Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story | Jerry Weissman

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story | Jerry Weissman | A winner!

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Presenting to Win:...

	Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story Jerry Weissman Prentice Hall, 2006 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In Presenting to Win: Persuading Your Audience Every Time, the world's #1 presentation consultant shows how to connect with even the toughest, most high-level audiences--and move them to action. Jerry Weissman shows presenters of all kinds how to dump tho

You will never present the same way again...and your audiece will thank you

Jerry Weissman is one of those rare people who has written an authoritative sounding book about how to present and has the real experience and background to justify every claim he makes.

The book starts with the premise that the presenter must focus on the audience and that he must make them focus on him. He must understand the mental point they are at (Point A) and moves them to Point B. He must understand what is in it for them (WIIFY) and constantly use it as he constructs every slide to walk them to Point B. He must also understand the setting of the audience, and his main points of argument. Finally, he must tie those points together with a flow structure that fits his argument.

That's the first half of the book and as someone who has through some awful presentations, I can only wish reading this book were the equivalent of a driver's license for public speakers.

The back half of the book draws on his background in television and employs standard cinematic techniques to improve the appearance of PowerPoint. It's easy to overlook this part, but it makes a huge difference as well.

I've now had a chance to see people who have used these techniques for years present, and it makes a huge difference. I have also seen someone present in a tough situation using these techniques for the first time. This person is level-headed and not given to fads. His comment? "I wish I had run to Jerry's book ten years earlier."

If you speak in public, this is the one book you have to read, and re-read. It is common sensical, based in fact, and surprisingly intuitive.

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A winner!

Presenting to Win is a terrific book. I got a clear, structured, sensible system to create presentations that will skyrocket the level of mine. I will keep this handy every time. Thanks for sharing your wisdom, Jerry.

How to take your listeners where you need them to go.

We've all sat through presentations that dragged on forever, but led nowhere. What's worse, we've probably even given a few. As the author puts it, "The problem is that no one knows how to tell a story...and no one knows that they don't know how to tell a story."
Author Jerry Weissman boils it down to telling a compelling story. That's easy to say, but hard to do. With this book's guidance, you can become an effective communicator--whether convincing employees of the need to change, persuading prospects that you have the best solution or leading skeptical community groups to support your cause.

Presenting to Win overflows with practical advice on how to engage an audience by telling your story with a focus on what's important to them. You become an `audience advocate' whose concern for your listeners' needs puts them at the heart of your presentation. As Weissman describes it:
"Persuasion is the art of moving your audience from Point A, a place of ignorance, indifference, or even hostility toward your goal...navigating them through an unbroken series of Aha!s...to Point B, a place where they will act as your investors, customers, partners, or advocates, ready to march to your drum."

By following Weissman's detailed roadmap, we can learn how to tell stories that move and motivate our listeners by keeping them engaged from a compelling start to a big finish.

Silicon Valley Presentation Guru

Weissmann's first career was as a Hollywood producer and screenwriter. His friendship with venture capitalist, Ben Rosen, led him to his second career as a presentation guru. In 1988, he launched a business that taught high tech executives to move from feature-laden, techno-speak dissertations to engaging, listener-centric presentations. Yahoo, Intuit, Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel all benefited from his teachings.

The Opening Gambit is Just the Beginning
Weissman offers plenty of real world anecdotes, how-tos, and helpful graphics that convey how to grab and keep your audience. His opening gambit concept typifies his approach. He first offers the rationale, supports it with multiple success stories, and describes a broad range of opening gambits.
To engage an audience, an opening gambit pulls them out of a state of disinterest or suspicion about you and your presentation. Asking questions is one of seven such gambits discussed. In 1993, Scott Cook founder of Intuit (maker of Quicken and QuickBooks) faced a jaded audience of investment bankers. Rather than launch into a feature packed discussion of his new product, he asked two questions:
* How many of you balance your own checkbooks?
* How many enjoy doing it?
After a round of chuckles, he continued, "You're not alone. Millions of people around the world hate balancing their checkbooks. We at Intuit have developed an easy-to-use, inexpensive home finance tool named, Quicken." With this `Aha' moment, Cook was off and running.
Beyond the Opening Gambit--Components of Successful Presentations
Equally insightful chapters on presentation essentials provide a level of detail and clarity that leaves nothing to chance. They include:
* Story development
* Graphic design
* Delivery skills
* Tools
* Q & A techniques
In each case, Weissman

Presenting to Win: A Blueprint Worth Following

Weissman demonstrates that even those of us who aren't naturals can present to win. Learning what he teaches requires significant effort because his approach contains such a broad range of interrelated elements--and includes variations that differ depending on purpose, topic, and audience. Making it easy for our audience is hard for us. But, as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Intuit, and Yahoo learned, the effort is well worth it.

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Presenting to Win is an excellent tool

This book is an excellent tool. It focuses very specifically on effectively creating a business presentation. The tips were valuable to be and I have been creating presentations for several years. It will also be very easy to reference in the future.

Homerun after homerun after homerun ...

This book is about making CONSCIOUS decisions for balancing the story board itself for hard facts, visual, ethical and psychological aspects, politicily correctness etc. but of course doesnt stop there.

The book shows and discusses which elements you need to convey your story and why you use certain presentation technics over others to achieve your goals.

The book is devided in 14 chapters. Each chapter is focused on either

a) How to create or develop your basic story or on
b) How to enhance it

(by using the described technics and its implications and reactons it will provoke).

What makes this book standing out is the careful analyzation of the aspects that came into play when giving an presentation.

That obviously includes the analytical skills itself but also the time and effort to explicitely mention and discuss (dis)advantages of each element.

The carefully chosen presentation samples will be disassembled throughout the book and taken apart into its peaces, analyzed, explained and put back together.

Where required, the example will be (dis)assembled several times to bring the points across.

Its the analysation of those presentations and its aspects to a granular level and putting the gained knowledge into a conscious presentation creation process that make the book so valuable.

Most books tell you just how to use software to make graphics etc. but this book tells you what you have to present to your adience to actually win them over.

The fact that the many aspects are explicitely explained helps you visualize the options you have at your disposal and the reason why you chose one presentation form over another.

While this book focuses on presentations that show off your assets and the art of persuasion. There is also a companion book "In the line of Fire" which focuses more on the defense to hardball questions.

I do also want to recommend a third book - "Dan Roams: Back of the Napkin" which focuses more on the technical aspects of how to find your story, and a strong focus on visualizing it fool prove and providing rock solid hard facts that wont be beaten.

What Jerry*s books does express very well is the fact that giving a presentation is like being an athlet.
You will have to exercise "verbalize" regularly to be in top form when it counts.

Good luck to you !!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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