I don’t watch The Apprentice. Â If I wanted to see squabbling egos coupled with little technical competence I’d watch children in my local pre-school. Â However, as my twitter feed went wild last night about the presentations on this episode I figured I’d better watch it.
I expected car crash TV and it didn’t let me down. The Catsize presentation was truly cringe-worthy. Â It had more repetition, hesitation and deviation than a bad edition of ‘Just A Minute’. Â Let’s face it, if you have to explain your strap-lines they you’ve got rubbish strap-lines.
Despite the fact that Catsize won (more by luck than judgement?) there’s a lot we can learn even from just a couple of minutes of viewing.
Leon - car crash presentation!
Firstly, nerves showed. In fact the nerves got the better of Leon (the presenter). Presumably it’s that, rather than stupidity that accounts for him saying the direct opposite of what he means. Â It’s not as if there aren’t tools and techniques for dealing with nerves (after all, I teach them!).
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly (because audiences often forgive nerves) the presentation was in the wrong ‘voice’. It’s what we call a ‘what I did on my holidays’ presentation. Â You know the kind of thing – way back in Primary School your teacher would ask you to talk about it and you’d give a chronological list: day 1, park; day 2, beach and ice cream; day 3, swimming in the sea. Take a moment to listen to Leon’s presentation again and he makes the mistake of simply telling his audience what he (the team) did.
Even his opening sentence is from the perspective of the team: “So, ermmm, first of all, we’ve come up with an idea”.
What’s wrong with that?
The audience don’t care. An audience listens to presentations from a WIIFM perspective (What’s In It For Me). They don’t care about how long it took you to pick your name, or design your slide. They don’t care if your best friend just died. They don’t care if you have a cold or a migraine. They care about what’s in it for them.
How should Leon have started his presentation?
Well, a stronger “Good morning” wouldn’t have hurt! Â Then, perhaps, something like this: “Did you know that XX% of the UK’s pet cats are overweight? Â This means there’s a niche market for catfoods with help deal with that.”
Straight away you’ve got the audience’s attention, given them robust, hardcore statistics and established WIIFThem – a new target market. Â Obviously there are other ways of doing this, that’s just one example, but it’s a start. Â I’ve done that with ten second’s thought – how long did Leon have to get his act together?!
It might not have been a bad idea to give an indication of how big the potential market is: pounds spent per year would be good, or even an estimate of the number of cats. Â (“The RSPCA estimates that there are XX hundred thousand pet cats in the UK and about half of them are too fat”.) After all, 50% of cats being over-weight if there are only 50 cats isn’t a market!
It might have been worth checking with the audience how many of them had a pet cat: Â establishing a rapport with your audience is often a useful tool. Â Be careful not to imply that they’re over-feeding their cats, of course, but you can use it to establish how easy it is to do that by accident!
It’s not rocket science, is it – just put yourself in the audience’s shoes for a moment and ask yourself what would make them go your way.
While we’re at it, it’s not just what he said that’s a problem – it’s the way that he said it. Â Compared to the previous speaker (for Everydog) Leon looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights of the car. Â Perhaps unfastening his suit jacket might have helped him look a little less like an anxious school-boy being forced by the Head Teacher to talk to the school assembly!
At the very least, Lean, lean forwards into the balls of your feet and stop standing like you expect to have to run away. Again, it’s not as if there aren’t simple rules you could have learned: even 10 minutes on Google would have found you dozens of tips and hints about how to stand, even if you didn’t read this blog! :)
Seriously Leon – did you even once practice your presentation? Â Just going through it a few times with your team could have made all the difference. If you have to ask your team how well you did, that tells you everything you needed to know…
