Tip - Business Presentations

So you are tasked with creating or delivering a presentation.   Whether it's delivered electronically or in person with Audio Visual, there are some considerations to keep in mind.   Regardless of audience, there should always be a general format you are keeping in mind.  I was once taught this by a mentor at a former company that was steeped in the tradition of being highly professional and always delivered the best presentation/sales pitch.  "Tell 'em what you are going to tell 'em, Tell 'em, then tell 'em whatcha told 'em".

That's the magic formula!

Here are some more tactical ideas to consider when delivering a presentation:

1. Audience - You want to speak or display content that speaks to the vernacular/lingo or vocabulary level of your audience.  Nothing allows an audience member to feel more part of your presentation than to use the language they use every day.  Nothing isolates an audience more than to speak well over or under their intelligence level or business perspective.

 

2. Branded Templates - If you are representing your company, use the company approved templates, not something you feel looks nice or cute. It's always best to represent your company first rather than your self interest.  Also, if your audience is a room full of clients from a single company, perhaps co-branding the presentation is in order.  This gives the sense that the speaker/presenter is "one of us" from the audience perspective.  *It is important to note that you must have permission to use other company logos and there may be strict rules on how their logos or brand is displayed.  Also the content of the presentation may need to be footnoted with proprietary, confidential or some other derivation of ownership; check with a legal department if available.

3. Formatting - Take care in utilizing the same font, tabs or bullet structure throughout the entire presentation.  This provides visual continuity and allows a participant to focus more on the meaning of your presentation rather than digesting the cognitive distractions in a continual moving target of title centering, heading boldness, bullet indents and sub-bullet icon discrepancies.

4. Light heartedness/humor -  Be very careful here.  This treads along the lines of talking politics or religion at a dinner party.  Regardless of audience, generally speaking, too much humor can sabotage the intent of your presentation, so use it sparingly, if at all.   The goal of a presentation is to get your point across with credibility, convince your audience of a particular point, or sell a product or service.  Too much humor may send the message that you are not to be taken seriously.

5. Animation - this is along the same lines as point #4.  Too much visual interaction via fly in from the left, camera shudder bullet points, sound effects, star wipes, etc. can be distracting.  If you must have an effect, pick one style and stick with it throughout the entire presentation.   Watch your presentation through on a timer start to finish and see if it becomes tiresome or distracting.   Chances are high that no one will be more impressed by your powerpoint skills versus your ability to present meaningful content and motivate a call to action.

6. On the screen versus "out of your mouth" - Here the standard 80/20 rule should apply*.  20% of what you say should be on the screen the other 80% should come out of your mouth, otherwise, why are you even there?  Value your personal contribution to the meaning and detail of higher level bullet points.

* If you are handing your presentation over to someone or an audience  to be read and learned, use the speaker notes to fulfill the total package concept, not within the slide itself.

7.  Length - Be respectful of the time you have with your captive audience.  If you know you have only 1 hour to present, give yourself about 50- 55 minutes to cover the material and leave the remaining time for questions.  If your presentation is a success, the audience members will be at the ready to ask for more of your time at a subsequent meeting time.  This is a good thing!  When your audience wants to hear more from you, you've done your job well, in fact so well, they want more!

8.  Basic Structure  - Outline what you are going to tell them,  tell them, then at the end review what you've told them.  A consistent message will always have a better chance of leaving the desired impression than a scattered concept that leaves your audience confused as to what they just heard.

Good luck and break a leg!

Quick & Easy dinners

I know I am not going to shock those who know me when I say that the slow cooker/crock pot is one of my favorite appliances in the kitchen next to the dishwasher. Well, not literally having the crock pot next to the dishwasher, but I think you get my point.

Does this sound familiar? Get up in the morning, brew coffee, make lunches, let the dog out, shower, get ready for work, let the dog back in. Take the dog to doggy day care (or kids to daycare), work all day, pick up dog (kids), stop at the grocery store for dinner supplies, get home around 6:30 pm, open the fridge and start grabbing whatever you can and need to whip up a reasonably healthy dinner. Hopefully what you are preparing takes less than an hour - start to plate so you have time to sit down like a real family and actually taste the food. Let's assume you did take the time to taste the food, now it's 8:00 pm-ish and it's time to clear the dishes (this is where my most favorite appliance comes in) and wash all the pots and pans you used to create the wonderful meal you and your family most graciously enjoyed. It's about 9 pm now, let the dog out (or get kids ready and off to bed), get out of your monkey suit and finally relax and/or tie up any other loose ends that you have been procrastinating or need to wrap up before tomorrow.

When you map it all out like that, it's amazing that we continue to do this routine weeknight after weeknight. Although the crock pot isn't the solution for every weeknight meal, it can certainly offer you some respite once or twice a week. It's a one pot, throw in all your ingredients in the morning, set the timer and get home and eat concept that is of course perfect for beef and pork roasts - the standard crock pot fare. In an effort to maximize the benefit this appliance offers, I've found a few other ideas to stretch this concept further.

Country style ribs
Pork Tenderloin
Chili
Non-cream based soups (I've tried cream based and it didn't go well - could be just me)

If anybody has any other great crock-pot ideas, please let me know!

I love the fact that I can cut out all the "cooking time" as it cooks safely on it's own during the day and reduce the clean up in half because there's only one pot to hand wash. Not to mention, there are generally leftovers that you can pack for your own lunch the next day.

Ah, life's simple pleasures...

Home Improvement Tip - Bathroom

It's mid October in Vermont and my house is in the throws of a massive exterior upgrade! We have replaced all of our windows, ripped off 2 layers of awful siding, fixed rotted framing and leaks galore where the flashing (if there was any) was shored up. Although, I fancy myself a bit more adept at some home improvements, the bulk of the work has been done by my husband who is by far one of the best builders/carpenters I know.

With the new siding and insulation as the next steps in our aggressive home improvement plan, which my husband will be the champion of, I find myself looking for ways to help or add value in our home's transformation. So I've looked around and found a project here and there that I feel comfortable tacking. So far, my first experience with my own Do-It-Herself project has landed me in our master bathroom, re-caulking the tub.

Allow me to set the stage a bit. We have an incredibly small master bathroom, which we one year ago made from a 3/4 bath to the full bath. The tub we installed could not have been any bigger, it fit like a glove with no room to spare. We then installed beautiful white subway tiles as the tub surround, but unfortunately due to time, budget or whatever our thinking was at the time, we used silicon caulk where the tiles met the bath. For us, this was not the best solution as silicon caulk can be difficult to work with. Over time, we noticed gaps that needed to be filled, as and you may know, you cannot re-caulk over silicone, it has to be completely removed.

Here's where my part comes in, I spent much of an afternoon digging out as much silicone caulk as humanly possible to give us a clean slate for putting new caulk on the tub.

LESSON #1
Remember to ensure that the tub and all crevices are completely dry.
I rushed to put the new non silicon caulk in and within 2-3 weeks had a gooey mess to clean up and re-do again.

LESSON#2
Do not go with the cheapest non silicon caulk.
I purchased a brand of caulk that does not set hard enough and will have to re-do it again because of consistent water exposure wearing down the texture of the caulk.

LESSON #3
When your father is a plummer, take his advise and use the products he would use.
I'm off the hardware store again after -recaulking the tub twice to get "Poly Seam Seal". This will surely be the winning caulk!

Good luck to those who try this at home!

Business Tip - Emails

Normally, when we engage in face to face conversations, we have at our disposal numerous tools to help us communicate effectively. We can modulate our volume, speed and pitch, use gestures, change our proximity to the listener, and change our body language, or facial expressions to emphasize or deemphasize aspects of what we say. In email, aside from the use of ALL CAPS, excessive punctuations!!!!.... or cute winks and emoticons, we are limited to pure composition to get our point across.

I have found that a poorly crafted email or a hasty response can quickly wipe away any positive reputation you may have established with known clients or co-workers. Now that's not to say that those whom you work with regularly might be aware of your personal quirks and general demeanor and are able to interpret your emails as if you were speaking directly. But, why would you take that risk, when I've also found that a well crafted and thoughtfully composed email may be a huge plus in your reputation with all recipients of your email, close co-workers, acquaintances, or people you are addressing for the first time?

Here are just a few tips in no particular order to help ensure your email communication is received in the manner you intended.


□ Typos - Even though spell-check catches inaccurately spelled words, common missed typos include unintended words that are spelled correctly. e.g. there - they're - their

*Try Reading the content through backwards.

□ Grammar - Consistent and correct tense throughout. Here are various links to Grammar aids and common mistakes:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/faq.htm
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/
http://cliche.theinfo.org/ (this will help identify Cliches or extraneous words in your copy)

□ Contextual - Ensure the message is clear, well organized and accurate

□ Avoid the use of ALL CAPS, cute winks or emoticons - unless you are completely comfortable with your relationship of all the readers. Even in this case, you never know if your email will get forwarded and to whom. Better safe than sorry is my motto.

□ Try not to write a book. Get to your point early in the email without a lot of extraneous verbiage. If there is too much filler in your email, you run the risk of your readers getting distracted by superfluous information and not reading it fully.

□ Formatting - Indented/bulleted text as required, use appropriate outline or bullet formatting (no single bullets or an "A" without a "B" etc.

□ An email's Subject is basically the intro to your email. Be clear and concise. Execs probably don't read every email they have in their inbox, so title your email wisely to engage them. Also, for those recipients who use mobile devises, the compromise between length and content in the subject line can have major impact on whether your email is even opened.

□ If you happen to be on the receiving end of an email that stirs up some anger and you feel compelled crank out a quick response, don't. When this happens, walk away or do something else for 5 minutes, an hour, a day; whatever it takes to take the emotion out of your response and create something objective. When we react quickly with emotion, we set ourselves up for missing facts, acting on our own misinterpretation of the email that got our blood boiling and coming off as hot headed. Take the high road at all times. Again, emails once sent, have a knack for coming back to bite you when you least expect it.

□ Lastly, never drink and email! When the wine bottle opens, shut down your laptop. You don't want your lack of inhibitions tangling with your business.

So although this may slow you down in the short term, the payoff can be invaluable in terms of advancing your career or saving it.

My Inaugural Post

So the day has finally come where I've put into action what I've been threatening to do for months; create a blog.

I suppose because it's Sunday, I've already mowed the lawn or dinner is prepared and cooking all on it's own in my favorite kitchen appliance, the slow cooker, that now seemed like the perfect time to start blogging. Plus Dingo has had his morning hike with my husband Chris and is sleeping peacefully at our feet, so keeping him entertained is not necessary for the time being. I'd also mention Amelia is peacefully sleeping too, but at age 14, this is quite common practice.

Indirectly, I've outlined the fact that I have a husband, job, dog, cat and a home with a yard. Without creating a laundry list, there's more where that came from which makes it seem like there simply isn't enough time in a day, days in a month, so on and so on. And the primary purpose of this blog is to help others and myself deal with the chaos that is life.

Look for my personally realized tips that will range from Home Improvements, Cooking, Yard, Business, and well anything that has helped me be a more effective and efficient co-worker, pet-owner, friend, wife, mom (some day), and all around good person.