How you present yourself or your work can determine a potential promotion, sale, or job offer. These three simple ideas, from my book, Peak Presentations, can go a long way towards helping you achieve the outcomes you want.
Make it Useful: Focus on their Bottom Line
It’s easy to talk about what you know. It’s harder to apply your knowledge to the specific issues of the audience members before you. Every audience member wants to know “how can this help me?” Taking steps to keep the focus on your audience’s bottom line is key to winning them over.
Here’s an example: I facilitated a meeting between David, a business owner with a client-relationship-management (CRM) software product, and Julie, a potential client for David, whom I knew and thought could benefit from David’s product. I had both worked with David before and used his software, so I could vouch for him and his product.
About five minutes into David’s initial presentation to Julie, however, I began to see that David was not going to get the sale. The reason: he went right into the features and the bells and whistles of his software, instead of keeping the focus on Julie’s specific problems, and how he could help solve them! In short, he took the easy route, instead of the harder route which would have involved seeking to understand Julie’s issues, and then translating his product’s benefits into solutions for Julie.
Following this non-event, I worked with David on his sales presentation. The next time around, he did his homework about what problems his software could solve for the prospective client, and what opportunities it could open up. He also made sure to ask a few key questions early in the meeting which further identified CRM-related issues the prospect was facing. This time, he got the sale.
PowerPoint Slides: Don’t Compete!
When using PowerPoint slides to support a presentation, make sure the slide content doesn’t compete with what you are saying.
Often this can happen when the presenter places too much content on the slide, so the audience has to decide– read the slides, or listen to the presenter? Think back to a recent presentation you attended, and you’ll know what I mean. That’s why you need to keep the slides simple– relegate them to a true supporting role. They should enhance your words, not compete with them; people are there to listen to you. The handouts, on the other hand, are a different story– that’s where you can give them details.
Have an on-the-job pitch at the ready
Having a very short, “five second pitch” at the ready for unexpected encounters can turn a mundane situation into a career-enhancing opportunity. The following client experience illustrates how this “mini-presentation” can help you.
Mike was in an elevator at work. The doors opened and in walked a more senior executive, Andrea, with whom Mike had little interaction. She said, “Hi Mike, how are you?” Mike could have made small talk, but instead, he used his five second pitch: “Well, we’ve just rolled out the new workflow-management platform, so things are great!” ”Oh you’re involved with that?”, asked Andrea. Mike’s response: “Actually, I’ve been leading the effort for the past three months!” Now they were having a conversation about this big triumph in Mike’s career.
Andrea ended the conversation with “Given your leadership role, we may want you for our cross-functional task-force for company-wide workflow management– I’ll talk to your boss about it.” The result? Mike transformed a potentially trivial encounter to a possibly significant career-enhancing opportunity.
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Keywords in your resume, LinkedIn profile, emails and ‘pitch’ help to communicate your value. To job prospects, your use of the right keywords tells them you are an “insider” (everyone wants to hire insiders) and that you understand the problems they face. Organizations use keyword filters for candidate searches, so your use of strategically placed keywords will improve your likelihood of being spotted.
When someone is searching on LinkedIn for a candidate with your skills (increasingly LinkedIn is the first stop for candidate searches), keywords in certain parts of your profile matter more than others.
When you are giving a presentation, look to actively engage your audience right from the start. Don’t assume they are paying attention; they may be thinking about their last meeting or the next one! So go beyond the dry and conventional; Capture their imagination, make them part of the show. Use any of these six approaches to hook your audience, so you can then reel them in with a memorable, powerful presentation.
Every so often you will get an interview question like this from HR or a hiring leader. “Greatest weakness” types of interview questions also include “give me an example of a time you failed, ” “tell me about a criticism your boss once gave you,” or “give me an example of an area of development or a situation where you didn’t get the outcome you wanted.” They use these questions, especially for executive hires, to a) find people who have a maturity and ability to self-reflect that allows for improvement and learning from mistakes, and b) screen out people who say something problematic. When forming your answer, keep these three guidelines in mind:
Many clients tell me that they really dislike the process of calling people they don’t know to get meetings, interviews, or new business opportunities. By following these tips on how to present yourself on the call and adopt the right mindset, you’ll get better results, and feel better too!
Presenting Yourself – Rehearse your “20-second pitch.”
How do you get them to stay on the phone, or want to speak with you? The key is your 20-second pitch. When someone takes your call, they
Getting a recommendation on LinkedIn can help your career. LinkedIn recommendations are valued by hiring managers. Why? 1. The first-degree connection giving the recommendation is visible, hence “researchable” on LinkedIn, 2. significant effort is involved in writing a recommendation, adding to the authenticity, and 3. the content’s often descriptive nature helps the hiring manager to understand your value. I would suggest getting at least three LinkedIn recommendations. LinkedIn considers three-plus recommendations to be a factor in “profile completeness,” which figures in it’s search rankings.
Even if your resume, pitch, skill set, and emails are all stellar, at the end of the day your job search is still a numbers game. To improve your odds of landing a position quickly, you’ve got to actively go for a large number of potential positions. That is, don’t just passively wait for the search firm to call or the ad to show up (and then compete with potentially thousands of other applicants). Instead, take the active approach: 1) create a plan that casts a wide enough net to include enough suitable positions (open or currently filled), and
Whether your goal is to sell, inform, or land a job offer, telling engaging, relevant stories can turn even a so-so presentation into a great one. Illustrating your points with the right stories will have a far stronger impact than many other things you can do, including slide design, body language, eye contact, and so forth.
You can create an effective LinkedIn profile by following many of the same principles that I would recommend for your resume. For example, focus on accomplishments, have a summary section, use keywords that resonate with your audience, etc. etc. (see this blog post and this one for other guidelines). Key differences in the way that resumes and profiles are shared, however, could have a big impact on how you choose to modify your resume for your profile. Below I’ve shared an excerpt from my book Advanced LinkedIn to highlight four of these differences.
In Part 1, I covered the top two mistakes that I see clients make on their resumes. In this post you’ll learn how to avoid six more resume pitfalls. Topping off this list:
Your resume places too much focus on responsibilities, not enough on accomplishments
Which phrase do you think is more powerful?
Led the redesign of the monthly financial reporting process.
Led the redesign of the monthly financial reporting process, cutting production time from one month to five days.
3 Tips for Delivering a Powerful Presentation
by Robert Hellmann • Building a Business, On-the-job Success, Org. Effectiveness, Presentations, Resume, LinkedIn, self-promo
How you present yourself or your work can determine a potential promotion, sale, or job offer. These three simple ideas, from my book, Peak Presentations, can go a long way towards helping you achieve the outcomes you want.
Make it Useful: Focus on their Bottom Line
It’s easy to talk about what you know. It’s harder to apply your knowledge to the specific issues of the audience members before you. Every audience member wants to know “how can this help me?” Taking steps to keep the focus on your audience’s bottom line is key to winning them over.
Here’s an example: I facilitated a meeting between David, a business owner with a client-relationship-management (CRM) software product, and Julie, a potential client for David, whom I knew and thought could benefit from David’s product. I had both worked with David before and used his software, so I could vouch for him and his product.
About five minutes into David’s initial presentation to Julie, however, I began to see that David was not going to get the sale. The reason: he went right into the features and the bells and whistles of his software, instead of keeping the focus on Julie’s specific problems, and how he could help solve them! In short, he took the easy route, instead of the harder route which would have involved seeking to understand Julie’s issues, and then translating his product’s benefits into solutions for Julie.
Following this non-event, I worked with David on his sales presentation. The next time around, he did his homework about what problems his software could solve for the prospective client, and what opportunities it could open up. He also made sure to ask a few key questions early in the meeting which further identified CRM-related issues the prospect was facing. This time, he got the sale.
PowerPoint Slides: Don’t Compete!
When using PowerPoint slides to support a presentation, make sure the slide content doesn’t compete with what you are saying.
Often this can happen when the presenter places too much content on the slide, so the audience has to decide– read the slides, or listen to the presenter? Think back to a recent presentation you attended, and you’ll know what I mean. That’s why you need to keep the slides simple– relegate them to a true supporting role. They should enhance your words, not compete with them; people are there to listen to you. The handouts, on the other hand, are a different story– that’s where you can give them details.
Have an on-the-job pitch at the ready
Having a very short, “five second pitch” at the ready for unexpected encounters can turn a mundane situation into a career-enhancing opportunity. The following client experience illustrates how this “mini-presentation” can help you.
Mike was in an elevator at work. The doors opened and in walked a more senior executive, Andrea, with whom Mike had little interaction. She said, “Hi Mike, how are you?” Mike could have made small talk, but instead, he used his five second pitch: “Well, we’ve just rolled out the new workflow-management platform, so things are great!” ”Oh you’re involved with that?”, asked Andrea. Mike’s response: “Actually, I’ve been leading the effort for the past three months!” Now they were having a conversation about this big triumph in Mike’s career.
Andrea ended the conversation with “Given your leadership role, we may want you for our cross-functional task-force for company-wide workflow management– I’ll talk to your boss about it.” The result? Mike transformed a potentially trivial encounter to a possibly significant career-enhancing opportunity.