Want to Perk Up Your Presentations?

November 2019

In PRSA’s Strategies & Tactics, Rob Biesenbach, a Second City-trained actor and consultant, says you can improve your presentations just by purging these seven phrases:

1. “Is this thing on? Can you hear me?” (Saying this tells your audience you didn’t bother to arrive early and test the audio, and it erodes your credibility.)
2. “I just threw this together.” (“Really? Then why are you wasting our time?”)
3. “Let me tell you about myself.” (“No, just tell me what you can do for me!”)
4. “You can’t read this in the back.” (When Biesenbach hears this, he says he actually envies the people near the exits.)
5. “This chart shows…” (Similarly: “Here’s a quote…” and “On this slide you’ll see…”)
6. “I’d like to tell you a story.” (This one is heavily favored by people who have heard other presentations about the power of narrative. Just tell the story!)
7. “Any questions?” (If you said any of these things, odds are you’ve already lost the audience anyway. Far better is to say something like, “What are your biggest concerns about what I’ve presented?”)