We know that presenters and salespeople who cannot connect with their audience are unsuccessful. At some time, we have all had to sit through an excruciating sales pitch or presentation, during which the speaker looked nervous and shaky, unable to look their audience in the eye, speaking over them, not with them.
There is a common misconception that to turn this kind of nervous presenter into a star sales person all that is needed is for them to learn a few tricks of manipulation. However, people generally know all too well when someone is trying to manipulate them, rather than actually believing and feeling what they say.
Making a good pitch is about making a real, genuine connection with people. If you were at a party and pretended you wanted to make friends with someone there who you actually disliked, they would likely see through you pretty quickly.
The same applies to sales and presentations: people do not suddenly have different emotional reactions or lose their intuition when they are listening to sales pitch. If anything, the reverse is true: people are more likely to be wary of sales people than they are of others, looking for signs of faked emotion.
Natural Style
Whether you are selling bank loans or making a presentation about a new widget, the key to engaging your audience and really communicating with them is to be yourself. It is an overused phrase, but ‘being yourself’ is the only real thing you can be. Pretending to be someone else is tiring and ineffective, for both you and those around you. To learn how to present or to sell well, you need to find your own, natural style. There is no one-size-fits-all quick fix when it comes to learning how to present well, as what works for one person, will not work for another, simply because they are different people.
Think about some of the great public speakers of the last century, and think what they have in common. Martin Luther-King and Winston Churchill (pictured), for example.They are very different people, with different personalities, but they both had the power to engage and captivate huge audiences.
Why? Because of those very different personalities. To hear either of them speak is to hear genuine feeling, passion and personality. When you hear them speak, you understand exactly who they are and you know they believe everything they say.
That is what we mean by ‘natural style’. It is not a complicated learned trick, it is simple and real.
We hope you’ve enjoyed PART 1 of this article – in PART 2 you’ll be able to hear all about ‘How to be Natural’ – don’t miss it! Want to learn how to develop genuine connections that lead to genuine sales? Get in touch now for information on our presentation skills training.
