Public Speaking is hard.
Last week we featured a guest post from Gord McDougall about pitching your company. This led one of our Alacrity advisers, Richard Zwicky, to consider common mistakes that people, not just entrepreneurs, should avoid making when speaking or presenting to investors, groups, and conferences.
Drawing on years of experience in public speaking and pitching VC’s to raise capital, and recognizing the errors he either made or watched others make repeatedly, we have put together a top 12 list (why be traditional and go top 10 like everyone else?) of common mistakes.
Here are the first six:
Top Common Speaking Errors and How to Avoid Making Them
#12. Lack of Dynamism
Some presenters feel most comfortable behind a podium. However, if you stand still and just speak, it is difficult to demonstrate passion or engagement. If you don’t engage, why should the audience?
Speakers who are very comfortable with the topic they are speaking about tend to move around. This allows them to use gestures that bring the audience with them on a journey through the storytelling experience. Moving helps convey excitement and passion for the subject at hand and, done well, it gets the audience engaged and excited.
Use hand gestures that feel natural and, unless you are trying to elicit a laugh or over emphasize a point, avoid being too flamboyant with your arms. That being said, occasionally overdoing it is far better than being a talking statue.
#11. Avoiding Eye Contact
If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone who did not look you in the eye, you know the uncomfortable atmosphere it creates. For audiences, avoiding eye contact with the crowd can be both annoying and disconcerting, increasing tension in the room and making it much more difficult for you to present to and engage the audience naturally.
If you believe in what you are presenting, you should be able to look the person you are speaking with in the eye! However, if you are speaking to a crowd and feel nervous, rest assured that the audience understands and sympathizes. Every single person who speaks in public is nervous at some point. Some great speakers are always nervous.
The key to overcoming your nerves is simple. Find three friendly faces in the crowd that are seated apart from each other and alternate addressing each of them with your gaze. If you can’t find three friendly faces, choose three plants or light switches! Choose one on each wall in the room, and shift your glance between them. Choose items that are generally low enough that people will think you are looking at someone, but high enough that allows you from making eye contact until you are comfortable. By using this easy trick whenever you’re presenting, you will quickly discover that friendly, interesting faces exist in every crowd and you will naturally gravitate your attention towards them, making you a more natural and less nerve-racked speaker.
#10. Bullet Points
I’ll admit that, like almost everyone else, I use bullet points occasionally. They definitely have a place. But not on every slide! My most successful slide decks have 1 or 2 slides with bullets and the rest of the slides are images, charts, graphs… anything but text. Why? Because bullets work best as takeaways to summarize what you have already spoken about.
The problem with bullet points on a slide is that they work a little too well. Your audience will be inclined to read the information, but so will you. Bullet points naturally draw a presenter in, imploring them to say those precise words while speaking, which makes them sound rehearsed and hinders the natural flow of the presentation.
Instead of using bullet points on the slide, use a relevant picture. Keep the points you need to make on your speaker notes, or as bullets in presenter view to remind you what to talk about, and to engage the audience to listen to you instead of encouraging them to read slides while you’re reading to them.
If you don’t want to put your audience to sleep (even if it looks like they could use a nap), keep your bullet points to a minimum and use them only to summarize your talking points. This will ensure that the audience pays attention to the words coming from your mouth instead of the words on the screen.
#9. Not Preparing Well
Steve Jobs was a famous for his presentations (among many other qualities). His speeches may have looked effortless, but as the head of a public company, he had to prepare and rehearse word-for-word every single statement he made in a presentation. Most of us never face that type of scrutiny, but we still need to prepare accordingly.
There are various ways to ensure that enough preparation has been put into a presentation and the one you choose to go with depends on the type of presentation and your own personal style. When I used to present at conferences, I would see people who spent days and weeks preparing their slide decks for that specific event. I, on the other hand, would not. Instead, I would be preparing each of my presentations iteratively every single day.
Careful preparation of your presentation is essential, but if you are presenting what you’re really passionate about, it is most likely something you live and breathe every day. Therefore, you should already be constantly preparing and iterating how and what you present to others.
Yes, it’s a good idea to start working through your presentation early (for instance, on day one of a venture) because you can never be too well-prepared. But it’s also important to find the right balance between memorizing every word of your presentation and winging it completely. Preparing well will depend on the circumstances so try a few things and figure out what works best for you and your presentation given the time, topic, and audience you’re presenting to.
#8. Too Much Jargon
We’ve all committed this sin at some point. Every industry has terminology that is known only to others within that industry. If you are presenting your information to someone outside that core group, they will not understand what you are talking about unless you forgo the jargon and simplify or at least explain terms before you use them. For example, if I say to someone at Alacrity that Penguin and Panda slapped me silly, they’ll wonder how I emerged without a scratch, and how they too can get special access to the zoo. Make the same statement to a search marketer, and they’ll know exactly what you are speaking about.
It’s hard to reduce difficult concepts into easy-to-absorb information. Being able to do so is a valuable skill that requires a certain level of expertise, and lots of practice.
Filling your presentation with jargon won’t prove you are an expert, but talking through or defining those terms in ways that are easy for any audience to understand will.
#7. Making Things Overly Complicated
Ever wonder why the optimal video for marketing purposes is under 90 seconds? The answer is attention span. The average adult has a less than an eight-minute attention span, so it’s critical to engage an audience using simple concepts during those eight minutes.
The best speakers do not depend on volumes of data. While they will reference facts, they enrich their content through emotional appeal. Presentations that use analogies and stories work best because they make the topic being discussed relatable, regardless of the subject matter.
Short, concise, simple facts are more powerful than long, drawn out conclusions based on reams of information. To the same end, short, to the point presentations are much more impactful than verbose ones. If you have 10 minutes to speak, do not try to fit 20 minutes of content in the time. People may be blown away at first, but when they get back to their desks, they will not remember the details of how to utilize the information you have worked so hard to share.
Worse, if you strive for an all-in-one presentation, a VC will be unable to repeat your story to an associate because of information overload, and you will have lost your opportunity to be one of the few memorable presenters they met that day. Would you rather have one meeting with an investor which leaves their head spinning or 5 meetings that build to an investment?
Try to limit your presentation to a few main points and don’t take too long getting to them. Find a balance between creating build-up, but not keeping the suspense up long enough to lose your audience’s attention. Making your points effectively will ensure that they remember what you said and their follow-up questions will drive further discussion.
Keep it simple (stupid). It will help you make your presentation a useful and valuable exercise for the attendees.
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Stay tuned tomorrow for the remaining 6 common mistakes you should avoid making when presenting.