I’ve just come back from an incredible external training session with international presentation training company BodyTalk, focusing on Powerful Pitching. It covered everything from presentation skills and body language to using storytelling structures to make our content sing.
The course was hosted in the FleishmanHillard Amsterdam office and saw fellow consultants from Dubai, Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, Riyadh and London attend. This is us after the two-day course celebrating our new found gesture skills – can you spot the BBC presenter hands?
It was an intense, awe inspiring course – so what did we learn?
- Storytelling structure – you CAN write a pitch in under six minutes. With a simple structure which outlines your credibility to advise, the challenge, the promise/benefit, how you plan to do what you propose and an action for the client to takeaway, it’s possible to deliver a powerful and compelling pitch.
- Create feelings with everything you say – presenting should leave the person listening with a feeling. Be it excitement, inspiration, fear or determination, every part of your structure should evoke a different emotion alongside it. You can then take the listener on a journey resulting in them becoming a part of it.
- Objection handling – with any presentation, there are often questions – and we learnt how you should drill down under the question to learn more. Empathise with the questioner – don’t just shut them down, ask them to clarify with more questions (they should talk, not you). And once you’ve reached an understanding, offer a proposal and check they are happy with that solution. Do that, and you should be able to walk out with the whole room’s buy-in.
Oh, and not forgetting that people remember things in threes. Which I hope means you’ll remember these great tips for presenting in future, and signpost your information in a similar way the next time you deliver some counsel.
Rachel Bowden, Account Director, Brand Marketing
