready for this challenge is to properly message your presentation. I call this taglining. Consumer companies use taglines to create a memorable phrase that is linked with their brand. For example, since adidas introduced their “Impossible is Nothing” tagline, it has become part of their target audience’s vocabulary. I call this type of message a ‘meta-tagline’ which summarises a broad theme or direction. Your presentation should have a meta-tagline. You can think of it as your high concept or movie title. (eg It’s a Wonderful Life, Saving Private Ryan, Snakes on a Plane).
The main benefit of using this approach is that – together with framing – it helps you think more clearly about the key messages that you want to deliver. This is important as today’s audience are busy, overloaded with information and distracted by mobile devices. You need to be able to deliver your key messages in a short time and make them memorable.
This is quite a challenge. Especially when most presenters can’t even remember their own presentation! Reading off crib notes, turning around to speak off the screen or frequent looking up or down are signs that the presenter has not prepared adequately.
Once you have a meta-tagline, go down through your presentation section by section and ask “What is my key message here?” How could you summarise it into a short sentence or tagline. This requires some thinking and can be difficult when you first use this skill. Once you have completed this, you should have an overall message or concept (meta-tagline) and between three to five messages summarising the main section content.
Your messages can now be easily written on a card and memorised. With clear messages, you can tie your content together more naturally and then the content (data, statistics etc) are used to support your message. This approach makes you bulletproof to shorter presentation times and ensures you have clear messages throughout the entire presentation.
Examples of Meta Taglines:
Too broad – Quality Concerns
Too long – The most important quality concern we have today is in manufacturing
Good example – Three Essential Quality Changes
Examples of Taglines (for sections):
Too broad – Data insufficient
Good example – Two data gaps we must monitor
Frame It
When facing an executive audience, such as a board of directors, you need to help them understand the scope of your presentation for two reasons.
Firstly, busy executives have so many issues swirling around their heads that you cannot assume that they know the scope of your topic.
Secondly, senior executives do not want to know all the details. That is why they hire you. You are the subject matter expert. So what this means is that at the start of your presentation, you must signal the depth of your content. By indicating to your audience that you will not dive straight into detailed charts and statistics you are showing that you understand their expectations. Later on while you are presenting you may be asked for extra details, but don’t assume that an executive audience wants to know every single statistic.
Example of framing 1: “Today, in the next 15 minutes I will cover the three main updates for Project X. I will not go into the data charts which I have provided as handouts. I will take a Q&A after each update. Shall we start?”
Example of framing 2: “The main purpose for this presentation is to highlight the options available to us following the discovery of Problem Y. Although this could take us into several related areas, we have decided to stay focused only on the short term solutions. This will take 30 minutes and I welcome comments throughout. If this works for everybody, I will start.”
Simplicity Sells
With the rise of the over 50s as a demographic that marketers would like to target, finally we have computer makers designing a computer for people who are not comfortable negotiating a complex file management system or a desktop full of icons.
Simplicity Computers have introduced a computer with a simple navigation interface (Square One - couldn’t they have found a better name?) and built-in video tutorials that are clear and easy-to-understand.
This got me thinking that designing a good message for a presentation is all about simplicity. Being simple is not easy. And being concise can take a lot of preparation. The next time you prepare a presentation, ask yourself, “What is my message?” Is it concise? Could someone over 50 or under 10 years of age understand it?
Simplicity means cutting out the jargon, and acronyms. Simplicity is about reducing a concept to its simpliest terms (without being patronising). Simple messages are easy to transfer.
David Pogue - an advocate for simple design - also has a speech called “Simplicity Sells” delivered at TED Talks.
Meditation can improve your concentration
With the need to multi-task and sift through a never-ending flow of information, we have adapted - with the help of technology - to become more skillful at darting our attention spans from point to point. From an email, to the mobile phone, to a web site, to a download, to a conversation. And so on.
While this adaption is an important part of being productive in a digital information age, it also impacts our ability to focus on one thing for a long period of time. Switching attention between tasks reduces effectiveness and hampers our ability to get things done in one sitting.
I recently attending a workshop and received a 25 minute meditation recording which I use at the end of the day to relax, unwind and calm my mind. One thing that surprised me was how difficult it is to focus for the complete 25 minutes. While listening to the guided meditation (basically someone’s voice), I noticed that my mind was drifting onto other thoughts. Even after pulling my attention back to the recording, my mind kept darting onto other topics.
Gradually, the more I meditate with the recording the longer I am able to focus my attention entirely. As we continue to plough through life with our numerous distractions, it’s good to remember that we can also “work out” our concentration and focus from time to time. Turn off the devices and just relax for 25 minutes. Your mind and attention span will appreciate it.
