The New Rules of Pursuasive Presentations

could you please join me in welcoming carmine gallo morning everyone so how many of you as Berkeley MBA students have ideas for either this portion of your career or when you leave school ideas for new companies new products new services a few of you okay probably all of you all of you have stories to tell and so I want to help you today tell those stories more persuasively more effectively than ever because I understand that as MBA students here at Berkeley you come from different backgrounds and you have different job functions am I correct but you all have stories to tell some people are better than others at telling their stories this gentleman for example is pretty good at telling a corporate story but every pitch that you make every job interview I understand there will be job interviews coming up every pitch every interview every presentation is an opportunity for you to tell your story so what is that conversation like is it interesting and illuminating and inspiring or is it just the opposite dull boring confusing I think with some of the new rules of persuasive presentations that I want to talk to you about you will learn some real practical techniques that you can use today to tell that story more effectively regardless of whether it's a story about yourself maybe during an interview or a brand or a company or a product or a service now many of these techniques are based on this book that I wrote called the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs it has become an international bestseller and I'm really really proud of that and I think we can learn a lot by Steve Jobs because you can have a person can have the greatest idea in the world but if that person cannot convince enough other people it doesn't matter would you agree with that statement that's pretty accurate isn't it communication is always matter to my clients as Pat mentioned they touch your life every single day my clients are see Theo's and managers of these companies and they all have great stories to tell and we help them tell their stories so these are some of the techniques that I use with major CEOs and techniques that I write about in my book techniques that I've learned from Apple and from Steve Jobs but before I give you those specific techniques this is the fundamental concept underline all effective communication passion you cannot inspire anyone unless you're inspired yourself you have to be abundantly passionate about your message I believe that many of you can go on to have rewarding and successful careers without being completely passionate about what you're pitching but I doubt you ever reach that level of true inspiration inspirational leadership you have to be passionate about the message but it's more than just the obvious is it's real easy to say oh I'm passionate carmine that's not what I mean it's not this outward show of energy you need to ask yourself what is it about the product that brings me pleasure what is it about my service that I'm passionate about how is my product or service going to improve the lives of other people then you can start getting excited about it with passion can change the world for the better this man certainly believes that Howard Schultz is the founder and the CEO of Starbucks I interviewed him a couple of years ago for one of my books and some of the articles that I write I write for Forbes and I write for Business Week as well and he said something very interesting he said carmine when you are surrounded by people who share a collective passion around a common purpose there is no telling what can happen but what's interesting about Howard Schultz is you can speak to him for two hours and he'll rarely if ever mentioned the word coffee because that's not what he's selling that's not what he's passionate about he'll direct the conversation to a bunch of other topics he'd like to talk about customer service he'd like to talk about treating employees with dignity and respect he'd like to talk about creating a third place between work and home where people would feel comfortable gathering and what would that place look like he rarely mentions the word coffee because that would be the obvious thing Oh what are you passionate about well Howard Schultz must be passionate about coffee he's the coffee guy not necessarily because he rarely mentions the word coffee listen to this video clip from CNBC listen to how he articulates the vision behind Starbucks and you'll also notice that the hosts of this particular program had the exact same reaction I did when I first interviewed him and I think the only competitive advantage this is you know an anastomotic company is we have no patent we have no secret sauce whatsoever the only competitive advantage we have is a relationship we've built with our people in a relationship day I've built with the customer so when we go to virtually competitive advantage you haven't mentioned the word coffee not your competitive advantage is not your cause well I'll get to the quit let me just said you can get energy I agree with you yes the relationship yeah with your people and the people with therapy with the crystal and in fact if you ask me what business were in we're in the people business we're not in the coffee business of course we are as a product but we're in the people business you need to ask yourselves before every job interview before every pitch before every presentation what is it about this particular topic that I'm passionate about and it's not the obvious Howard Schultz is not passionate about coffee Steve Jobs is not passionate about computer hardware he's passionate about how those tools can help you unleash your personal creativity that's a big difference when it comes to communication in order for a message to be inspiring it has to do three things doesn't it it has to be understandable if I don't understand what you're saying I'm completely lost it has to be memorable especially if I have to talk to a decision maker somebody else in the company how am I going to relay what you told me if that other person wasn't there has to be memorable and it has to be emotional because we have to touch both sides of the brain the analytical side and the emotional side which is actually more when it comes to persuasion for persuasion to occur every pitch every presentation needs to have some components to make it more understandable let me give you some fantastic techniques that you can use today number one create Twitter friendly headlines I believe that you really need to think about how to articulate or communicate your product or service in 140 characters or less there is a reason your brain needs to see the big picture before learning about the details isn't that interesting that's why this slide is a problem what's the problem with this too much detail too much information this slide was actually delivered by an economist and you know how economists like to talk it was delivered by Morgan Stanley economists who had 20 minutes to talk but she had eight themes to deliver eight themes to get across that's a lot of information isn't it I'm a former journalist and so I watch how journalists covered the same stuff one journalist at this particular conference said this the mobile Internet is growing faster than you've ever imagined that was his headline the mobile Internet has grown faster than you've ever imagined in other words the journalist who was watching this came up with this headline so I created that slide I'm not the greatest designer but I created that slide what's more interesting to you what would have grabbed your attention and really want maybe you want to sit through this presentation for the next 20 minutes here I've got 8 things I want to talk to you about today or folks the mobile Internet is growing faster than you've ever imagined and I'm going to give you eight reasons why or several reasons why big picture before detail I think this is how the average presenter would have introduced the MacBook Air we're really excited to introduce the MacBook Air today it's a really phantom pewter it has a 13.3 inch widescreen display backlit keyboard intel processor a lot of details right lot of details what did Steve Jobs do he simply said it's the world's thinnest notebook if that's all you know that tells you a lot now you're going to watch the rest of the presentation to learn more you can go to the Apple website to learn more but if that's all you know it tells you a lot it also fits very easily within a Twitter post what's the iPad the iPad is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device now he only said at an unbelievable price once this was the first time you introduced it this is one of the first slides I think a lot of critics said $800 yeah that is unbelievable so he stopped using that but whether you think is hyperbole or superlatives so magical and revolutionary the point is if you google that phrase it does come up hundreds of thousands of times because that's the way he chooses to frame it for you and that's the point that's the point this is not don't do these things by committee it's up to you how do you choose to frame the communication behind a product or a service so always ask yourself what's my headline what is the one thing I want people to remember and make sure that it's in 140 characters or less if you cannot express yourself in 140 characters or less let's go back to the drawing board and keep working on it so now let's talk about act 2 we got to make it memorable how do we create content and messaging that people are going to remember I have one great technique that I use with all my clients Steve Jobs uses it it's fantastic use it today use it all the time it's called the rule of three in short-term memory we can only process about three or four points of information why do you give people 22 points they won't remember it all three points Steve Jobs will often break up presentations into threes the iCloud was the last of three services and software updates that he was going to talk about that day that's the one that got all the news of course but when he first came out he said there's three things I want to talk to you about today and he saved the best for last but he often does this three features of a product three sections of a presentation three models of an iPad it's all about simplicity both in the way they market and design products at Apple and in the way they communicate products at Apple what's the iPad 2 the iPad 2 is thinner lighter faster than the original that's it it's thinner lighter and faster Steve Jobs came out and he said there's three things I want you to remember about the iPad 2 its thinner lighter and faster let me go through each one so again you can use this for anything it doesn't have to be a major PowerPoint presentation you can use this these concepts and these techniques in any type of any type of conversation you're having so the rule of three very important we use this all the time with major presentations or with CEOs who are going on the media or television another thing that I want to talk to you about regarding you know making your story memorable is bring numbers to life put those numbers into context put those numbers into perspective Steve Jobs does this all the time when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPod in 2001 he said it stored the equivalent of five gigabytes of information what's five gigs nobody knows what five gigs means it doesn't sell any benefit oh it's 1,000 songs you remember that five gigs is the equivalent of 1,000 songs oh and we'll do one better it's five 1000 songs in your pocket that's interesting five gigs of storage is not interesting last year Cisco introduced the CRS three router routers are pretty boring big pieces of machines right that nobody ever sees so they realize they need to make it interesting and memorable they got to bring numbers to life this operates at three hundred and twenty two terabytes of information per second three hundred and twenty two terabytes of power that's a lot of power what does it mean when John Chambers first presented it he said that means it can stream every movie ever made in four minutes it can download the entire Library of Congress in one second now isn't that much more interesting than saying that it operates at three hundred twenty two terabytes a second and by the way the way they phrase this the way they communicated it was picked up by media all over the country media that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be covering a new router why because they put it into context that people understand bring numbers to life and finally we need to make your communications emotional John Medina taught me this he said the brain does not pay attention to boring things so you need to create what psychologists call emotionally charged events emotionally charged events are those events that elicit laughter fear joy surprise when the brain detects an emotionally charged event it releases dopamine into the system which acts as a mental post-it note saying remember this so how do you do that how do you do that in a presentation well you've already been seen it the whole time especially with some of these video clips number one think visually think visually because we're visual people this is hard this is how easier said than done but I just want to introduce the topic to you so you can think about pushing your presentations to the next level the typical PowerPoint slide Microsoft makes it kind of easy to create a slide like this what they say is let's put a title let's add a whole bunch of bullets and different colors and a different fonts aunt there's space there's empty space so let's make sure that we have some clipart and of course you know we're mba so we're going to have a chart in a graph and a line and all that so pretty soon this is what you get because you're trying to include all the information on one slide by the way I thought this was a pretty ugly slide when I first created it until I saw this that is a real slide that was created by the US military and one general allegedly looked at said if I can understand that we'll have won the war the difference in a Steve Jobs presentation and in any great presentation is that the slide acts as a compliment to the narrative the slide acts as a complement to the storyteller the average PowerPoint slide has 40 words it's hard to find 40 words in 10 Steve Jobs slides that's about all you'll see this is called picture superiority picture superiority simply means that when people see or hear information delivered verbally they remember about 10% add a picture and retention goes up to 65% so let's go back to the MacBook Air I created this this is what I think the average presenter would have done to introduce a new computer a new product they would have tried to put everything on one slide and maybe they were not have paid a lot of attention to it so you've got different fonts you've got some clipart here but I'm going to put everything on one slide Steve Jobs and Apple thought about it they said how would we describe the world's thinnest notebook in visual form oh why don't we just compare it to one of those envelopes that are in the office it's that thin it's so thin you could fit it inside an envelope what's more interesting that are this what's more inspiring what's more intriguing to you what's more emotional and memorable okay this takes work though that takes work that takes thought that takes this brainstorming whiteboarding sketching you got to think like a director director doesn't just pick up the camera they want they want boar and they sketch it out so think visually before you create your PowerPoint and one other emotional way of really appealing to people is by telling stories nobody tells stories it's amazing and yet stories are the most emotional and intriguing and interesting parts of a presentation I'll often talk to CEOs who are giving some pretty dry presentations and then behind the scenes they'll tell some great stories and I'll encourage that what you tell the story in your presentation oh well gee I never thought about that I thought it was just about delivering the info no you want to make it emotional so tell the story and more often than not at the end of the presentation people come up to the leader or whoever gave the presentation and they'll say hey love the story people remember stories stories can be about you stories can be about a case study they can be short they can be long or stories can be about something completely different like when Marissa Mayer introduced Google Instant she's the vice president of Google she introduced a new technology last year called Google Instant which predicts what you're searching for as you type it's very interesting the way she presented it she didn't just come out like most people would she didn't just appear on stage and say hey we have a great new technology to introduce you today it's called Google Instant we've been working on it for a long time we're really proud of it let me demonstrate it and most people would have done that instead she told a story of how search evolved over time here's an excerpt and as such and to put today's announcement in perspective her whole point was what took you a day and a half in 1935 will now take you three seconds with Google Instant isn't that a lot more interesting than what the average presenter would have done which is to come out introducer technology and demonstrate it okay that's simple this takes thought it's not about the slides it's about the technology it's about her story it's about what it can do for you but it's not about the slides the slides simply serve as a backdrop to the narration so remember to tell stories and when you tell stories use what we just talked about the visual display of information so I hope this morning I have convinced you to start thinking differently about what you do and what you can offer the world about your brand and about your product your service your ideas see the genius in your own craziness believe in yourself believe in your vision and be prepared to constantly defend those ideas and that vision because it's those ideas that are ultimately going to change the world thank you very much for inviting me this afternoon you're a great class appreciate

Channel: Carmine Gallo

Views: 33,111

Keywords: Carmine Gallo, Gallo Communications, Steve Jobs, Presentation Skills

Id: rT8we3V-qDs

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2011