----------------------------- No Sweat Speaking(sm) Ezine ----------------------------- Speaking Tips for Greater Confidence, Skill, Influence & Profit ----------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 4, Number 4 April, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Allan Kaufman & Allan Misch, Editors, Allan and Allan, Inc. mailto:cust-serv@nosweatspeaking.com http://www.nosweatspeaking.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- This monthly newsletter is distributed by request only. If you want to stop it, you can find instructions at the end of the newsletter. (c) 2005 Allan And Allan, Inc. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Please send this Ezine to those you know who (1) need to give technical, sales, marketing, or management presentations; (2) are interested in developing or improving their presentation skills; (3) want to make money speaking and training; (4) need to improve their performance; or (5) have a fear of speaking or are nervous when they speak. This newsletter also is good for building relationships with your clients, customers, associates, and friends. Send this to them with a note that you're thinking about them. ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Attention *** If you're receiving this issue from someone and would like to get your own complimentary newsletter plus TWO valuable BONUS reports, please visit... http://www.nosweatspeaking.com or... mailto:nssezine@nosweatspeaking.com?subject=Subscribe ----------------------------------------------------------------- PRIVACY STATEMENT: We absolutely will not share your address with anyone. Period! ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Learning to communicate is like taking out an insurance policy. You never know when you'll need it, but it's too late to take it out after you need it." Allan Kaufman as quoted in Baltimore Magazine ----------------------------------------------------------------- *********************** Check This Out! *********************** "Last year, I made a career change from engineering management to marketing at a new company. Public speaking and even presentations to small groups were my greatest fears and I had gone to great lengths to avoid them throughout my career. In my new company, public speaking was not something I could avoid and my speaking ability would be quickly tested. After a lot of research, I turned to Allan & Allan. Most other companies only offer skill training. What I needed was to overcome my life long fear of speaking in front of groups. The No Sweat Speaking system seemed illogical to me at first and I was skeptical. The great part about the system is that you don't have to understand it or believe that it will work. It just happens. Today I speak in front of groups, give media interviews and conduct training sessions on a routine basis. Not only is my speaking anxiety gone, but my skills continue to improve and I look forward to my next opportunity to speak. I give my highest recommendation for Allan and Allan's system. If it works for me, it can work for anyone." Thanks, Jim M. Connecticut --------------------------------- Is Speaking Fear Holding You Back, Costing You a Lot of Money? --------------------------------- Are you not getting the job you want or the promotion you deserve because you suffer from speaking anxiety? How much money, loss of opportunities, or damage to your reputation is this fear costing you? A whole lot. Let's be honest. If you have performance anxieties, you know you need to kill those butterflies in your stomach, but you're afraid to take the next step and/or you're not willing to invest in yourself to make it happen. One man just said to us that he knows he really needs us to coach him, but he thinks he can't afford to. What he can't afford to do is do nothing and continue NOT getting promoted and continue NOT seeking better job or business opportunities because he may have to speak in front of people. This is so sad. It's especially sad when that same person will take out a $20,000 car loan on a depreciating asset. Getting rid of your speaking anxieties and developing your speaking skills are appreciating assets. They increase your value. This means once you do it, you continue to reap the rewards. One promotion leads to another one and another one, but if you don't do what you need to do to get that first promotion, you can forget about it. You could be promoting your businesses and increasing your income by speaking to groups who need your products and services, but your speaking anxiety and other performance blocks are holding you back. Probably, you're reading our ezine because you have some speaking anxieties. If they're bad enough, don't you think it's time to do something about it and improve your self-confidence? How much is having a sense of confidence worth to you? Not just in your work and business life but also in your social life? Have you ever thought about being the life of the party? About being less shy? --------------- We Can Help You --------------- Using our No Sweat Speaking(sm) techniques, we provide personal coaching to help you get rid of your speaking anxieties in a relatively short period of time. Send us an email and tell us you want assistance. In the SUBJECT line of your email, put "I need speaking coaching." We will email you some questions to assess your situation and then send you a proposal as to how we can help you. It doesn't matter where you live as this can be done via email and phone consultations. mailto:allank@nosweatspeaking.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Featured Article 2. Presentation Skills Tip 3. Humor Tip 4. Dear Allan and Allan (Answers to Your Questions) ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Attention Small Business Owners *** Here's one of the best websites on the Internet for small business marketing. We use this site and its great information as a resource. Get a free 24-page Marketing Plan Workbook. Visit... http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?AFID=50478 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Featured Article ----------------------------------------------------------------- **Make Your Audiences Say "WOW!"** by Barbara Brown, PhD Wouldn't it be nice to get a standing ovation every time you presented to an audience? Of course it would. But that's not always going to happen, even if you're great. So the next best thing is to make your audiences remember you in a positive way. How? By getting your audience excited, engaged, and energized enough to say "WOW!". These three "WOW!" techniques have worked for me during my last 13 years as a full time trainer and speaker, and I know they will work for you as well. "WOW!" Technique #1: Vary Your Activities I recently attended a presentation where the speaker started off with a bang. He had us moving around the room, laughing, and interacting. Of course, we thought the next two hours would be full of similarly engaging activities. No way! Instead, he followed up with a standard technique of presenting his idea then having us form groups and talk about how to use his idea. After the fourth time doing this we were all groaning. So what's the solution? Use different techniques to engage your audience. For instance, if you want your audience to discuss your topic, have them vary interactions with their seating partners by forming dyads, triads, and quads. And don't just have them talking about how to use your idea. Have them talk about the pros and cons of your approach; make comparisons to the past; or rate the effectiveness of your ideas on a scale of one to five. You get the picture. Another great engagement strategy is to use quick transition activities to introduce the main points of your presentation. I always use these in my presentations. One of my favorites is to have everyone place their hand on a piece of paper and draw an outline of their hand. I then have everyone switch hands with the person sitting next to them. My debriefing points address the need for making adjustments if you were wearing another person's rings or gloves. This can easily relate to change in the workplace or finding the right fit for a job. And you can create engaging activities even if you are presenting on a technical, content-filled topic. For instance, a topic like "writing" falls into this category. In fact, I was working with a client a few days ago who needed to present an editing seminar. Of course, she was using the typical approach of having memos as handouts, along with the process for correcting them. I had her design a list of 15 questions, which would require the participants to actually read the memos in search for the answers. Her audience will thank me. Over the years, I have collected numerous icebreaker books and created my own personalized exercises. If you want your audiences to "WOW!", build your own collection and check out what other presenters do. Some of my favorites are by Edie West. You can find her books at http://www.amazon.com. For some other great ideas, visit http://www.thiagi.com. There you will find all kinds of complimentary ideas for games and exercises. "WOW!" Technique #2: Make Your PowerPoint Exciting There is nothing more boring than seeing a presenter using PowerPoint that has the typical white background. If you know how to use PowerPoint, then you know how to change the background colors and create some animations. And if you don't, spend some time or some money and find out. It's too easy. Once you change the color, the next step is making your content come alive. That means not doing what too many presenters still do, which is "teach from PowerPoint slides." When presenting, I give my audience a handout, then, I use mostly animated graphics to make important points and guide the discussion. For instance, if I want to make a point about having a vision statement, I use a picture of a person with a bag over his head or a little person walking around with a blindfold on. This makes my audience laugh and remember the points. You can find all kinds of animations and other cute clip art at http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?lc=en-us or go to Google, click on Images and put in your specific words. You will be amazed at what you find to dress up your slides. Also, customize your PowerPoint to you and your presentation. One effective way I have found to do this is to take the picture that I have on the first slide and place a smaller version in the upper left hand corner of each subsequent slide. This carries my theme throughout and keeps the audience focused. Send me an email at Barbara@DrBarbaraBrown.com if you want an example of how I do this. "WOW!" Technique #3: Create A Theme For Your Presentation This means centering your presentation around one focus area. It could be sports, or smiley faces, or animals. One of my frequent topics is "High-Performance Leadership." I often use a car theme for this presentation. I then create metaphors to compare high- performance leadership to high-performance cars. You could probably think of several right now. You can do this regardless of the title, even though fitting your theme into your title adds excitement and interest. For instance, this month, I am presenting to a group of Human Resource Managers and the title of my presentation is "Game Willing Strategies For The HR Leader." My PowerPoint slides for the HR Leader presentation all have something to do with sports and athletes. I've created ranking scales for an exercise that includes sports and athletes. Additionally, I have bought some cheap give-aways, which I always do for my presentations. These include little sports figures, some funny-faced balls, and some "you're a winner" signs. You can buy these really cheap at http://www.orientaltrading.com. People love to receive complimentary stuff and it's really inexpensive to purchase them at this website. If you go there, I bet you'll find all kinds of neat ideas for themes. "WOW!" Is The Word If you want to get invited back to speak, you have to get people to remember you. It's easy to do that if you think about the audience first. As presenters, we sometimes get caught up in delivering our content and showing off our expertise. Audiences want to know what we know. But they also want to enjoy learning it. Dr. Barbara Brown speaks on high-performance leadership. Email her at Barbara@DrBarbaraBrown.com or visit her website at http://www.DrBarbaraBrown.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Keynote was a huge success! You were right about everything -- from bringing my introduction to adding humor. I ended up adding about 9 humorous things to my presentation -- I actually brought the house down with the expandable ball visual. Thanks for everything. You made all the difference." Best, Trish "In minutes you were able to do for the audience what some people have been trying to do for themselves for a lifetime. You two helped audience members get rid of the fear of public speaking right before my very eyes.... Any organization can benefit greatly by witnessing your seminar.... You two are a great team!" Craig Valentine Toastmasters International 1999 World Champion of Public Speaking ----------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Presentation Skills Tip ----------------------------------------------------------------- **Keep Your Audience Involved** by Allan Kaufman >> Call on volunteers. >> Use memorable visual aids. >> Do group exercises. >> Ask questions. These are some techniques to keep your audience engaged. Why get your audience involved? We've all been to boring lectures, so boring we want to just run out of the room. I even did that several times. It is your responsibility as a speaker to not only inform your audience but also to engage them so that it will be easier for them to understand and remember your message. Use your creative mind and/or search the internet for additional methods to make your talks exciting and engaging. You will be glad you got your audience involved. They will give you very favorable ratings, you will be invited back to speak again, and you may even get a referral to speak to another group. ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Great Speaking Resource *** Turn your speaking, training, or sales skills into cash. Check out a great professional speaking resource. We recommend it highly. Lots of great tips and tricks. Just click on or paste the URL into your browser. http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?AFID=50475&u=www.antion.com/public-speaking.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Humor Tip ----------------------------------------------------------------- **What Do You Do When Your Humor Falls Flat?** by Allan Misch It's bound to happen. You practice telling a funny anecdote, story or joke. Your practices seem to go well, but when you use the humor your audience stares back at you with stone-cold faces. Gulp! So what's your reaction? Break out in a sweat? Stammer and stumble? Run through the rest of your program in record time? No. You ignore it and move on, period! You can move on if the humorous piece is related to your message or point. You can move on if you don't telegraph to your audience that you are going to tell a joke or humorous story. You can move on if you personalize your humor so it doesn't sound like a canned joke. Do this and your audience won't know that you're trying to be funny. So it won't matter if they don't laugh. You can just move on. ----------------------------------------------------------------- **If You're Looking for a Home for Your Website, iPowerWeb Makes Website Hosting Simple!** We did a lot of research on Web hosting companies and compared many of them. We decided on iPowerWeb to host our website, and we made a good decision. iPowerWeb is rated #1 for affordable, high quality web hosting. You get an incredible 1,000 megs of space, 500 POP email accounts, 40 gigs of transfer, website builder, 24/7 customer support, free setup, marketing package, and much more... all for an incredible $7.95 per month! So if you're interested in establishing a presence on the Web for the first time, or if you want to change your Website hosting company because you're tired of getting ripped off, check out iPowerWeb. http://www.ipowerweb.com/cgi-bin/tracker/trackeraf.cgi?rid=afftrend ----------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Dear Allan and Allan (Answers to Your Questions) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Allan and Allan, I'm an executive in a large company. I'm not very good at giving presentations. There is a staff person lower in the organization who excels at designing and giving presentations. I would like her to coach, me but I am reticent to ask for help. Managers at my level do not get coaching from lower-level staff. What are your thoughts on this? Donald with a Dilemma. Dear Donald with a Dilemma, This is not an unusual problem in traditional organizations. You have two options. If you know the staffer and can trust her, you may want to ask for assistance. Both of you would keep your coaching relationship under wraps. You may even offer to mentor her in areas in which you are strong. So you have a win-win, mutually beneficial business relationship. Your other option is to contract with a professional speaking coach outside your organization. The professional may have more experience in areas that would be beneficial to you. The first option is less costly and may reap more rewards for both of you. The second option is more costly and could avoid a potentially embarrassing situation for you if not handled properly. It's your choice. Allan and Allan Submit questions to mailto:questions@nosweatspeaking.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Hot Internet Business Secrets *** Over 1,000+ PAGES of the Hottest, Proven Profitable Internet Business Secrets Broken down Into An EASY-TO-DUPLICATE System! 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