Category: Communication Skills

Some pointers to take note as you prepare for a technical presentation.
1. Pictures Tell A Thousand Words
Literally. I casually googled for “social networking” (SN) and found a site that explains quite succintly what SN means. Here goes:

Based on the six degrees of separation concept (the idea that any two people on the planet could make contact through a chain of no more than five intermediaries), social networking establishes interconnected Internet communities (sometimes known as personal networks) that help people make contacts that would be good for them to know, but that they would be unlikely to have met otherwise…[more]

That’s about 1000 words? Even if it is spoken word for word, I bet the audience will not fully understand, especially since it was written for the eye and not for the ear. Like any amateurish presenter, he will attempt to organize the points in bullet points, thinking that it will make it easier for them to understand. All he does is confuse them even more. Not a very smart thing to do.

Not very helpful, isn’t it?
Like the video, the presenter incorporates a lot of visuals which makes it easier for us to comprehend the extensiveness of human network and how we can leverage on them using the social networking sites like Friendster. Similarly in your technical presentation, you want to ensure that you use a generous portion of visuals to explain the process, procedure or product.
It is much easier to walk them through a software rather than attempting to explain the functionalities. It is much easier to show them how information flows in your organization through a flow-chart than a bunch of words. It is much easier to show them the exact product rather than describing the features. By engaging your audience through both the visual and audio channels, you make the learning process effective and effortless.
2. Relate To The Common Experience
I like how the video started by demonstrating how network get things done through common experience. For example, sending a letter, lighting a house or flying a passenger from Chicago to Santa Fe. We immediately get how a network functions. He then brought in another situation – finding a job.

He drew the number of hops you have to go through before finding someone who can offer you the job. And cleverly he slips in the problem – do you know who your friend (Bob) knows? The next one minute was used to explain how social networking sites eliminate the problem. In this case, he makes use of a current problem we have to explain something seemingly complex.
“Like the map for the highway, they (social networking sites) show you the people network that help you get to the next destination faster – a love partner or a great place to live in.”
Likewise in your technical presentation, use everyday examples to explain complicated concepts. I remember evaluating this gentleman’s presentation on “What’s In A Computer?” If not for my technical background, I will not have understand the jargons he used or the way the RAM powers the processing speed of a computer. So you can imagine that if he was presenting to a room full of aunties or non-techies, he will lose them in double quick time.
Instead of stating that the CPU is the central processing unit where all the circuit boards are housed, and is in charge of executing all the commands given by the user, try comparing the CPU with our human brain. The nerve network in our brain is like the circuitry in the CPU. The signals they carry to the brain are similar to the current in the circuit. Both acts as the command center where instructions/commands are executed.
Instead of describing the RAM as a type of data storage used in computers, you can relate to RAM as human memory. Both share properties like capacity and speed of retrieval. A computer with higher RAM can store more information (say 10,000 songs) and retrieve information in a very short amount of time (in a blink of an eye). Again, we understand the examples immediately, which allows us to grasp this once elusive concept call RAM.
In order to apply this technique effectively, you got to first know your product or concept inside out. Pick out the features that you want to explain and then map it to common functionalities that we can all relate to. Earlier in the afternoon, I was asked to answer this question – “What’s coaching?” and here’s how I answered using the technique above.

3. What’s In It For Me?
Unlike your usual presentations, it is critical to start your technical presentation by first answering this question – “What’s in it for me?” or variations like “Why is this presentation important and relevant to me?” Technical presentations are informative in nature. They are dry (and boring) too which means that unless you give them an incentive to listen to you, they won’t bother trying. As such, you got to ensure you capture your audience attention right from the start.
You can highlight how this presentation relates to them or introduce the pressing problem your audience is facing right now and then explain how your product resolves it. Bottom line, you got to make your presentation relevant and important to them. As homework, go study your audience’s needs. Find out who they are, what they do and problems they face daily. Armed with this data, you can then position your presentation to answer their needs or problems. For example, if you are demonstrating a security software for mobile phones, you could start your experience by doing a quick poll – how many of you have lost your phones or PDAs before?
You then move on to talk about the inconvenience and high costs involved in losing phone. By poking at your audience’s pain, you have effectively unbalance them. If you share their pains of losing a phone, your audience would automatically see you as one of them, which means a home run for you!
Studying the audience also allows you to know the level of their expertise. You tell them something too complicated and you lose them. You tell them something too simple, you risk insulting them, and you lose them too. Hence it pays to do a careful analysis of your audience. A good practice is to test out your presentation on a few of your trusted colleagues who share similar level of expertise with your audience. Listen intently for their feedback and then make necessary adjustments.

Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

I got your attention, didn’t I? You must be wondering.. what is it I need to know, more than anything else. And the more I digress, the more you want to know. You may be thinking right now whether I am dangling a carrot right in front of you. Yes, you are absolutely right. Question is, why are you still reading this since there’s every possibility I may just be playing a fool with you. Well, let’s just say that you have no choice. You have come thus far and you seriously need to know what is that something that now, more than ever, you need to know. Give you a clue. It is a secret that a lot of top-notch speakers adopt to have their audience eating from their hands. It is a persuasion technique that has been subtlely added in the sales pitch, without you knowing. It is a formula that once you understand will serve you well.
In James C. Hume’s bestseller “Speak Like Churchchill, Stand Like Lincoln”, he termed this secret, technique and formula as the Power Button.
In an essay, you can easily draw attention to phrases or words by highlighting it, increasing its font size or italicizing it. But how do you do that in a speech? Well, you can raise your voice or switch the tone of your voice. However, I have seen skilful speakers adopting the Power Button Strategy to have you eating from their hands. It preps you up for the line to follow, usually an important line that the speaker wants you to remember.
For example, LET ME AGAIN SAY WHAT I ALWAYS TELL THOSE CRITICS OF AMERICA [pause]… we will…
Or THE SECRET OF HOTEL MANAGEMENT IS SIMPLE. IT CAN BE SUMMED UP THIS WAY [pause]… our customers must always come first.
The line in caplocks is the power button. Once you hit the power button, you effectively get the attention of your audience. They are going to pay attention to what you have to say next. However, a power button only works when the proceeding sentence is an important one. It could be your message or key idea. The zinger line that you want to use to burn a hole in your listeners’ ears.
You can think of the power button as a preamble to what’s important. It can be as simple as “WhAT I AM GOING TO SHARE WITH YOU NEXT IS GOING TO WORTH ALL YOUR TIME SITTING HERE…” Remember to insert a pause before you tell them the zinger line.
That’s right. The power button preps your audience for something impactful or important to come. The pause creates the suspense. And of course the zinger line blows your audience away.
Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

A post that I wrote earlier on “250 Things You Wish You Know That Will Guarantee Your Speaking Success” has created quite a buzz on the blogsphere. It started with Andrew Dlugin at Six Minutes who wrote a fairly long post challenging many points that I have raised. And then yesterday, Life Hacker picked up the article (thanks Kevin!) and bang! Traffic at The Public Speaking Blog quadrupled overnight with 829 new visitors (hello!) and the “250 speaking tips” entry was posted on 14 other blogs.
Understandably, not everyone agrees with my list of 250. Some like it and call them “gems” or “speech-prep zen”, others hate it and call them “hasty and forceful”. Well to each his own.
What I am really happy about is the conversations that were created out of this contentious list. At the very least, it makes people aware about how they can raise their speaking standards by a few notches if they pay attention to the tips.
To make the list palatable for you, I have filtered it down from 250 to 50. Yes, it’s Pareto Principle at work here. Focus on the 20% that delivers 80% of the results. Prepare your forks and knives… let’s dig in.
1. Audience always comes first, ask yourself “How can they benefit from listening to me?”
2. Most people seek validation and not education – don’t be like most people.
3. Tell a story, make a point.
4. Create a story bank. Each time something interesting happens – big or small – write it down. You never know where you can use it.
5. Follow the 80/20 rule – 80% prepared. 20% impromptu. Being prepared is extremely important but when you are too prepared, you take the fun out of a speech. The 20% spontaneity allows you to milk any situations that arises while you deliver your speech.
6. A powerful speech is one that can help solve your audience’s problems.
7. The best way to learn is to teach somebody else. Find opportunities to do that. Offer pointers. Offer coaching. Offer suggestions. Remember, you can’t give away what you don’t have. Once you teach somebody else what you learned, it reinforces and improves your speaking skills.
8. Don’t try to impress. Instead try to, share, help, inspire, teach, inform, guide, persuade, motivate… or make the world a little bit better.
9. Stay present in the moment. Forget about the conversations running in your head. Be with your audience. Enjoy the time you have with them.
10. Keep your presentation simple. One message, three points and a kick-ass call for action.
11. Remember, the greatest enemy of speakers is same-ness. (Thanks Patricia Fripp for the tip!)
12. Don’t memorize your entire speech. Internalize. (Thanks David Brooks for the tip!)
13. Never, ever go overtime.
14. Avoid abstractions. Always relate to a common experience.
15. A fail-safe question to answer in your speech – What’s in it for me (the audience)?
16. No pain, no action. If you want to get your audience into action, you need to first understand where their pains are. Once you have identified that particular pain, poke at it. Recreate the scenario so that they can re-experience the pain, both physically and emotionally. When you have successfully brought your audience to that state, they will be begging you to offer them a remedy or a quick solution to rid them of the pain.
17. The key to grabbing attention is surprise. The key to keeping attention is interest.
18. Smile. Smile when you are walking up to the stage. Smile when you make a mistake. Smile when your audience laugh at your story. Smile when you are delivering your message. Smile when you conclude. Smile when you leave the stage. Smile.
19. Videotaping yourself speak can be very confronting but necessary, especially if you want to improve.
20. Take extra effort to remove all your pause fillers from your speech. Common culprits include “urm”, “ah”, “so”, “you know”, “hmm” etc. They are known to reduce your credibility ten folds.
21. One way of overcoming them is to get used to the silence.
22. Stop asking WHY. (Why am I so sucky in speaking? Why did the audience look so bored?) Try asking HOW. (How can I be less sucky? How can I make the audience interested in what I have to say?) Why gets you defensive and stuck. How gets you moving forward.
23. Remember some of your audience’s names and use them in your speech. They will love you for it!
24. The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten.
25. The next time you prepare a speech, do some imagination. If your speech is a piece of music, what music will it be? If your speech is a colour, what colour will it be? If you speech is a dish, what dish will it be? The secret is to cross and merge different senses so that your speech becomes richer and more real to the audience.
26. Have “flesh” time with your audience before you get up on stage to speak.
27. Plan-Pause-Scan: Plan where you want to stand. Pause and get yourself composed. Scan at the audience. And then begin your memorized introduction.
28. Once in a while, take a risk in your speech.
29. Each time you think of something safe to do for your speech, reverse it!
30. Find things that are “just not done” in the speaking industry and go do it (for the fun of it!)
31. Ask “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. It is usually the result of fear and assumption. So why not?
32. Treat your next speech like a game! Have loads of fun with it!
33. I learned this from Seth Godin: One message per slide. Part of the less is more rule.
34. Be really interested in your audience. It shows.
35. Ask and you shall receive. Never be afraid to ask for feedback. Do it for yourself.
36. Always write your speech because what is written can be edited to be more colorful, concise, powerful and precise.
37. Read ONE public speaking article a day. Try The Public Speaking Blog.
38. You are only as good as your last speech.
39. The two main arsenal of a speaker is his stories and analogies. The better his stories and analogies, the more he get paid. (Thanks Darren La Croix for the tip!)
40. Pay attention to stories and things that happen to us. (funny stuff does happen)
41. Audience laughed when they are successfully tricked. That’s the mechanic behind humor.
42. Be knowledgeable – know your stuff. Present 70% of what you prepared. Keep the rest for emergency purposes for eg. during Q&A or when you need to show off.
43. You get creative ideas at all time. Carry around a digital recorder or notebook everywhere you go. Whenever a creative idea strikes you, record or write it. You only have 37 secs of window time to capture the idea. Don’t wait till you are booked for speech before you think of what to say.
44. 95% growth happens when you are out there with your audience. Yes, it’s another way of telling you to get stage time!
45. Don’t be afraid to say this to your audience – “RIP ME APART!” Repeat after me, “RIP ME APART!”
46. 10 “You” for Every “I” in your speech! Remember, keep your speech audience-centric.
47. ??????????? (realized this when I was competing in Macau in 2006). Here the direct translation: “Ten minutes on stage is equivalent to ten years of training offstage”.
48. It’s ok to fail or bomb on stage. What is more important is the lesson behind it. Learn it well and make sure you don’t forget.
49. Be willing to fall & fall forward.
50. Persistence is key. And I think you have it if you have read from point 1 all the way to point
Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

I recently received a very interesting question and I would like to take some time to answer it here.
“Can you share with me on… how to make small talks with people of higher authority? (for eg, after attending a talk, there’re many people worth saying hi to…how to do tt without feeling out of place? what to say? how to start? )”
There are two parts to the question:
1. How do I make small talks
2. How do I make small talks with people of higher authority?
To answer both questions, I would first like to introduce you to a concept call SCHMOOZING. Schmoozing is more than small talk. And I would like to borrow the definition from a very insightful book titled Vault Guide to Schmoozing.
Schmoozing is noticing people, connecting with them, keeping in touch with them — and benefiting from relationships with them.
Schmoozing is about connecting with people in a mutually productive and pleasurable way — a skill that has taken on new importance in our fragmented, harried, fiber-optic-laced world.
Schmoozing is the development of a support system, a web of people you know who you can call, and who can call you, for your mutual benefit and enjoyment.
Schmoozing is the art of semi-purposeful conversation: half chatter, half exploration.
Schmoozing is neither project nor process. It’s a way of life.
Now that you have an idea of what schmoozing is, allow me to share with you three principles of schmoozing that will answer the above two questions.
1. SMILE!
You can’t go wrong with that. Smile and the whole world smiles back at you. Nothing is as powerful as a sincere smile. It cost nothing yet it means so much. The next time you attend any function, just smile at people around you. You will be surprised how easy it is to make the first connection!
2. Be REALLY interested in whoever you are talking to
If you are out there to get something out of everyone, it will show. Instead, try this. Go out and make a friend. Keep a “I want to know you better” mentality and creating small talks will be a piece of cake. In fact you will find yourself going beyond small talks and start enjoying every conversation you made.
3. Find a common ground
You smiled and made the first connection. You are really interested to know the other person. Now what? Simple. Find a common ground. You would never want to start a converation with a “So how old are you really?” or “I sell insurance, do you want to buy from me?” or “Are you Christian?” This is extreme but you get my point. So what are some topics you can talk about? If you are in a seminar, you can start with “What made you attend this seminar?” or “Who do know here?”. If you are in a party, you can start with “How do you know the birthday boy?” or “How do you find the food?” Notice that these questions are open-ended. Avoid asking the “Do you …” questions which often lead to a yes, no or maybe. Hardly a great way to start a conversation!
4. Listen!!!
Now that you have got the person talking. What do you do? SHUT UP and listen! Listen to what your new acquaintance has to say and paraphrase. Say he told you that he knew the birthday boy at another school party. You can continue by first paraphrasing “Oh so you went to that party with him…” and then proceed with “What party was that?” And make sure that you pay attention and really listen. Let him talk and you will have a chance to locate any common interests. Say “Oh yeah.. it was a party for my scuba diving club…” and if you like scuba diving, you can now delve deeper. “Really? I love to scuba dive! Where was the last place you went….” Got it?
5. Follow up
You have a wonderful time with the new acquaintance. And you both bid farewell. Ask for his number or business card. And when you get back home, send him an email or give him a phone call. Thank him for being so much fun. And you can proceed from there. We call that a follow up. And this is also the part where most people forget. In my opinion, it doesn’t make sense. You spend so much time and energy to turn a stranger into an acquaintance. Surely you won’t want to stop there. Besides you never know when you will need the person’s help or the person’s friend’s help. So always be gracious and remember to follow up!
The above five tips apply to schmoozing with higher authorities as well. But I know what most people will say: “He is a big shot… what if he gives me a cold shoulder?” From my experience, very seldom! In fact they love it when you take the proactive approach to get to know them. One thing that worked really well for me is this:
BONUS: DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
Before the big event, find out which big shots will be attending. You can usually find out via the event website or by asking the event organizer. Google for the big shot and very often you will find some information about him. Read it and memorize one important fact about him. For example, he recently organized a large technology conference in China. When you see him, ask him about it. This would be your “common ground” and he will be fairly impressed!
And I would like to emphasize this: ALWAYS FOLLOW UP! At the end of the conversation, thank the person and ask for his business card. They will usually not decline unless they run out of cards. Here’s one tactic I use all the time. “John, if the next time I have any questions on this topic, can I ask you?” They cannot say no. And even if they say no, they will usually refer you to someone else.
Once you collect his business card, send him a thank you email (at the very least) at the end of the day or the next morning. Thank him for sharing with you x, y and z. (You gotta remember what he shared!!!). And if you have any more clarification/questions, now would be the best time to ask. Without knowing, you have found yourself a mentor without really finding one!
There is really more to it so if you have any more questions, let me know.
Here’s another book that I would strongly recommend: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.