Resonate, Nancy Duarte’s latest book, is for the serious student of presentations. Resonate delves deep into the art of presenting and analyzes precisely what makes a presentation persuasive and memorable. You don’t need to know this to create an effective presentation, just as you don’t need to know how an internal combustion engine works to be able to drive a car. But having the knowledge will lift your game another level.

There are many ideas in Resonate which will be familiar to students of the art of presenting: tell stories, have a big idea, create a logical persuasive structure. In this post, I explore the less-talked about ideas from Resonate.

1. Your audience is the hero

Nancy advocates a new attitude towards presenting.

You already know that your presentation should not be all about you and how brilliant you are (or how brilliant your company is). But what attitude should you take instead? Nancy recommends casting the audience as the hero of your presentation and suggests you, the presenter, take on the role of mentor. You invite the audience to come on a journey with you from their ordinary world to your special world – the world of your new idea, the change you’re proposing, or the product or service you’re selling:

As mentor, your role is to give the hero guidance, confidence, insight, advice, training or magical gifts so he can overcome his initial fears and enter into the new journey with you.

Casting yourself as mentor gives you both wisdom and humility. Nancy says:

Audience insights and resonance can only occur when a presenter takes a stance of humility.

2. Make the gap clear

There’s a gap between the audience’s ordinary world and your special world. It’s your job as presenter to make the gap clear and invite the audience to jump across the gap. Nancy calls this the contrast between what is and what could be.

Before your audience will be willing to come on a journey with you, they need to know that you understand them, that you can understand what it is like to walk in their shoes. You do this by describing what is:

You should deliver a concise formulation of what everyone agrees is true. Accurately capturing the current reality and sentiments of the audience’s world demonstrates that you have experience and insights on their situation and that you understand their perspective, context and values.

What could be is what you are leading your audience towards. The gap between what is and what could be should be clear to your audience. No fudging or ambiguity.

3. Create and use contrast

Nancy sees contrast as being a primary way of engaging and holding the audience’s attention.

Content contrast

The contrast between your views and your audiences’ views will fascinate your audience. If you attempt to play down the contrast so as not to stand out or attract resistance or objections from your audience, your presentation will be bland and boring.

Nancy suggests that for every idea or point in your presentation, you think through the contrasting idea. You may not use them all in your presentation but the thinking will be useful.

Emotional contrast

Contrast analytical content, such as data and facts, with emotional content such as stories, metaphors, shocking statements and surprise. Nancy suggests that you do an audit of your content, just as screenwriters do, to ensure there’s an appropriate balance between analytical and emotional content.

For a highly analytical audiences, such as scientists and economists, have less emotional content than for a lay audience, but don’t leave emotion out altogether – they are humans too.

4. Expect resistance

Acknowledging and working with the audience’s resistance and objections to your idea is a critical part of inviting them on your journey. Nancy reminds us that whenever we suggest change – whether it be organizational change, buying a new product, or even a positive move, your audience is likely to resist. That’s because change involves loss.

During your presentation, you may experience this as an apparent lack of interest, cynical body language, nitpicking over errors in your presentation and outright hostile questions or statements. Be ready for this by thinking through what objections your audience may have. Address these issues in your presentation. Nancy compares this to an inoculation:

An inoculation purposefully infects a person to minimize the severity of an infection. The same takes place when you emphatically address an audience’s refusals by stating them openly in your talk. This will help them see that you’ve thought through everything – which will decrease their anxiety.

Research has also shown that acknowledging and countering opposing viewpoints is more persuasive than only presenting your own viewpoint.

5. Something They’ll Always Remember

Create a memorable moment in your presentation – a S.T.A.R. moment (Something They’ll Always Remember). Traditional public speaking advice has advocated that this moment should be at the start of your talk – the cliched “attention-getting opening“. Nancy suggests that the attention-getting and memorable moment can be at any time in your presentation.  Nancy is clear about the dangers inherent in creation of a S.T.A.R. moment:

• it should magnify not distract from your big idea
• it should be worthwhile and appropriate, not kitschy or cliched.

These memorable moments are a vehicle for your big idea. A memorable moment can accelerate the spread of your idea exponentially.

These are only five ideas from Resonate, there are many more. And Nancy’s points are supported by detailed analysis of many presentations and speeches. If you’re a presentation geek, you’ll want this book on your bookshelf.

And as the curtain rose on the first night, I had a flash of intense vertigo, like I was going to pass out and couldn’t find my center. It sent me into a cold-sweat panic.

This is a quote from Jason Alexander, most well-known for his role as George Costanza in Seinfeld, from a book called Stage Fright: 40 Stars Tell You How They Beat America’s #1 Fear. I’ve been sent the book to review and I’ve highlighted below some of the best tips for overcoming stage fright when you’re presenting.

1. It’s not about you

Many presentation coaches say “The slides are not the presentation, you are”. I agree with this up to the point of saying the slides are not the presentation. But neither are you. The presentation is the experience that you create for the audience.

Jason Alexander attributes his recovery to learning this:

When I began to make the story the most important thing, I became much less the focus of my concerns. I realized that I was one small element on the stage, working with my colleagues to tell our audience a story. The information is what people want, the experience is what they want. They’re not there for me.

2. Dealing with things that go wrong

It’s nice to visualize your presentation going perfectly, but it’s not reality. And if you only visualize things going well, it can really throw you when they don’t.

Lawrence Beron, actor and stand-up comedian, says:

Part of the preparation is foreseeing the possibility of problems and not being thrown when they occur. Because they are going to occur. I don’t even call it “going wrong”. It’s what’s going to happen.

3. Let go of people liking you

This is what most of us are really concerned about – will the audience like us and what we have to say. It’s a natural reaction to the public speaking situation but not useful to reducing your nerves. Carlos Alazraqui, another actor and stand-up comedian says:

If you’re comfortable with yourself, confident in your abilities, and you’re not worried about the outcome – whether or not people like you – that allows you to relax. [emphasis added]

4. Play with the importance of the event

Jim Bouton, baseball player and now professional speaker, used to get very nervous before games. Until Ralph Terry, a veteran pitcher told him:

“When you’re out there on the mound today, kid, just remember one thing: No matter what happens, win or lose, five hundred million Chinese don’t care.” [quote slightly changed to remove potentially offensive words]

But when Jim relaxed too much he had to take the opposite approach:

There have been some situations where I didn’t feel nervous, I didn’t feel butterflies, and I had to manufacture butterflies to get a better performance. While pitching with the yankees, for example, games became routine after a while. So I would create an imaginary dire circumstance, I’d put the welfare of mankind at stake.

Now with public speaking, if he doesn’t feel nervous:

I spend some time alone, and talk to myself about the importance of what’s coming up.

5. You should be making mistakes

Jim Bouton was coaching a professional piano player who would get so nervous during performances that she would mistakes.

I said “What are you afraid of?” and she said “I’m afraid of making a mistake.” I said “Well, you should be making a few mistakes.” She said What do you mean?” I said “ If you never make a mistake, that means you’re not playing all out. You’re not playing as open and free as you can. You’re playing too tight, too controlled – that’s not the way to play. You’d be better off having a full-out recital with half a dozen mistakes, than having a mistake-free boring recital. Because the one in which you’ve allowed yourself to make mistakes is going to be more dynamic, more powerful and more musical.”

So it with speaking. If your goal is to make a word-perfect, mistake-free presentation you’re likely to give a boring presentation because the life will have gone out of it.

These are just some of the nuggets from the interviews in Stage Fright: 40 Stars Tell You How They Beat America’s #1 Fear. What have you learnt that has helped you to get over stage fright?

If you give sales presentations I recommend you read “How to Win a Pitch“. I admire Joey Asher’s blog Talking Points, so I did expect to be impressed. And I was.

The book has the same discipline as a well-planned presentation. Joey Asher distills five key fundamentals that will help you stand out in a competitive situation. Here’s three reasons to read this book:

1. Joey Asher is an experienced pitch coach. He knows what works and he’s put his winning formula into a book. If you can’t hire Joey to help you, reading his book is the next best thing.

2. There are many worked examples so that you can see how to put the advice into practice for your own business. These are not just stories – they’re step-by-step examples, showing you exactly what you might say.

3. This book doesn’t cover everything there is to know about making a winning pitch. It highlights the most important things you can immediately do to make a difference to your chances.

Here are the tips that I particularly liked and which are applicable to all presentations not just sales presentations:

1. A presentation is like a bridge with a weight limit

This is a great metaphor.  A presentation is a poor medium for transferring lots of information. It’s a great medium for convincing your audience of a single message.

2. Make your presentation about the audience, not about you

Joey Asher speaks out against “capabilities presentations” -  presentations which talk about your company’s history and services. He recommends focusing your presentation on your audience’s problems and how you can solve that problem. You can apply this same thinking to any presentation. What problem can you solve for your audience during your presentation?

3. Refuse to pitch when you’re going in “cold”

Joey Asher recommends that you always speak to key stakeholders before a pitch presentation so that you can focus your presentation on what’s important to them. His experience is that cold pitches are rarely successful.

This applies to all presentations. If you have no idea what your audience is interested in, find out. Your presentation will be more successful.

4. Give evidence for every point you make

Joey Asher stresses the importance of stories to back up every point you make. I particularly like the benefits he gives of telling stories in a pitch presentation:

1. When you’re selling a service, stories give the prospect a “taste of the intangible thing that they’re buying – a satisfactory result.”
2. Stories de-commoditize your business. Many businesses sell similar services – by telling your own unique stories you show how you’re different from the competition.
3. Stories highlight your firm’s qualifications. Instead of an overt “credentials” section, your success stories subtly reinforce your expertise.

These benefits of telling stories apply to all presentations:

1. Stories make the abstract, concrete. They enable your audience to visualise what you’re talking about.
2. Even if you’re giving your audience facts or tips they’ve heard before, your stories will make your presentation original.
3. Your personal stories establish your credibility without bragging.

5. Choose rehearsal over creating PowerPoint slides

Plenty of people are great presenters without PowerPoint. No one is great without rehearsal.

Joey Asher believes in rehearsal. Rehearsal is one of his five fundamentals that helps you stand out from the competition. I agree.

Instead of rehearsing, presenters create and fine-tune PowerPoint slides. And using PowerPoint slides as our notes has lulled us into a false sense of security – and less rehearsal.

6. Find your “Maximum You”

I like this way of putting it. Be yourself – at your best. Joey Asher recommends that you imagine yourself having dinner with your best friend and talking about something that you’re really excited about.

7. Encourage questions throughout your presentation

We’re stuck in a paradigm of Q&A coming at the end of a presentation. How formal and rigid is that? It’s based on the need of the presenter to stay in control.

Joey Asher says that the most successful pitches are those that become a discussion about the best way to solve the prospect’s problems. So encourage questions – ask for them, leave time for them and answer them enthusiastically.

One quibble

Joey Asher uses the words “points” and “messages” interchangeably. Here’s an example that Joey gives of the beginning of an insurance pitch:

There are three core messages I’d like to focus on:

• Risk management policies and procedures to minimize your total cost of risk
• Implementation of your policies and procedures
• Monitoring your policies and procedures and adjusting our approach.

Here’s my quibble – these are not messages. These are points or topics. They don’t say anything in themselves. A message, in my view, conveys an opinion or fact. Here’s how I would rephrase the points so that they become messages:

Here are the three core messages we want to convey to you today:

• We can minimise your total cost of risk
• We will implement your policies and procedures seamlessly
• We’ll adjust our approach to respond to events.

A point is a wasted opportunity to say something meaningful. Convert your points into messages.

Buy the book

If you makes sales presentations, reading this book and putting Joey’s advice into practice will help you win more business. If you buy the book through the links on this page, I’ll make a few cents through a commission from Amazon – so that I can buy more of the books on my wishlist .

There are three books which have ushered in and defined the PowerPoint Revolution. If you can only buy one, which one should you buy? Here’s my analysis of the three books and my recommendation.

Cliff Atkinson was the pioneer with Beyond Bullet Points. The Beyond Bullets approach is an entire system for creating a presentation with the support of non-bullet PowerPoint slides. It’s published by Microsoft and is a hybrid between a software how-to book and a presentation book. I find the system too limiting and constraining. Note: I have the 2005 edition of BBP – there is a 2007 edition which may be improved.

Garr Reynolds came next with Presentation Zen, based on his blog of the same name. His book is imbued with the philosophy of simplicity. If Cliff’s book is methodical, Garr’s is philosopical. The book attempts to cover most aspects of giving a presentation from planning the content, to designing the slides to the delivery itself. However, the strength of the book is the section on slide design. Garr made us non-designers aware of the importance of design in PowerPoint presentations. The discussion on the planning and delivery of a presentation is at a high conceptual level. There are useful insights for presenters with some experience but the lack of practical guidance could be frustrating for a beginner.

Then came Nancy Duarte with Slide:ology. Slide:ology is the most beautiful of the books. It is also the most focused. Nancy concentrates almost exclusively on slide design (there is an out-of-place section on audience analysis).

Here’s a table which summarises the strength and differences between the three books:

So which one would I buy? I would no longer recommend Beyond Bullet Points. Not when you can see what’s possible with slide design in Presentation Zen and Slide:ology.

If you want a philosophical discussion of simplicity in the art of presentation together with wonderful inspiration for designing better slides, go for Presentation Zen. But after I’d read Presentation Zen, I felt like I wanted a “A non-designer’s guide to slide design” to help me put into practice the principles and the inspiration that I had from Garr’s book. I could copy the ideas behind some of Garr’s ideas, but I felt like I didn’t have enough grounding in the basics to create my own designs.

Nancy’s book fulfills that need. So if you want the non-designer’s guide to PowerPoint slide design, together with visual inspiration, then Slide:ology is the book for you.