Presentation Training - Stinky and Impotent.

I'm a talker. I like to get ideas into the ether, bounce them off other peoples brains, and then modify or cement.

However, I tend to work alone these days, so getting together with my contemporaries always leaves me buzzing with ideas.

Yesterday I had a cuppa with Richard Tierney a fellow Presentation Trainer / Coach. We were talking about the job, this blog, and the challenges of telling someone they need training.

Richard told me that one of his clients described Presentation Training as 'Erectile Dysfunction"; you don't want to admit you have a problem, once you do it's treatable, but you're never going to tell your colleagues that you've had a problem in the first place... you may hand a card to a very good friend and say "go and see my guy, he sorted me".

It's somehow worse than that. I think it's Erectile Dysfunction and Body Odour rolled into one socially unacceptable mess.

How can you tell someone working with you or for you, that they need Presentation Training?

How do you go up to someone who may be oblivious to the problem themselves and say "you need Presentation Training." It's not just telling them that they can't do an element of their jobs, it's far more personal than that. It's telling them that their personality isn't good enough and they are a failure... Not that they need to build skills to match the rest or their highly skilled work... No, they PERSONALLY are a failure.

To you it's a minor change, to them, it's screwing with their image of themselves.

What if they already know that there is a problem?

They know that they smell, they've tried all the usual remedies; self help books, youtube videos, hiding in a cupboard and having a cry, delegating to someone else... and they are now so dissolution that they begrudgingly use PowerPoint as a distraction whilst they talk into their notes.

The presenting has become a self fulfilling prophecy, "I'm bad so my presentations are bad" (repeat to fade).

Offering training is just rubbing salt into their wounds...

Who's fault is this situation?

Some of the problem is the fault of the employer; rather than looking for aptitudes Presenting comes with the role and you just lump it.

Some of it is the fault of the individual; they don't want to admit to a problem.

Some of it is the fault of colleagues; not wanting to say "with training you'd be so much better".

And some of it can be levelled at the wider business community allowing bad presentations to happen without question and then going off to see another bad presentation...

Businesses of Britain, now is the time to be honest with each other, now is the time to be honest with yourself.

If you want your business to grow succeed and flourish, let's stop being so damned 'English' about things and cry out "I have no idea what I'm doing in front of an audience I NEED PRESENTATION TRAINING!!"

Photo Credit: miserablespice via Compfight cc

Piggy Back

The "Fuel Crisis" has started again. From the mouth of Francis Maud (whom I've blogged about before) comes a miss guided tip, and the country goes into meltdown.

This is a great opportunity for you. It really is.

Every single Local Radio Station will be talking about the looming crisis, the panic buying and the queues at the pumps; all you need to do is call them and piggy back the story.

Here's how to piggy back.

1) Identify what everyone is talking about.
Last night there was talk of little else, so you should have been thinking of how this story affects your business / charity / organisation. Do you have people on the road? Are you a sole trader who works with their van? What about meals on wheels!

2) Think of a universal line.
If you can say "I bet lots of people are in the same boat" then great. If you can't then think harder. Transport troubles in the world of herpetology isn't shared experience; freelance self employed delivery driver (who happens to cater for herpetologists is) if it means one child will go without their snake then it's terrible.

3) Say what you feel not what you think.
You feel worried that if fuel stocks run out then the old ladies won't get their meals, you are angry at the people who are filling up cars that do tiny mileage a week when you have to fill up every second day, you feel disappointed that this crisis threatens your charities work. Feel don't think.

4) Sound good.
You need to be calm prepared and slick. There's no use calling a phone-in and getting your business a mention when you sound like a school child who's been caught smoking in the bogs. Get the terror out of your head, listen to how the presenter is treating other callers and take your cue from that.

Don't forget that you have to get past the producer first "I want to talk to [insert alliterative local radio name here] about the problems for small businesses / charities / health workers / etc.", they will want you to get to the point, tell them the story and then repeat that on air to the presenter. If you sound normal then you certainly will get on.

5) Don't plug too hard.
A couple of mentions of a company name are fine, but more than that the presenter will pull you up on it and embarrass you. No one wants a public telling off.

6) Don't get drawn into politics.
"So what should the government have done?" and the answer is "I'm not sure about that, all I'm sure of is that my clients won't be happy and I'm not happy about the situation. I've built up "Farnsbarns Industries" over a number of years and this sort of thing could really tarnish our reputation and loose us money; and there are loads of other businesses that are going through the same thing." Lovely. No political argument, well side stepped and moved on. Your company / charity / organisation, unless it is always overtly political shouldn't get into a political debate. When you're on air talking for THEM you can't let personal bias suddenly become your company stance.

7) Be brief enough to get a news clip.
The news clip is the great bit in a bulletin where they lift stuff out of the broadcast and recycle. f you give punchy answers and short sentences it's easier for them to lift what you say and play it all day long. If they don't credit your company name when they do use it, call them and ask them to.

You can learn more about controlling the news agenda here.

Expert Help for Small Business

There are some things that small businesses need to do... and they do them, and there are some things that small businesses need to do but they don't. Often it's because they fall outside the field of experience, some times it's just the feeling that, well, it's all a bit difficult and scary.

PR is one of these things. There are hundreds of businesses that are watching competitors grow because they have been in the paper, they were on the radio or there was that bit about [insert business your type here] and they interviewed [insert name of your competitor here] on the 6 o'clock news. How did they get there?

There are ways that any business, big or small can get into the conventional media.

1) Know how journalists think.
Journalism is a miss-understood profession. The things that drive journalists are far simpler than the search for exclusives and exposes.

2) Know how Journalists work.
Disappointingly they don't all rush into news rooms with their trilby's on their heads shouting 'Hold the front page'.

3) Know how to take advantage of Journalists.
No, not like that...

4) Know where the sweet spot is.

This is something that I've realised over my 16 years of being in news rooms. There is a sweet spot for journalists and it all revolves around the idea of Effort going into a story, the Quality of the final story and the overall Feedback once that story has been published. Journalists may say that they are in it to tell the truth, but one of thier drivers is the praise that they get... like anyone else really.

So the best story for everyone is the one that takes all their effort becomes a great quality story that gets lots of praise; that is DIFFICULT, so let's put that to one side.

For the Journalist the PERFECT story is one that is great quality that gets praise and awards but takes little or no effort. I've witnessed a few of those in my time and it's brilliant for an organisation to achieve that. It is, however almost impossible to engineer that without the journalist pulling the plug with a sense of 'too good to be true... so it isn't'.

The everyday REALITY of journalistic life is that you really make an effort on a story, that turns out not to be as good as you thought, but you put it out anyway and no one really cares. Most of the TV, Radio, and News Paper content is stuff that was really good in the news meeting and then it became average when it came to publishing/broadcasting.

The sweet spot for most businesses sits at the end of this chart. It's the story that is HOPED FOR. It's the story that takes just enough effort for the journalist to feel happy that they have done a days work, it's good enough to be above average so the effort feels even better and it receives more positive feed back than expected (from audience, management & peers). It's a story that every business, with a little preparation can produce.

5) Get your timing right.
If what you want to say is said when they don't want to listen what's the point?

6) It's the way you tell 'em.
Frank Carson was right...

To help with all of this I'm holding a 3 hour seminar on the 15th of March at The Gloucestershire Enterprise Training Centre in Twigworth. There are a limited number of places available and we'll go through how you get great PR without writing a single press release. To book a place click here and email me, John Rockley. I'll send you more information and a booking form.

Take Advantage Of The Media (or PR without Press Releases for Small Business.)

Thursday 15th of March 2012. 9.30 to 12.30

£55 per person including VAT

Gloucestershire Enterprise Training Centre
Twigworth Court Business Centre,
Tewkesbury Road,
Twigworth,
Gloucestershire.
GL2 9PG

Who Takes Responsibility?

Recently there has been a focus on the idea of 'Joint Enterprise' particularly when associated with criminal convictions for violent crimes but it's a concept every shrewd business person needs to be aware of.

So what do I mean by 'Joint Enterprise'? It's more than shared responsibility, and it's far more than a post disaster blame storm; it's the concept that product development, public relations, marketing, advertising, sales strategy and everything in between is everyone's responsibility success or failure. 

Take my time with the BBC for example, I saw a number of programme strands that were flawed in thier original concept and under performed in their on air state. I may have had no responsibility for the idea or even be involved in the production, but like the gang member who doesn't call the police I stood by and watched it happen (OK sometimes it was for personal gain, for 'shits and giggles' and probably so that I could enjoy the warm glow of schadenfreude but I can admit that now). 

Is there too much fear in sticking your nose in? Is there a feeling that once a project gets to a certain point then questioning is seen as unhelpful? Do we just want an easy life?

There's been a lot written about the treatment of whistleblowers in the NHS and how staff are afraid to step up and question practice or policy; an enlightened organisation should welcome honest in put from any member of staff. If that person has an area of concern, expertise, or a perspective that's not being taken into account as a stakeholder then it's part of the collective responsibility to listen and it's part of the concept of 'Joint Enterprise' for that person to step up. It's their organisation too...