One of my favorite websites lately is BNET. The site is a great tool for anyone in business but is especially helpful for managers. Their articles are well done and extremely well laid out. You can easily work through lots of information in a short period of time thanks to their executive overview style layout.
This week, they’re featuring a short video that couldn’t be more up my alley! Its all about how to present like Steve Jobs. They also have an additional article recapping some of the details on the video, incase you prefer to read. Incase you’re really under a time crunch and want an even shorter run-down, let me help by providing the bullet points I wrote down while watching it:
- Headline – Start with a memorable headline to provide a theme that will carry through the presentation.
- Outline – Tell people what you’re going to talk about briefly. Then, open and close each theme to help transition from topic to topic.
- Enthusiasm – Be passionate and excited about what you’re talking about. Use words like “best,” “biggest,” “exciting” and “cool.”
- Sell an Experience – Numbers and stats are meaningless unless their in context and relative. Jobs talks about how many iPods are sold in a quarter and then quickly breaks it down into how many are sold per day, or hour. — Its easier to envision yourself in an Apple store, watching that number of iPods be sold before your eyes vs. the entire quarterly total.
- Visual & Simple – Use as little text as possible in your presentation. Use images. Don’t use more than 2 or 3 images on a slide.
- Dramatic Flair – Make it a show.
- Identify and build up to the most memorable moment
- Reherse
- One more thing… – Probably Jobs’ most well-known line, it gives people a bonus or an encore to the event.
I thought these were all great suggestions. I’ve implemented some of these into my presentations lately and its been met with lots of success. I have stopped short of wearing a black turtleneck and jeans … but that didn’t change the fact that I felt very Jobsian during the presentation. That’s a good thing for me because he’s one of my favorite presenters of all time!
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