Last summer, I was moderating a panel at the Armanino McKenna Leadership Conference. One of the participants— a kid who was 20 but looked 12—asked Andy Armanino, the firm’s managing partner, “What advice do you have for us in our last year of school?”
Armanino didn’t skip a beat. He said, “Take a communication class!”
He went on to explain that being a good communicator had more impact on his career than any other skill. It may even impact one’s salary. According to Distinction Communication, 86.1 percent of executives agreed that “Communicating with a solid level of clarity and confidence directly impacts my career & income.”
Wherever you have to make a presentation—in a sales situation, at a professional conference or at the state-of-the firm meeting—how you present yourself and your ideas can have an enormous impact on your reputation.
Where do you start?
Think back to the last great presentation you saw. You know, the one that made you think, “I can’t wait to tell someone about this!”
What do you remember?
You may not remember the name of the presenter or much of the content. But you probably remember a story or a feeling. “Eww…” I can hear you groan, “I’m a CPA. I don’t do feelings in my presentations.” If you’re opposed to putting feeling into your presentation, then you’re not communicating effectively. The calculus of great presentations can be distilled in a simple equation: E+I=C, Emotion + Information = Communication
Most CPAs are more comfortable with “Information” and neglect “Emotion.” But if you routinely fail to connect emotionally with your audience, you won’t earn new business, you won’t engender loyalty among the people you need to follow you, and you certainly won’t get promoted.
Four rules
In addition to E+I=C, there are four rules that can help you go from mediocre to memorable, from tolerable to terrific.
Rule 1: Your presentation is not about you. It’s about your audience. This is counterintuitive, I admit. Yet, the very best presentations are always about the audience— meeting their needs, being in the moment with them, making a connection.
Here’s a simple question to consider before planning any presentation: “What do I want my audience to think, feel, and do as a result of our time together?” The “Think-Feel-Do” question is central to Rule #1. Below, are a few common presentation situations for CPAs, alongside “Think-Feel-Do" ideas:
Rule 2: Stories rule, stats rot. CPAs love data like dogs love squirrels. But most people in your audience don’t connect with you through your data. They connect through your stories.
You need stories because they help your presentation become emotional and memorable.
Geni Whitehouse, author of HOW TO MAKE A BORING SUBJECT INTERESTING
“Delivering a good presentation, just like singing a good song is not enough. You have to provide something that gives you an edge, add some color, add some flavor, mix in spice, emotion and energy. Presentations are just songs without the music and the band. But there are plenty of judges—every single member of your audience.”
How does this look in real life? Let’s say you’re preparing for a pitch meeting, and you want your prospect to think, “Wow! They’re very deep in our industry!” What do you do? You don’t show a slide listing all the clients you’ve ever served in that industry and read them off one by one.
Instead, you project that slide in the background while you tell a story about a client that has faced the same—or a similar—predicament as your current prospect, and how you helped solve it. Include the twist, or the funny ending. The prospect will remember.
Rule 3: Show, don’t tell. If you’re using slideware like PowerPoint, you’ll be tempted to use the same images or clipart that everyone else uses: the handshake, the lock and key, the calculator, the diverse team of smiling people. Please don’t. These are default images, cliches. And by using them, you’re demonstrating that you’re lazy ... or a cliche.
Nancy Duarte, the diva who made Al Gore’s amazing slide deck for An Inconvenient Truth, has literally written the book
Rule 4: Be yourself. Stay in character. I interview dozens of people each year for my podcast. I know nearly all the people I interview, so there’s usually a friendly rapport between us prior to the show. Sometimes, when the recording starts, my guests adopt a “show voice,” a weird, unrecognizable version of themselves that—frankly— doesn’t work.
When a guest does this, I stop the recording and ask them to loosen up. If they still can’t shake it, we don’t publish the interview. When our guest is not acting like themselves, it comes across to our audience.
What about you? Before you make a presentation, do you feel you need to take on a different persona than your own? In my experience, when a presenter takes on a different character, he or she is trying to prove something. The MC who’s trying to be funny by poking fun at someone in the audience. The speaker who’s trying to be inspiring by talking only about themselves. The account executive who’s trying to prove that he’s the smartest guy in the room by getting the last word every single time.
Garr Reynolds, author of PRESENTATION ZEN
Just be you. You’re one of a kind, and you should let your audiences know it!
[This article is reprinted with the publisher’s permission from CPA Practice Management Forum, a monthly journal published by CCH INCORPORATED. Copying or distribution without the publisher’s permission is prohibited. To subscribe to CPA Practice Management Forum or other CCH Journals please call 800-449-8114 or visit www.tax.cchgroup.com. All views expressed in the articles and columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of CCH INCORPORATED or any other person.]
