Month: February 2009

 

The face bone is connected to the wrist bone.

That’s right. Very often, when our clients are having trouble improving their hand gestures, we’ll focus on their facial energy. That’s because if you improve facial energy, the gestures will often improve.

“What do I do with my hands?”  is a question we get from a lot of our clients and workshop participants.  And like most public speaking skills companies, our programs include a very effective module on hand and arm gestures and body movement.

But often we see gestures improve simply by energizing the face.

Be Like Jim Carrey on Steroids

“Here’s what I’d like you do during your presentation,” one of our coaches will tell a workshop participant.  “Deliver your next presentation with too much facial energy. It should feel like you’re face is over-active, like Jim Carrey on steroids.”

And the participant will speak on videotape with lots of eye brow action, exaggerating the smiles and grimaces.  We’ll then look at the tape and see that the gestures suddenly became quite natural!  It’s like the facial energy somehow fixed the gestures!

Of course, what’s happening is that the focus on the facial energy has made the participant “forget” about his hands and start gesturing in a natural, energized and confident manner.

Other Tips for Gestures

The fact is that while we teach gestures, movement, facial energy, and vocal energy as separate modules, they often all work together and are naturally connected.  If you improve your facial energy, there’s a good chance that you will improve your gestures.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.  Much of the time, gestures can be improved with a few simple tips:

Make Big Gestures: the best gestures reach out and make you take up a lot of space.  The bigger you look, the more confident you will appear to your listeners. 

Hold the Gestures Through a Thought: No apple picking!  Don’t stab at the air with your hands.  That can be distracting. Rather reach out and hold the gesture confidently until you’ve completed your thought.

Gesture Boldly: Think about how an umpire calls a person “safe” when sliding into home.  He makes a strong decisive movement. That powerful movement makes him look confident.

 

Many speakers insist on making their listeners play “Where’s Waldo?”

If you don’t remember, “Where’s Waldo?” is the addictive series of drawings by British Illustrator Martin Hanford. The drawings include busy crowd scenes. Your job is to identify Waldo in the crowd. 

Many speakers make their listeners play a corporate version of “Where’s Waldo.”  They throw out a mass of confusing information and expect their listeners to find the point.

It’s easy to avoid a game of “Where’s Waldo” with your listeners.  All you have to do is say things like “My single point here is . . . . ”  Or “The three key things I want to you remember are  . . . .”

“Where’s Waldo” is great fun with a two-year-old.  It’s a lot less fun in a business meeting.

“Why do you love your dog?”

That’s a question that I’ve been posing lately in my presentations about how to deliver a winning sales presentation.

Here’s what a bank president said when I asked it Thursday morning.  “I love him because every time I see him, he’s so glad to see me.”

What’s the point here?  Just as people love dogs because the dogs love them, people tend to like people who like them.

This is an incredibly important idea to understand if you want to deliver sales presentations in a way that wins business.

You need to make sure that when you’re delivering your presentations, that you make it clear that you like the people you’re presenting to.

How do you do that? Let’s count five ways.

1. Smile at them when you speak to them.  One of our firm’s oldest sayings is “A smile is the shortest distance between two people.”

2. Speak in an enthusiastic, friendly tone.  The next time that you’re having an animated dinner conversation with a close friend, remember how it sounds and feels. Then use that exact same tone when you’re speaking to a prospect during a sales presentation.

3. When your prospect asks a question, don’t put it off.  Realize that your prospect’s question is incredibly important.  Treat it that way. Drop everything! Answer the question.  Friends answer their friends’ questions.

4.  Listen to your prospect. This means that when he tells you before the presentation that he’s interested in knowing exactly how you are going to get the project done in 12 months, you address that specific issue.  Addressing that issue prominently shows respect.

5.  Propose a serious solution to your prospect’s business problem. If you come in to a presentation and clearly have worked extremely hard at finding a solution to your client’s real estate challenges, that shows that you not only want the business, but that you care about your prospect.