Government RFPs sometimes only allow you to submit your Technical and Management responses on slides that are then used for an Oral presentation of your proposal. This causes tremendous angst among offerors because it seems so risky. "How can we possibly cover everything in only a slide deck?" And then... Continue reading

You're very well aware of the culture (the sum of beliefs and behavior) of your company and you do your part to fall within its boundaries. That's largely how people get along and succeed. Company culture unfortunately can be an impediment to better speaking and presentation skillfulness, although that may not be readily apparent. Over the 14 years that I've worked at hundreds of companies I've seen these three beliefs and behavior predominate. Your company may only believe one of these but that's enough to cause behaviors that hurt your speaking skillfulness. 1) Belief #1: Our marketing tactics must be... Continue reading

There is magic in those moments when everyone in the audience is paying full attention to you. You don't need to be a sleight-of-hand magician to make this happen. You only need to tell a great story. A powerful example of how a great story is like magic was reported in the news about Bill Clinton speaking at Howard University's 2013 graduation. Clinton described his visit to Indonesia and a tour through the camps sheltering many tens of thousands of those left homeless by the tsunami in 2004. Clinton praised the handsomeness of a 10 year old boy. The interpreter... Continue reading

The first slide of a recent draft Orals deck was titled 'Subfactor 1a: Management Approach.' The problem? The content of the slide was much broader, as the speaker inteded to use it to introduce themes and discriminators. When I asked them to alter the title to reflect the actual slide... Continue reading

"Organize the facts logcially" or "create an incontrovertible formula" or "collect a zillion proof points." I've heard these approaches to being persuasive thousands of times over the years. Yet the study of human psychology shows that these "left brain" approaches hardly ever work, or don't work on their own to influence behavior. What does work well is being likable. Likabiltiy is one of 6 influence factors identified by Ribert Cialdini, PhD. proven to make a difference in the behavior of people. The stronger your likability, especially when you're speaking for business, the better your chances to influence behavior in the... Continue reading

Is there one set of words that is perfect? That could never be improved upon? That wouldn't benefit from just one more tweak? Probably not. If for no other reason, as we and our circumstances change, our thinking changes and we could continue to revise ad infinitum. Sometimes you just have to stop revising. It may be the fifth, eighth or tenth time and then you've got it. Additional revisions will just make your content weaker, more labored, more stilted, more distant from the original thought that prompted the writing in the first place. Here's an example: After several revisions... Continue reading

Are these proposal practices familiar to you? I've made a list of the top 3 "Worst Practices" because in spite of government contractors constantly talking about following best practices, these worst practices often overtake even the best intentions. 1) Failing to follow your proposal calendar and schedule. This one can... Continue reading

Do you compare yourself to someone else? You're "sort of like..." or "in the style of..." or "a knock off of..." Stop it immediately! The original person X or person Y is likely online in many media. If you identify yourself in terms of person X or Y, you'll simply send your listeners or readers or followers to that other person and they can do so with a few taps of a finger. Why would they listen to you when they can go directly to the original? Put your efforts into working diligently and thoughtfully to be the very best... Continue reading

'Best practices,' 'standard processes' and 'lessons learned.' Everyone in the proposal world counts on these, or aspires to them, or relies on them as the means to winning contracts. I have seen time and again that each of these has the potential to hurt more than help. They become obstacles... Continue reading

Your audiences require value, a return on the investment they've made to show up and listen to you. You only give that to them by talking about views and visions that are constantly refreshed. Any speech or segment of a speech that is more than 3 months old does not pass the relevance test. Get rid of it. Not only has the world changed in the past few months, all the people in it--and in your audiences--have changed too. What was fresh and new a few months ago is either now accepted practice or has gone by the wayside. People... Continue reading

You'll never get ahead without others knowing about the outcomes that your work generates. Yet we are conflicted about self-promotion. It's bragging, it's unseemly, what will others think? "There's no I in team" has been pounded into us. Before you turn away from, or jump into, the idea of bold self-promotion, take a few moments to objectively evaluate whether you're ready to self-promote. The two dimensions are Skills and Outcomes and you evaluate yourself on how high or low you are in each dimension. If you fall into the High SKills-High Outcomes quadrant, you are ready for bold self-promotion. You... Continue reading

Excited chatter, waving rally towels, boasting about the team's stats, boldly predicting that your team is going to blow away the other team... Do you craft and deliver your stories like a football game unfolds? To me, the qualities that make a sports game exciting and captivating are these: 1) Uncertainty-even an underdog could win! 2) Ups and downs-every team fumbles, makes amazing catches, expresses elation and frustration 3) The possibility for something unexpected to change the trajectory of the game (weather, ref's call, a player coming out of nowhere to make a great play) Regretfully most business speakers are... Continue reading

"A great speaker lifts the audience up like a quarterback running for a touchdown excites the fans." This is an example of a simile, which is a comparison between two unlike objects or behaviors that specifically uses the word "like" or "as." To state this comparison as a question: "Do you lift the audience up like a quarterback running for a touchdown?" Business speakers load up their speeches with facts like a freight train loaded with heavy cargo. Instead, business speakers must present like a thriller that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. Now that you've got... Continue reading

A wonderful client has experienced many events in her life. In fact, she wrote a personal memoir and she's learning from me how to speak about it in a way that inspires others to read it. Our work reminds me that stories are more than reports of events. Stories are works of art that capture the imagination and tap into the feelings of audiences. Here are the 5 tips I gave this client and that you can use to craft stories from the events of your life. 1) A story requires 5 elements: the hero or main character; the crisis;... Continue reading

Who are your top business heroes? Steve Jobs, perhaps? Tony Hsieh, who sold his company Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion? Honest Tea, a small local company committed to real tea (now Fair Trade Certified) that has become a national brand? I believe that these people have one particular trait in common. They never, ever said "We always do it that way." Six simple words, too often used to stop innovation, imagination and risky choices from becoming trailblazing, explosive-growth business efforts. I love imagining the meeting at which Tony Hsieh said to his executive team "I think we need to... Continue reading

Football has them. Baseball has them. The Olympics has them. And businesses have them. By them I'm referring to high performing INDIVIDUALS. That supposedly dreaded person you've been warned about for years everytime someone speaks about team work. There is no "I" in Team? This is completely hurtful thinking that has reduced people to conforming performers much to the detriment of their careers and to the detriment of the organizations where they work. Since I'm writing this during baseball season, let's look at baseball for some lessons about the critical need for high performing individuals. Pitchers? Do you want your... Continue reading

Words flowed swiftly and smoothly from my mind through my pen and onto the page. Within 15 minutes I had notes for a 15 minute speech. I rehearsed it a couple of times. The audience never took their eyes off me and I connected with them and they with me. Speaking easily comes to me most of the time. The ease and flow were more pronounced than ususal this particular time. When I analyzed it later I realized that it was a speech delivered completely from my inner knowledge and my passion: the perfect melding of my head and my... Continue reading

Every week I see teams collaborating and improving their decision-making and their results. I also see teams seeking consensus and see them failing to improve their decision-making and their results. What's the difference and why does it matter? Collaboration is activity--conversations, discussions, planning, implementation--that embraces different levels of risk. There's something in the plan for the risk averse person and there's something in the plan for the risk forward person. Collaboration encourages innovation while helping the risk averse to be active participants. Consensus on the other hand, as I see it practiced everywhere, is defined as a decision or plan... Continue reading

I recently read an article about 'groupthink' that was so heavily laced with a sneering tone I could practically hear the author's voice. The premise and the conclusion was that groupthink is only bad, forcing out innovation and invention in favor of sticking with anything and everything that's familiar. If you define groupthink as plain vanilla, you'll probably get that because people perform to the expectations of their peers and those above them. However, if you define groupthink as the outcome of the people in a group thinking about and sharing all of their ideas fully and freely and then... Continue reading

The audience jumps to its feet, cheering and clapping with unbridled enthusiasm. You bask in this recognition of your excellent speech. "Wow," you think, "all my hard work has paid off." I wish a response like this for all my clients. However, for many reasons--small gorup and/or a culture of restraint primary among them--standing ovations don't happen very often for the many business speakers who are in front of audiences day after day. Without such a response, how do you know when you've earned a pat on the back? The best way is to keep track on your own of... Continue reading

I love it when speakers use analogies to illuminate concepts. Concepts which are new or hard to visualize and internalize can be made concrete with the use of a great analogy. For example, I ask my clients who are struggling with their speech and presentation content if they want to be like the foam or like the beer? The foam is pretty but lacks substance. The beer reflects all the craftmanship and flavors that people drink beer to enjoy. Then my concept of high impact content is easy to understand and they realize they want to be the beer. Listening... Continue reading

If you're like most people I meet, you make lists every day. "To-Do" lists are a regular favorite. There are lists of activities; lists of things to take when you travel; lists of projects you've worked on. The similarity between all of these lists is that you jot down one word or two and then you know the whole story behind those short words. If you can make a list, you can write a speech. Why? Because just like these lists, each word you list for your speech represents content you already know. When you see the word, you know... Continue reading

I'd guess that several tons of digital ink have been used up complaining abut LPTA, why incumbents are losing at a faster rate than ever and the problems with the contracting departments at government agencies. Stop complaining and then you can start winning! No matter how badly RFPs have been... Continue reading

Many busy business speakers were happy to learn about my chunking approach to speech content collection and organization. I'm going to help you put it into practice right now. Successful and sought after business speakers typically gain their reputation because they speak effectively about two or three specific topics. Keep these topics in mind as you implement the 10 minute speech segment approach. For each topic you have a couple or three calls-to-action. You vary them to meet the specific needs and interests of each audience. So make a list of your 2-3 calls-to-action for each topic. Let's say you... Continue reading

The mechanics of pulling your audience to you when you speak are easy: Why doesn't every speaker and presenter do it? Because you've been exposed to the habits and techniques of pushing yourself on the audience for years. People are self-centered by default. They want to know what's in it for me, and this yearning never ends. When speakers resort to pushing themselves on their audiences, they're ignoring this essential nature of audiences. Every audience wants to know how you're going to help them reach their goals. In this table, I've listed the typical components of a push speech or... Continue reading