I spent a day working on sales messages and presentation of those messages with a sales force, except the sales force was divided in two—half were an outside field force, and half were inside sales. We discovered that it was… Read More »Two kinds of selling
It is Sunday afternoon. My wife is away for a week at a poetry summit in California. No food in the fridge, dishes in the sink, bed unmade. Too much TV. My daughter is engrossed in the music scene of… Read More »The autobiography of a speech coach
Gary Forman is a friend of mine. He’s a great speech writer. He was working on a stump speech for himself. He came over to read it to me and get my feedback. It was fabulous, and so was he, a fierce partisan in… Read More »The Youie Youness of You
Over cigars and Chivas on Sunday night with Dikki Ellis, Michael Christensen and Zach Grenier, we came across an interesting distinction between clowning and acting, and one that is helpful to business speakers. Michael is a Co-Founder of the Big… Read More »The fourth wall or not
When we watch TED talks, such as Rory Sutherland’s on the power of advertising, or Hans Rosling’s on the power of data, we are watching two men who know their way around the presentation platform. Both speak without notes, use… Read More »Using speaker’s notes
I just witnessed several clients reading scripts. There was something very unsatisfying about the experience for me. They lacked life and expression. They didn’t appear to mean what they were saying. Yet scripts are often useful and necessary. So what… Read More »Reading a speech vs. giving a presentation