Gone in 60 Seconds - Presentation Training 16/9/9

As a trainer there's nothing better than watching people develop, that for me is the reason I do what I do and having some tools and drills that create highly experiential learning environments with the emphasis more on the 'doing' is a great place to watch people develop.

Soft skills development training
Today I trained with a group of people in Leeds who came from as far as Bristol, Ripponden and the North East and as local as Bradford and Greetland. All the delegates are business owners who had identified that an improvement in their soft skills, specifically when it comes to presenting your business message at networking events, would improve their opportunity in building business relationships and those who experienced what the day has to offer left with a mixture of confidence and control and 'language tools in their back pockets' that beef up your business message and the 'style' in which you deliver.

Providing conditions for fast paced learners
State management to attain 'presenter state' and techniques to enable you to do just that form a reasonable portion of the course with opportunities to continually evaluate your performance and build your skills. Of course, some progress quicker than others so providing exercises that are challenging, yet scalable, for those moving forwards quicker than others, is key. In addition, some people shift in state and behaviour when they feel challenged and being able to coach and identify continuous improvement and 'journey travelled' means that no matter what, everyone is continually improving. Overall, the day was a success.

With everything, there is something to learn or enhance and today was no exception. Learning points for me centred around some admin that I'd overlooked, and overunning a short while. Timing is critical in these situations with people who have travelling commitments wanting more time to get on the road to wherever they are going, you have to consider their position and sometimes be flexible enough to cut out bits or add/spend time with those who require a bit more attention, without diluting potency or value.

A successful day
Under quite challenging circumstances whereby it was pretty clear that delegates were at times outside of their comfort zones I'd like to say 'fair play' to everyone who attended. You got stuck in, made mistakes, coached, watched and learned, took on the drills and as a result, some delegates said that, "The day was a massive success for them" and surely, when it comes to choosing a training that's one of the things you expect isn't it?

The big question is, "Did they improve?"


" Excellent mentoring, great delivery with impact, an invaluable training experience!"
James Malone, Calder Valley Security

"Really enjoyed the challenging course and believe that business will increase as a result"
Tom Lawrence, Area Leader 4Networking and TLC Office Supplies

"Challenging! Thanks Nick, it's coming together!"
Rob Arthur, Rob Arthur Photography

"Nicks style is to encourage and develop the person. I found the course challenging and feel I have developed as a person"
John Elcock, Bradfor GRID

"I genuinely thought todays course was excellent. I can feel a huge difference in myself and I'm very excited about going out and doing my job!"
Amy Driver, Bradford GRID

"Very professional, instills confidence, quite commanding in style which is interesting and works"
Tamsen Garrie, Network Director, 4Networking

"I got the expansion I needed and particularly liked the way the course was able to be tailored to individual needs"
Denise MaCallum, Prime Investigations


If you or anyone you know in business is wondering if a course, like this one, is for you as it progresses you towards your objectives, then why not contact Binary Vision to discuss your requirements? Then you can start to experience how fast tracking your soft skills with us is not just training, but its also a damn good day out.

Rapport building

Building and managing relationships is key to business success and there are additional soft skills that a person can accrue to enhance their relationship building skills further.

Your contacts, employees, suppliers and anyone else who you are in contact with all have unique characteristics, qualities and behaviours that once recognised by you, can be utilised to cement and strengthen 'bonds' further. By paying attention to a persons methods and ways of communicating - what they are saying and how they are saying it - provides 'knowledge' to you in terms of their personal communication 'style' and how they prefer to be communicated to.

Observing these 'patterns' allows you the opportunity to operate on their wavelength. Rapport building is a skill and it happens naturally. You will have been in situations where you are with a friend, acquaintance or colleague and for whatever reason you have that feeling of 'connection' with them. You get them and they get you and your deisred outcome is achieved. You were 'talking the same language', maybe 'matching and mirroring' eachothers physiology, gestures, voice tone - maybe without realising it! On the other hand you may also have been with people where all you wanted to do was end the conversation and move on, for whatever reason. No connection, no commonality, no shared objectives. What would have happened in this circumstance if you were to have matched and mirrored their style?

Most people have heard of mirroring and matching. It can be effective and the advice here is to go out and experiment with it. Watch out for the subtle movements, gestures that a person makes when you communicate with them and match their patterns.

See what results you get, what level of connection you feel and if you achieve your outcome.

Play time.

Do you need to toughen up your soft skills?

In the current business climate where numerous transactions of various forms take place every day of the week it could be a fair bet to state that 'business won' is determined by some key factors.


As an Executive or Owner your key objective is be to be 'out there building relationships' to get the business to grow. Your role in making that happen is to communicate your business message and listen to others and understand needs. How you do that will determine the success of the relationships you form at whatever level and will create profit or losses. To some people you may be accepted, to others you may form stronger bonds and knowing that people buy people, your ability to adapt to the differing types, characteristics and styles is paramount to 'your name being in the frame' when the time is right.

Think about it. Your 'presentation of yourself' i.e what you wear, your level of confidence, or any other 'state or feelings' you experience at the thought of having to go up to people and start conversations, make big telephone calls, approach difficult tasks and your 'behaviour' whilst you do that along with the words, sentences and value you attach to the style of your delivery, is the recipe for success and the business executive and owner of this era can survive the storm by following a few simple guidlelines that for some might constitute a personal development plan. However, most, I'm sure, will view this as an opportunity to think about how improvements, large and small, can enhance their skills dramatically to create more business for you.

Some people find things that you find challenging easy

Your softer skills, that is your behavioural patterns, your personal presentation skills and your style are so important when you think about it. How you 'deliver' is down to you and growing in these areas should be high on anybodys list of requirements. The way you think about business, the challenges it throws, the parts of it you 'like' and 'dislike' are all deemed that way because you have given those tasks those 'labels.' For example, there are people out there who find it easy making cold calls and others who have no problems attached with just going up to a group and requesting to 'join in'. The way you approach these tasks with the sometimes 'half heartedness' or even 'fear' means that their success is diminished and business opportunities lost because of how you feel about them. However, things can change.

Those feelings you experience when you think about a challenging area of your business are as a result of what goes on in your visual field i.e what you see or sense as you manouvre around the world of business. That in turn goes through a number of processes that creates a feeling that you may refer to as 'productive or counter productive'. That feeling then determines if you get your outcome in that task or not and in the style or manner you would want to. Either way, it contributes to the outcome.

Some personal development techniques that are in use by companies large and small today enable those who choose to get involved, with an opportunity to experience how to play with their sensory based channels. By restructuring the elements of the sensory channels changes how you think and feel about your challenges so a person can move on and experience 'preferred feelings' associated with a once challenging task. You can now approach people easily with a different level of confidence that enables you to join in, make those calls and present easily with the style which is appropriate for you. This is soft skills development.

Think of a dog, then a solicitor

And language is also a very important factor to take into consideration. The language you omit provides the listener with an experience of what it is you do based on how they compute that information given to them. As you speak to another that person reference checks the words you issue against their own 'internal dictionary' that is linked to the sounds, images and feelings that they, associate with those words. For example. if I say to you 'think of a dog' a particular style/type will come into your visual field. It may be a dog that carries some sort of experience or emotional attachement with it and those feelings may come to the fore as you think about that dog. What happens when you say 'solicitor' or 'printer'. What happens then? Do you view a solicitor you know or does it draw up other types of experiences and feelings associated with past experiences? Different people experience different sensations internally when they experience the words you use and 'how' you say them.

To illustrate the point, think about how scalable language can be. Are you effective at what you do, very effective or exceptionally effective? Do you provide services, good services or fantastic services? Are you feeling OK about the future, confident about the future or not looking forward to it at all?

Calibration - that's what you need.

We all have a preferred way of communicating and the ability to 'calibrate' to another persons way of accepting communication on their 'wavelength' is a key skill in communication. These skills are available to be learned, just like anything else like sales, accounts packages and SEO, and are absolutely paramount to the success of you and your business.

So. Sharpening your soft skills should be a part of any business persons list of needs. Having the right behavioural characteristics for the task in hand so you feel tuned to do it mode,' coupled with the communication skills to paint the right pictures means you'll soon be on your way to achieveing your goals and objectives.

Get the most out of your networking

Business networking is one topic that is at the forefront of most business owners minds right now. Why? When it's done well it yields results and when it's not, it doesn't and with business owners out there who are looking to maximise that return on their networking investment, then doing it to the best of your ability is high on the agenda.

A full range available

There are many different groups out there to choose from ranging from pure referral based set-ups where you accrue a surrogate sales team to work on your behalf, through to informal 'social gatherings' where your ticket to success relies on the words that leave your mouth and the 'style' in which YOU deliver them. Throughout this spectrum of opprtunity there is a format that will suit you and your business, no doubt about it, yet before you go and start networking there are a few fundamentals to take into account.

Activity management

Like many other business development activities, networking IS business development and IS measureable. As a business owner or representative of a business you have made an investment in time and money to be there at the event so to measure your success in your chosen environment should be on your agenda post event, shouldn't it?

Why are you there?

Firstly - manage your expectations in relation to networking. Business networking is not a forum for a person to go and directly sell their wares. Most would agree it is a platform for business owners and decision makers to communicate with eachother, build relationships, get to know, like and trust one another before 'possibly' making an appropriate recommendation where available to your business. Rightly so, you are there to raise the profile of your business, make people aware of who you are, what you do, the value you provide and , if appropriate to do so, request who you might be interested in speaking with so making 'commtiment' to the 'who and how many' question should be a consideration. For those who are part of a group already, it could be your responsibility to communicate the benefits of the group or outline some of the success achieved by the group to maintain the level of interest amongst visitors.

What do you want to achieve?

Having personal and business objectives in mind is crucial. To go networking without an objective is potentially hazardous. Why? Because if you 'prefer' this environment to develop your business (as opposed to telemarketing for example) yet don't commit to speaking with new people then you are not developing your business as efficiently as you could. Committing to speaking with new people, committing to speaking to exisiting contacts about success stories since you last met and committing to step outside of your comfort zone to do these things can be a part of your plan. In addition to telling others about you, you must also make time to allow others to return to you information about them, their business and offer, if appropriate, how you can help them. Having an objective to help someone will move you quicker towards communicating with many.

Offering a helping hand!

Some people say that better networkers are those that give and there are often people who you come across who are only more than happy to assist you and your business. THIS IS QUITE NORMAL and not to be misconstrued as someone being over keen or intrusive. You can tell those types a mile off! Rooms of people hold valuable skills, contacts and experience and for those who find people with skills sets that are slightly unique, there may be opportunities for you to experience that offering before having the opportunity to recommend to your valuable contacts. Go in a giving mood - you never know what might occur. Would you want to be amongst givers of takers?

Building rapport with the people in the room

Your ability to learn or advance your personal rapport building skills is paramount to the success of your networking. With so many people 'unaware' of how to build rapport with people easily, maintaining conversations and communicating 'on their level' is a pre-requisite to advancing a relatiionship in your desired direction so the skills are their to be learned. Rapport happens naturally for most people and the next time you are out there networking, take a look around the room and as you listen to the conversations taking place, also take note of body positions. You may notice many mirroring and matching of behavioural patterns as you do that.

Your 60 second message

Whether off the cuff or planned to the hilt, your business message is to be clear and concise. Your ability to communicate in a confident manner whilst illustrating your offering is the prime skill to be honed in this environment. Couple that with a style that is natural and appealing to the listener(s) and you have a combination of ingredients to get you known in the right areas.

Presentations

The best opportunity in business networking awaits you at the 10 minute 4site/spotlight/insight part of the meeting. For those who choose to get involved and do it, this is the main event. It's not very often that you get an opportunity to showcase your business for 10 minutes with no interruption, everyone listening, just you and your peers hearing about what it is you do, how you do it and how you help people in business to get their results. This moment in time is not a direct sales pitch with no room for identification of offers, pricing structures or persuasion to use. It is your opportunity to give more information than you might in 40-60 seconds whilst going round the table over breakfast. A chance to let people get to know you and the business better, see your style, your personality and your skills and knowledge. What an opportunity, take it with both hands when the time is right for you to do that.

Post event tools!

Some of the more 'with it' networking businesses have harnessed the power of the internet and in particular social networking as part of their offering with great success. Those businesses have managed to allow their members to continue their relationship building online, in between meetings. This opportunity allows you and your business multiple ways of promoting yourself, your knowledge, offers, thoughts and anything else you consider of value to a listening community. In addition, the opportunity to contribute to other business owners thoughts, dilemmas and challenges via the contribution to 'threads' is an indirect way of promoting you and your knowledge to that community. If your business knowledge enables you to provide interesting and relevant articles that will benefit community members then this is yet another way for you to showcase yourself.

Investing time, not effort

When you look at all the various ways you can promote your business, owners and representatives are advised not to be fooled into thinking that liaising on linkedin, tinkering on twitter or any other social media for that matter is 'messing about on the net'. By adopting a time managed approach, say 20 minutes a day, to such activity, can and does build and cement further relationships. As the old saying goes, you have to 'in it to win it' and as communication methodologies advance, the advice is to get on board and commit to making it work in which ever way is best for you to do that.

Can you evolve with it?

So. It does pay to invest time, thought and effort into networking. It also pays to move with the times and step outside of your comfort zone to adopt the latest ways of working to get your business. Business is evolving and so is the way it is being done. You have to prepare yourself to choose to evolve with it.