Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story - Softcover

Weissman, Jerry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0131875108 ISBN 13: 9780131875104

Publisher: FT Press, 2006

Synopsis

In Presenting to Win: Persuading Your Audience Every Time, the world's #1 presentation consultant shows how to connect with even the toughest, most high-level audiences--and move them to action. Jerry Weissman shows presenters of all kinds how to dump those PowerPoint templates once and for all--and learn to tell compelling stories that focus on what's in it for their listeners. Drawing on dozens of practical examples and real case studies, Weissman shows presenters how to identify their real goals and messages before they even open PowerPoint; how to stay focused on what their listeners really care about; and how to capture their audiences in the first crucial 90 seconds. From bullets and graphics to the effective, sparing use of special effects, Weissman covers all the practical mechanics of effective presentation--and walks readers through every step of building a Power Presentation, from brainstorming through delivery. Unlike the techniques in other presentation books, this book's easy, step-by-step approach has been proven with billions of dollars on the line, in hundreds of IPO road shows before the world's most jaded investors.

 

Foreword to the Paperback Edition  xxiii

Preface: What’s Past Is Prologue  xxvii

Introduction: The Wizard of Aaaahs  xxix

Chapter One: You and Your Audience  3

Chapter Two: The Power of the WIIFY  15

Chapter Three: Getting Creative: The Expansive Art of Brainstorming  27

Chapter Four: Finding Your Flow  51

Chapter Five: Capturing Your AudienceImmediately  83

Chapter Six: Communicating Visually  109

Chapter Seven: Making the Text Talk  123

Chapter Eight: Making the Numbers Sing  143

Chapter Nine: Using Graphics to Help Your Story Flow  157

Chapter Ten: Bringing Your Story to Life  189

Chapter Eleven: Customizing Your Presentation  215

Chapter Twelve: Pitching in the Majors  231

Chapter Thirteen: Animating Your Graphics  237

Chapter Fourteen: The Virtual Presentation  257

Appendix A: Tools of the Trade  273

Appendix B: Presentation Checklists  277

Acknowledgments  283

Index  287

About this title

About the Author:

Jerry Weissman, the world’s #1 corporate presentations coach, founded and leads Power Presentations, Ltd. in Foster City, CA. His private clients include executives at hundreds of the world’s top companies, including Yahoo!, Intel, Cisco Systems, Intuit, Dolby Laboratories, and Microsoft.

Weissman coached Cisco executives before their immensely successful IPO road show; afterward, the firm’s chairman attributed at least two to three dollars of Cisco’s offering price to Weissman’s work. Since then, he has prepared executives for nearly 500 IPO road shows, helping them raise hundreds of billions of dollars. His techniques have helped another 500 firms develop and deliver their mission-critical business presentations.

Weissman is author of the global bestseller Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2003) and In the Line of Fire (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005) along with its companion DVD, In the Line of Fire: An Interactive Guide to Handling Tough Questions (www.powerltd.com).

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Weissman_preface.qxp

PREFACE

What's Past Is Prologue

My first experience with the power of the spoken word came on December 8, 1941, when as a child, I joined my father and mother at the family Philco radio to hear President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, deliver his stirring Day of Infamy speech. I'll never forget how he concluded, his rich voice reverberating: "With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounded determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God." In that exhilarating moment, Roosevelt's potent words pierced through our dismay, lifted our spirits, and restored our confidence in our nation and in our future.

Later, I learned more about the ability of words to move people's minds in my graduate classes in the Speech and Drama Department at Stanford University, where I studied the works of the great Greek orators. Still later, in my work as a news and public affairs producer for CBS Television in New York, I witnessed the momentous impact of the words of great national leaders, from John F. Kennedy to Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I never fully realized the universal significance of communication until I left the broadcast medium and entered the world of business. The medium of choice in business is the presentation, and I soon discovered the force it can exert: A poor presentation can kill a deal, while a powerful one can make it soar. Early in my business career, I was privileged to work on the Initial Public Offering presentation, known as an IPO road show, for Cisco Systems, and saw, on its first day of trading after the road show, Cisco's valuation increase by over 40 million dollars.

The big Aha! for me was the realization that every communication is an IPO. Everyone communicates every day. You do. I do. Every time we do, we can either fail or succeed. My job is to help you succeed in your everyday communications, just as I helped the Cisco IPO, and as I've helped hundreds of corporations like Microsoft and Intel, and thousands of clients who are executives or managers or salespeople just like you. My job is to help you persuade every audience, every time.

The very same principles that propelled Cisco's success reach all the way back to the classical concepts of Aristotle. Those same basics underlie Abraham Lincoln's towering rhetoric that healed a nation torn asunder by civil war. They underlie Sir Winston Churchill's inspiring orations and Franklin Roosevelt's assuring fireside chats that rallied their nations to the victorious defense of the free world. And they underlie Martin Luther King's rousing speeches that spearheaded the civil rights movement.

They also underlie your sales pitch, your presentation to a potential new customer, your bid for financing, your requisition for more resources, your petition for a promotion, your appeal for a raise, your call to action, and your own quest for the big Aha!

They are the principles that will empower you to present to win.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: FT Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0131875108
• ISBN 13: 9780131875104
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292