If you must use notes for your business presentation, here are the options

“I’ll do a deal with you. As long as you can deliver your opening and closing without notes, you can do what you like in between”. That was how I described in my most recent post the way that I start to wean the business presenters I am coaching off the use of notes.

So what form of notes should they use in the middle sections of their presentations? Let’s look at the options:

1. Full script - Definitely not a good idea unless you have a really compelling reason such as lawyers insisting that delivery needs word-perfect precision to avoid litigation. The only time I have ever had a full script to hand was for the delivery of an address at my father’s funeral – I simply couldn’t be sure that my emotions wouldn’t get the better of me.

Every business presenter knows that reading from a script is to be avoided and yet many of the people I coach arrive with closely-typed sheets of A4 paper.  This is marginally preferable to 56 sheets of printed out PowerPoint slides, but neither so-called ‘aid’ is actually helpful to the presenter. The reason they give for carrying a script is that “I might freeze”; having focused on the potential to freeze, invariably that’s exactly what happens. They look down at their copious notes and are none the wiser – because they can’t begin to find where they should be!

So we establish the need for something smaller and less ‘flappy’. With a touch of intended innuendo for the sake of memorability, I introduce them to the benefits of ‘small and stiff’ as we start to talk about cards, but even this usually needs a step-by-step approach.

2. Set of cards – This is intrinsically good because, if you have not already done so, it forces you to carve up your presentation into series of segments, with one card for each segment. Then you need the discipline to restrict yourself to five rows and about five words across each row. The cards then cue you to the key points and even the moments that require a pause as you move to a new point and, especially, a new card. If you number the cards and move them to the left each time you complete one you are all set – as long as you have the physical space to lay your cards. Many people fall at this final fence, fumbling their cards due to lack of space and even dropping them on the floor.

3. Simple ‘map’ card – The ideal solution. Assuming you know your subject matter – and if you don’t what are you doing talking about it? – all you really need is the simplest prompt so that a brief glance enables you to cover off all the main points, get them in the right order, and get back on track if you freeze. And the good news is that all this should fit onto one – probably A5-sized - card.

Here (see left) you can see a map-style card that I made for myself. The situation here was not that I was unsure of what I would say, nor that I had a fear of freezing. The challenge was that I had been invited onto the Chris Evans Show on BBC Radio 2 and been given just three minutes to talk about how I apply the Rules of Magic to business presentation skills. I had never previously done this in anything less than 40 minutes so I had to be absolutely crisp and concise about the points I wanted to make. And if Chris asked me for examples of applying the rules I had no time to rack my brain as to what might work effectively on radio – I needed instant responses, which I listed (see right) on the reverse of the card. It clearly worked because it led to bookings in several different European countries and many enquiries about the availability of a book, which I eventually answered with the publication of Presentation Magic.

That’s all you really need to know about notes if you are simply standing up and speaking, but of course most of us are expected to use at least a degree of PowerPoint when making business presentations. If so, it is essential that you know what slide is coming up next and cue it with confidence and in sync with what you are saying. How do you achieve that without a bunch of PowerPoint print outs?

If you have an Apple laptop loaded with either PowerPoint for Mac or Keynote you already have the solution and may not even realise it. In either of these programmes click ‘View’ and select ‘Presenter View’ ('Presenter Tools' for older versions) and your screen will give a display like the one below. 

Rather than simply displaying what your audience can see, the screen shows both the slide being projected and the next in line. The Notes section can be displayed in the size most convenient to you; the full run of slides displays at the bottom so that you can pick and choose slides seamlessly; and clocks show both current and elapsed time. This facility is absolutely invaluable to the presenter, but is still difficult to find on PCs; it is one of the main reasons I use Macs.

I said up front that I wean people off their notes gradually and there two reasons for this. First, I put a lot of emphasise on working on the structure and content of their presentation, often re-ordering it and taking a lot out. The result is that it has a much more natural flow. They are speaking from their heart rather than being driven by some slides, so they don’t need a bunch of reminders about what to say!  Second, simply knowing that the safety net of some simple notes is there invariably instils enough confidence to mean that you are not going to need it. Indeed, that is why I refer to my map-style prompts as 'Confidence Cards'.

Business presenters need to speak from the heart, not from their notes. You can wean yourself off the notes step-by-step and by stealth.

“I am 59 years old; I have always used notes when making a business presentation; I cannot imagine a situation in which I could give a presentation without using notes”. This is one of the more extreme protestations that I have received while coaching senior business people in Presentation Skills. 

It often comes in the form of angst or protest because they know inside themselves it’s not right. At worst you are going to end up simply reading from a script, so why bother with a presentation?  Why not simply send your script by email and save everyone’s time? At best you will be deprived of one of your most essential and powerful engagement tools – eye contact.

Knowing that I need to help them progress step-by-step, I usually respond to the protests along the lines of: “I’ll do a deal with you. As long as you can deliver your opening and closing without notes, you can do what you like in between.”  What this does is to cover off the two most important parts of the presentation, which we have discussed before (here). Rule 13 of the Rules of Magic says: ‘Firsts and lasts are remembered’. 

Over and above being remembered, it is crucial that you engage your audience at the outset – and you are not going to achieve that if you are looking down at a bunch of notes! I worked recently with a group of mature students who were finishing off at university having gained PhDs. Almost without exception, they seemed unable to tell us their names, let alone their area of expertise without appearing to refer to notes! And that is one of the problems with notes, or indeed a screen – when you have them there your gaze tends to wander in their direction as a kind of comfort blanket. I addressed my PhD group collectively: “Look here, you lot. You are being coached in Presentation Skills because you are all at the top of your game and the time has come for you to go out and tell the world about it. But no one is going to believe a word you say if you have to check your notes for who you are and what you do!” We worked on their opening and closing passages and as soon as they achieved proper engagement with energy, full eye contact and a sense of ‘owning the space’, I accorded due respect and started to address each of them as ‘Doctor’.

Closing is every bit as important as opening because that is the moment – if your presentation is properly structured – at which you deliver your ‘Call to Action’ which probably means you are asking for something or seeking commitment.  You simply cannot do that in any way that is effective without full eye contact and speaking straight from your heart – rather than your notes.

So what happens when I do allow the use of notes in between the opening and closing? I plan to cover that in my next post, but I often find that by promising people they can use notes in the middle I have actually ‘tricked’ them out of using notes at all. By opening without notes they gain confidence and start to enjoy themselves, soon finding they don’t really need them after all.

I would like to be able to conclude by saying that this is what happened with the 59-year old extreme case on which I opened. What actually transpired was a bit different. He rang me after delivering the big presentation we had been working on. He thanked me for my advice and said he had changed ‘almost everything’, with great results. When I asked about notes he went a little coy, saying: “Would you believe it, I dropped my notes all over the floor, soon after my opening. I couldn’t stop and pick them up so I had to manage without them; and I did”!  “That”, I replied “is what you call a happy accident”.

What business presenters can learn from a young comedian with ‘massive teeth’

Rob Beckett

“Hello” said the young comedian who had just bounced on stage for a recent edition on the BBC’s Live at the Apollo, “my name is Rob Beckett and I’ve got massive teeth”.  At last, I thought, I have a new high profile example of a principle that can be very useful to anyone giving a business presentation.

If there is something that will inevitably be on the minds of your audience as you start a business presentation, you need to address that issue head on, right up front.  Only then can you engage your audience properly without what will inevitably be an on-going distraction. So I tend to say to those I am coaching something along the lines of: “Had I arrived today with a black eye, the first thing I would have said was ‘hello, I’m Nick and I’ve got a black eye because….’”. Then, and only then, would I have a realistic chance of engaging the person I am coaching without them continually thinking ‘I wonder how he got that black eye’ and imagining a range of different scenarios in which it might have occurred. It would have been, in modern business parlance, what you might call a ‘mini elephant in the room’.

Bearing in mind that the whole point of being full and frank upfront is that it allows you move on, be sure to say absolutely no more about the matter once you have addressed it.  When we open up in an awkward situation and admit a faux pas or make an apology, human nature dictates that we do so in a fulsome manner. Which means that we invariably go on and on about it, making everything increasingly awkward for both sides. As the actors alongside whom I sometimes work always say: “if you drop a brick, don’t keep kicking it around!”

Before closing I am going to risk being just a tiny bit politically incorrect. I say this because we are meant to be ‘tone deaf’ to accents these days but, whether we like it or not, an accent is one of the first indicators that we use when forming initial impressions of people. Jon Snow has recently admitted that, like everyone else, the first thing he thinks about when meeting someone is sex; the same applies to accents. So there is nothing right or wrong about having a regional accent – unless, it seems, if you work in TV presentation where it has become almost obligatory. If, however, you have a distinct accent and you want your audience to focus on what you are saying rather the origins of the voice that is delivering it, then find a subtle way at an early stage to slip in where you come from. 

Finally, why was I so keen to find a new example of coping with a mini elephant in the room? I always like to give the business people I am coaching examples from the worlds of music, movies and particularly magic. I used to know a young magician who used this technique particularly well to address - and so move on swiftly from - the fact that he had a very wide girth. His opening line was invariably: “I may not be the best magician in the world, but I am certainly one of the biggest”. The audience immediately warmed to him and focused on his magic and his character rather than his size. Very sadly he died, so it didn’t seem right to keep relating this excellent example.  RIP Pete McCahon.