Presentation_SKills_TS_DSWA_Master_Any_Room1 (1)

(Grace): Good evening everyone and thank you so much for tuning in to tonight’s DSWA telecast. It is an honor and a privilege to be welcoming our master of ceremonies (laughter), our speaker of the evening who is a fabulous woman and a great presenter. She's going to be sharing with us about presentation skills that catch and hold your audience. Let me tell you a little bit about Marcey Walsh before we get started. She is, one way to describe her is she is a gift for your team. She does neurologically based methods that create essential aha moments that move prospect customers and down lines into action. She is a national trainer, she does a lot of interactive learning experiences that grab and hold your leader's attention as they learn to tap into the brains natural desire for pattern to create a sense of urgency that the opportunity you present makes sense to their lives now. She is a key note speaker, she's written books, she's the director for the Institute for Pattern Literacy and she's a national trainer and consultant and creator of the neurologically based system used by counselors coaches and trainers nationally to generate life and business changing aha moments for customers and clients. You can learn more about Marcey at strategicbrilliance.com which I love the name of that by the way (laughter) strategicbilliance.com. What a pleasure to have you here tonight Marcey!

(Marcey Walsh): Oh, thanks Grace, it's so nice to talk to you again.

(Grace): You as well I’ve been looking forward to this call and I’m sure all of who are on the line have been looking forward to it as well. I encourage you to get a notepad and paper out because we are going to be interviewing Marcey and she is going to be sharing with you these strategies for you to be able to have these skills that catch and hold your audience. We've already had some feedback on what a couple of people would like to walk away with. If there are things that you have a question on, please jot those down and towards the end of the call we'll be able to open up the line for you to ask those questions and throughout we'll try to make it so that we can allow for questions throughout. Are you ready to get started Marcey?

(Marcey Walsh): I am ready.

(Grace): Awesome. Let's say that a person has great products and professional scripts that they use or have been using. Why are presentation skills so important to their businesses?

(Marcey Walsh): That is a great way to get started. We already have - you are in the business you are in because you believe that the products are super and because you were promised you would have people to mentor you and help you to learn how to put down your presentations, help you to do sponsoring. That you would have all the tools that you need to build a fantastic and fabulous and rewarding business. And all of those things very well may be in place but even though everyone in your company may have access to the same materials, isn't it amazing how different the levels of success are for all of the different people? You have to look at that and think, what's different? Why is person A so much more successful than person B? You start looking at the variables and what's different. What often is the difference is people just say, well I trust her, I really like her

and you think, well I’m likeable and I’m trustworthy so why is that not coming across to the people that I deal with and that's exactly the purpose of understanding what presentation skills are and being able to use them consistently. It's the consistency that makes the difference between a businesses that just kind of sputters along and one that grows and grows because you are able to pass you skills on to the other people in your organization. When you start thinking about when do you use presentation skills, who is your audience and when are you on stage? Is it only when you are in front of 100 people at a directors meeting or is it every time you are at the grocery store and you run into someone and start talking about your business? Out of the people that we have on the call, who can give me idea - do we have everyone muted Grace?

(Grace): We do. We do have everyone muted Marcey but I was going to enter after you and say -

(Marcey Walsh): I was going to say, I’ll ask you (overlapping speech)

(Grace): We are on every time. Everywhere we go, people are watching when we don't even know they are watching.

(Marcey Walsh): Even our kids?

(Grace): Even our kids, oh my goodness sakes and they catch us.

(Marcey Walsh): They should do.

(Grace): (Laugher) I think we are on all the time.

(Marcey Walsh): Oh yeah? The skills that we learn are not only helpful when we are having one on one conversations with people, it's when you are doing demonstrations, it's when you are doing a sponsorship opportunity or it maybe when you are in front of 100 people speaking at a convention. Once you learn the skills you can turn them on anytime that you want and you will because you will find that the response that you get is exactly the one that you wanted and that's really the first presentation skill that I’m going to talk about. It’s very few of us have captive audiences. People may have to be at our meeting, they may feel they need to be there and their bodies, their butts may be in the seat but the only way that you get to keep their attention and their minds; keeping their attention is 100 percent your responsibility. They may be texting, they may be tweeting, and they may be writing their grocery list on the back of your order form. If you can do these steps that we are going to talk about today you will keep the attention of the person that you are trying to communicate with. The very first step in any situation is to know what your agenda is. When you are going into any communication situation, what is it that you want out of it? Are you looking to get sales, are you looking to get signups for hostesses? Are you looking to get a phone number and a commitment that you can have a phone call next Tuesday at 3 o'clock? Or are you just trying to get the kids to commit to eat their spinach. Whatever it might be, you have to know what it is. If you don't know what your goal is then you are never going to be able to make the results of that goal happen with

your communication skills no matter how good you are. The best way that I found works for me, I do it for myself and I do it for the person I’m speaking with. Whether there is one or 1,000 are I make an agenda. When you speaking with some, you let them know what your agenda are. It might be something like, I’m so glad that you talked to me today for a few minutes, these are some topics that I thought might be good for us to cover in this half hour that we have that might be talking about, what your goals are for your family. What you've been able to do so far to help to reach those goals. What things have been kind of holding you back that you haven't been able to overcome? How might my business opportunity be a match for the goals that you have for your family? This is the magical sentence after this. You have given your agenda and then you say is there anything else that you would like to add to that? You listen because what they say to you is going to be the very most important issue you will address because that is going to be their emotional why. Grace we've talked about that a lot in our coaching sessions.

(Grace): Yes, absolutely. That is so important to discover that and to be able to find what it is that they are looking for and what they'd like to accomplish during their time together. I love that, yes.

(Marcey Walsh): Exactly. I'll tell you, all of you preparation that you do to get ready to talk to anyone is totally about you. How you are dressed, how much you are prepared, what you have planned, all the things that you have ready, that' all about you but the presentation is all about them. That question that you asked allows them to say, this is what I really want to talk about. This is what's really important to me and if you don't do anything else in the presentation skills that we are talking about, in most cases, people will talk away from you. We want to make a good first impression but for me, what puts my money in my pocket is, what's the last impression I leave them with? If you will have known people, you have gone to a party, you've talked to them for 10 minutes and you think, this is the most interesting person I have ever talked to and later you start thinking about it and you realize they really didn't say anything. All they did is ask you questions and hear about you. When you ask what they want, what' they'd like to add, what they'd like to talk about, they are going to think you are an incredible listener and that is the last impression you want to leave them with if you are expecting them to trust you. Getting back into the presentation skills would be, now you know what your agenda is, you had yours and now you’ve let them know about it. A good presenter always sets the stage. You are going into someone’s home to do a program or you are going into a meeting. If you have the opportunity, check the venue out ahead of time and make sure it's set up so that you feel comfortable. For instance when you go in somewhere and you are going to be talking to people, you probably want to have it arranged so that the children have something to do, so that they are not going to be interrupting your conversation. You might have music playing in the background. You want to make sure that there's not a lot of outside noise and we always, always ask that everyone turn their cell phones off. That's you, setting the stage for the conversation that you want to have, whether it is with one person or with 1,000 people. I spoke to 200 people last Saturday and I actually re-arranged all chairs in a Chevron shape. Do you know what that shape is Grace?

(Grace): Chevron shape? No.

(Marcey Walsh): You want the audience to be able to communicate with each so that if someone starts to laugh over on the right, the people on the left can hear it and see they and they'll all join in and it's a lot more friendly. It's not very friendly to have your rows of chairs straight across. Instead -

(Grace): Oh OK. Is it kind of like a half triangle?

(Marcey Walsh): You have aisle down the middle and the chairs on the outside are closer to the stage that the chairs along the aisle in the middle, so they kind of angle towards - see what I’m picturing? It's not an arrow facing towards that stage; it's an arrow facing towards the back of the room

(Grace): Yes

(Marcey Walsh): So that your rows are parallel on either side. That way, people can see each other and if something funny happens and someone starts to laugh, it will kind of flow through the crowd or if you want people to talk to each other and they can see who's talking when someone raises a hand. When everything's in straight rows all you can see is the back of the head of the person in front of you.

(Grace): Oh yeah. I like that. I like that. We also like it when they do rounds too. Eight people to a round eight to ten because we like that community amongst the community.

(Marcey Walsh): Exactly.

(Grace): I like the Chevron took; this is good, thank you. (Marcey Walsh): You want to have as much audience interaction as you can get and there are three different kinds of audience interaction. There is the interaction between the speaker and the people in the audience, that's where you ask a question. Asking questions is the easiest way to interact with the audience. You can have people raise their hands. You can have them shout, amen hallelujah! Or you can have them actually answer your questions and you can call on individuals. What I like is neighbor to neighbor where you give them a question like, what is the most exciting thing that happened in your week? Turn to your neighbor and you have 65 seconds to tell your neighbor what the most exciting thing about your week was. It’s fun to give them an odd amount of time to do it and they'll all turn and they'll just start chattering and the energy level in the room really goes up and you'll start to hear people laughing and if you hear a lot of laughter over in one area, of course you scurry over there and listen in and then you can share that with the rest of the group.

(Grace): Can I share a funny story around that?

(Marcey Walsh): Sure.

(Grace): That happened to me? I was preparing for this speech that I was going to give and it was one of the first talks that I had ever given and so I put a lot of time and effort into this and I said, OK everybody, look to the person to the right of you and tell them that they are an amazing person. Just visualize that for a second. Everyone was looking away from each other! (Laughter) I was like, oh my gosh that did not happen the way I thought it would, but they were all laughing as you are right now because, so when you do put this planning and preparation into whatever you are doing as far as presentation, practice it first. (Laughter)

(Marcey Walsh): We have to practice it right. I did a great demonstration on Saturday. The third kind is when it's the individual to the group. Where people actually get up and move and do something and that takes some planning but I’ll tell you what I did on Saturday and it worked brilliantly. I went to the dollar store and I got a bunch of Winnie the Pooh puzzles with 25 pieces in each one. They were big puzzle pieces. For $6 I had enough for 130 people and I went around and put one piece underneath every chair before everybody sat down and when we got ready to do the activity I was talking about the fact that people have many different parts of their lives. You have your family, you have your business, you have the hobbies and sports that you like, you have the things that you are passionate about and had them hold up the puzzle piece and touch all four sides of the puzzle to realize that you have these different aspects of your personality and that when you are making friends or looking for romance, there is never one perfect person, there's many different perfect people who match different parts of your personality. I said, OK. You are going to take I think I gave them 180 seconds. I said you are going to take your puzzle piece and try and find another person who fits you. When you find someone who fits you, everybody's got to raise your puzzle piece in the air and go wow! Everybody just, they scattered and they started matching up, matching up, matching up and it only took about 30 seconds and we heard woo-hoo over here and woo-hoo over there. One lady was very aggressive, she stood up and she said who's got ER? She attracted the people who would fit her which was brilliant and then another group to the left goes, yeah, we've got a threesome and it was riotous. The important thing when you are doing a group activity like that is you need to know how you are going to end it. In that case I had not announced how it was going to end but I had a bell. I struck the bell, everybody heard it, I said have a seat please, they sat down and then we debriefed and talked about what we learned from the exercise. I said, what did you learn. One woman raised her piece and she said, I learned I’m very lonely because she had not matched anyone that matched her and then other people talked about, yes they found this person, that made them want to find more people even though we had done that including the debrief in less than five minutes. Everyone was talking, everyone was happy and they were on topic with the agenda that we were trying to cover.

(Grace): Oh I love that. How creative is that?

(Marcey Walsh): Well you know Grace; I spent 25 years working in Elementary school working with about 400 third and fourth graders at a time. I had to get creative or else I would have been dead meat.

(Grace): Oh yes, (laughter) or else they would have been throwing tomatoes right?

(Marcey Walsh): Yes

(Grace): Throwing tomatoes. I love it, so the puzzle pieces under everybody's chair and then having a system for that activity and you debriefed it. Everybody probably had the unique perspective of the experience.

(Marcey Walsh): They got to keep the puzzle piece and take it home with them. When I do this simple activity I’ll actually have them take a pen and you know the back of the puzzle's pieces is blank. If you have specific things perhaps in direct sales you might have done that with saying, OK some people really like prospecting. Some people really like selling, some people like to do commercial. Some people like to do training and maybe find the other people who will fit on your team. Maybe that might be a way. Can you find the four people that fit you and maybe they would make a great team for you. It can be applied to almost everything. I find that when I’m driving is when my mind puts these ideas together. If it's fun for you it's going to be fun for the audience. You've done your agenda, you've told them what it is, you've found out what is important to them and then you start to move through your agenda that you are going to do, whether it is a party, or whether it is a meeting whatever it is. As someone said, you don't want to get long and boring. You have to have planned what your game plan is for the interaction that you've got with the most important thing being that before you walk out the door you've covered the parts that were important to you and especially anything that they added when you discussed what you wanted to cover. The way that you make it interesting and interactive, you use the interactive situations that we talked about, you have to do that about at least every five to ten minutes, even if it's only asking a question otherwise people's minds are wondering to the grocery list and the laundry and what's the baby sitter doing and all the things that are going on. Your job is to constantly bring their focus back to you because your content is important or and it's very good also to give other people jobs if it's a meeting. That way it's, oh this is someone new, and all the attention goes over there and they get the information that they get from that resource. That's structuring your room so that it's the way that you want it to be. It's also structuring your content so you are going to move through it and it's going to constantly be changing like you said. Kids watching cartoons, I think it changes about every three seconds. We are not going to do it that fast but you need to keep getting their attention up to you. I also use props anytime that I can. When we have all of our products that is easy, I don't like to use notes although I always have notes near me because if the electricity goes off or the fire alarm and everything gets distracted, as a professional, it's my job to be able to get on track very quickly. Things have to run on time. Having a sheet of notes, I may not look at it unless something like that happens but there if I need to get back on track very quickly. It's how you do it also. You've got your stage set, you've got your interaction planned and the one thing that you have to have is you have to have stories. If you tell stories, that's what people are going to remember. For instance the story you told Grace. People on this call may remember the things that we've talked about that they'll remember that story you told about the look on your face when everybody was looking away from each other.

(Grace): (laughter) I'll never forget that moment.

(Marcey Walsh): Exactly, because those are the things we can connect with. Telling your stories and also asking other people for their stories. If you are talking to people about their successes in bringing new people into the business, give people opportunities to tell their stories. Someone had said that what if you have really strong personalities and they hijack your meeting and take it in the opposite direction than you wanted? You allow them to tell their story. I've actually been in a position where I’ve gotten up and I’ve been walking around the room while someone was telling a story and then walked over near them and when they actually took a breath put my hand on their shoulder and then taken a sentence in the other direction to bring it back to what we were talking about. Alpha females. Many direct sales women are alpha females, we're strong. If their agenda isn't the same as yours, if their agenda is to get attention or if their agenda is to stir up problems, it’s your job, you're in charge to bring it back to your agenda. Everyone is there for what you have planned. I can certainly emphasize when someone is talking about the stronger personalities. I hope that addresses that a little bit and at the end we can ask some more questions about that, if that's still not clear. It's you meeting; it's your communication set and your agenda so these are the tricks of the trade that you can use. I actually had one girlfriend who I found out why I can never interrupt her. She had developed a speech pattern that she only breathed in the middle of a sentence.

(Grace): Oh my (Laughter) how do you work with that?

(Marcey Walsh): It took me weeks to figure it out of listening to her because she would talk forever and there was never a moment to stop her. It's because, I don't even know if I can use it. She would be going a long and then, all of a, sudden she would breathe in the middle so then she could stop and go on to the next sentence without even pausing a breath. There was never a minute to step in. I have found 99 percent of the time if you physically touch someone it draws their attention and everyone else around you and that gives you an opportunity to redirect things.

(Grace): What I also heard too. I'd love that strategy of the physical touch I’d never had that before, thank you for that Marcey. Someone had told me that they move in. The speaker can move in to that person as they are speaking and then if they go on too much it's almost like they take some steps back like it's a natural OK we are getting to progress on to the next subject or we are moving forward.

(Marcey Walsh): It depends on –

(Grace): If you don't have the ability to touch them.

(Marcey Walsh): Right. Any physical movement will draw people’s attention to you. You have to be careful culturally with moving in close to people depending on their culture that may or may not be a good thing and it can also be perceived as being aggressive. You just kind of have to read the situation and see how it goes. Also the touching, in some cultures you just do not touch people but usually woman to woman is usually not a

problem. It's usually the man - woman thing going where you have to be a little cautious about the touching.

(Grace): I've also heard somebody else that said that they would acknowledge what the person is saying if they are trying to take off on the meeting. They would acknowledge that strong person and what they are saying and then they would ask, I know how important this is to you, may we set a time to have a conversation around this or can we have a discussion about the even relevant to your thoughts on this. It was something along those lines so that they don't monopolize. What are your thoughts on that Marcey?

(Marcey Walsh): That would work if you get the chance to get word in edgewise. What I would change was rather than saying may we or can we which are asking permission and they could say no, would be, let's set a time or at the break we'll set a time to talk about that later. That way you are not asking for their permission, you are saying this is what's going to happen.

(Grace): Great

(Marcey Walsh): I don't know if you've ever watched the TV show The Dog Whisperer? It's fascinating to watch because all the techniques he uses - he actually trains the humans but all of the techniques he uses work in group interaction settings. It's a fascinating show to watch. Set your stage, you've got your agenda, you are moving people through. You are keeping them interested because you are using interaction, you are asking lots and lots of - I don't think you can ever ask too much questions honestly. Personally you want to leave them with the impression that you are an expert. That you are confident and you are positive and you are caring. If you have all those impressions left with them, they are going to trust you. Most of the things in our business that we want people to do whether to buy with us, to join us, we need them to trust us. In order to do all of those, there are some things that we can do with your body and your voice to make that happen. We all know about eye contact you don't want to stare somebody down... No matter the size of your group, if I am in front of 300 people or 300 children, by the end of an hour I have made contact with every single one, eye contact. As you are talking that means you have to know what you are going to be saying so that you are not distracted if you see somebody in an absolutely gorgeous red hat. You need to definitely know what you are saying so that you are communication with each person as you look around the room. If someone asks you a question you maintain a little bit longer eye contact with that person but then you answer looking at someone else. That way, everyone feels like they are involved and they don't dare miss anything. Something that might be going on which they would miss. They feel like they have to hang on the edge of their seat because you are talking to them. Eye contact is vitally important. Never, ever, ever wear sunglasses when you are talking to someone. If you are both sunglasses I guess it might work but have you ever had the experience of talking to someone with sunglasses on? How does that feel?

(Grace): I feel they are a rock star. (Laughter)

(Marcey Walsh): I just feel like I can't read them. I'm looking at their body language to know whether they are engaged or not versus what you see in their eyes. Exactly, and it's hard to trust somebody and it's hard to feel like you have a connection if you are not making eye contact with them. Eye contact is important. To me, the next thing is most important ant that would be your body language. We are going to talk about vocal variety in a moment but the body language, again, leaning towards someone shows that you've got interest. Moving draws people attention back to you but when you are moving it needs to be in purpose. I don't know if we have anyone in our audience who's taking and dance or been a dancer. The main thing when you are dancing is, you just don't move your hand from your wrist or from the elbow, and you move it from the shoulders. You are making a big sweeping motion and all of your movement needs to be intentional and it needs to be complete because people follow it with their eyes, makes them feel satisfied. It makes them feel like, oh she did that on purpose, that wasn't just oops, a jerk I tripped, something like that. It makes them feel comfortable and it makes them trust you. Your body language, you move around your stage, that way you keep people’s attention. If you are in a situation where you are doing role playing and you are not doing it with someone else, you are doing it on your own. To use your stage when you are being one person, you might be on the right side of your stage, you might also change your voice and when you are being the other person or you are talking about a change in situation. Go ahead, move to someplace else. When you do that it helped people's minds to go, oh that's different something has changed. It helps them to understand what you are saying better and it helps to keep their interest too.

(Grace): That's brilliant. I'm seeing so many parallels when people are presenting to their teams, working and training their teams. If they are in a party plan or even in network marketing they are in an opportunity meeting.

(Marcey Walsh): Right

(Grace): All this ties in or even sharing their products or services in a more intimate setting. These all apply, this is fantastic!

(Marcey Walsh): That's good (laughter) because you have spoken to five times more people that I have. That's wonderful; I can even surprise you with a few things. Do you use mirroring Grace?

(Grace): Yes, matching a mirroring absolutely with the body language.

(Marcey Walsh): With the body language. We'll talk about that with the voice a little bit later also. I was sitting in a meeting with a top corporate executive the other day. There were three of us and when