The Bootstrap CEO
February 5, 2010 by Jerry
In the previous post, you read about how musicians and athletes practice their art to the point of effortless grace; and that presenters, while not performers, must practice their presentations to the point delivering it with confidence and poise. The practice methodology to achieve that lofty state is Verbalization, the subject of prior blogs, as well as a case study in Presenting to Win. Verbalization means rehearsing your presentation aloud—just as you will in front of an actual audience, and doing it many times over.
Unfortunately, the way most businesspeople rehearse their presentations is to click through the slides and say something like, “Okay, with this slide I’m going to say something about our sales revenues…and then with this slide I’ll say something about our path to profitability…and then with this next slide I’ll show a picture of our lab and talk a little about R&D.”
Sound familiar? As a form of rehearsal, it is completely unproductive. Talking about your presentation is not an effective practice method for presenting; any more than talking about tennis would be a good way to improve your backhand.
An even more common presentation practice, is mumbling. The presenter clicks through the slides on the computer or flips through the pages of a hard copy of the slides while muttering unintelligible words. Neither of these methods is Verbalization. In fact, they are both counterproductive because they reinforce negative behavior.
Jason Trujillo of Intel Corporation described this behavior as “practice makes permanent,” a variation of the 2000-year old words of Publius Syrus, “practice makes perfect.” If you mumble, you reinforce mumbling. If you Verbalize your words just as you will say them in front of an actual audience, you will reinforce the correct words.
To illustrate the power of Verbalization, here is the story of The Bootstrap CEO from Presenting to Win:
The man, who began his professional career as a scientist, had developed his esoteric technology
in his garage and then bootstrapped his company without ever having to make presentations. But
when his technology took off and his company was about to go public, he knew that he would have
to stand and deliver the IPO road show. He retained my services and we went through all the steps
you’ve learned in this book, except for the Verbalization.
On the morning of the day he was to deliver his road show to the investment banking team that
would be selling his offering, he panicked. I printed out his slides on paper, spread them out on a
conference room table, and asked him to talk through them. But he stammered as he did, and his
panic intensified. I asked him to start again. As he worked his way through the slides the second
time, he stammered less and less. I asked him to do it again and again.
By the fifth run-through, his stammering had disappeared; by the sixth, he was beginning to
develop continuity; by lunchtime, when the bankers arrived, he was able to deliver a positively
fluid presentation. The solid foundation of the well-developed story and graphics combined with
Verbalization gave the apprehensive presenter the comfort level he needed.
Make this your lesson learned: Verbalize your presentation and you can approach the effortlessness of successful musicians and athletes.
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[...] triple iteration of "over" is the operative point. Verbalization is the process of rehearsing your presentation aloud as you would to an actual audience; that same [...]