What kind of first impression do your customers and prospects get of your business when they get your voice mail greeting? Is it enthusiastic and professional? More important, is it concise and helpful? Or, does you greeting sound more like this one?
Quickies
Good Slides Make Bad Handouts
A client recently engaged me to create and deliver a workshop for an employee group. During our planning discussion, I recommend not using slides, given the audience, content and objective to create a more lively and engaging discussion. Slides tend to create the opposite impression.
Just Say ‘No’ to Note Cards
Given my commitment to Life Long Learning, I regularly review presentation skill-oriented books to keep what I share with my clients current and relevant. I recently encountered two different authors who recommended using 3×5 inch note cards for preparing speaker notes. Whoa! Couldn’t disagree more. So, please allow me to respectfully disagree and rerun one of my favorite rants.
Get My Point?
A reader just asked me what I thought of using a laser pointer with his slides. I started the conversation with ‘Don’t let the technology tail wag the presenter dog’. The rest of my comments:
One major downside of using this tool is the need to look at the screen when using it. I’ve already ranted about avoiding turning your back on the audience to read a slide to them. Using the laser pointer has the same effect – loss of eye contact and connection.
Handouts vs. Slides
A client recently asked for some advice about a common practice with handouts. He noted that presenters often give audience members hard copies of their slides so they can take notes or use as a handout. My comments:
What Are Your Strengths?
A reader involved in a job search just asked how to best answer the typical interview question ‘What are your strengths?’ This is a critical question because it usually comes early in the interview process, helps project focus and value and sets the tone of rest of the interview.
A Very Unique Request
Regular readers know how much I love to rant about ineffective word choices, so please humor me about ‘very unique’. ‘Unique’ can’t be modified. Ever. Period. Therefore ‘very unique’ is wrong, so is ‘somewhat unique’ and ‘really unique’.
How’s Your Escalator Speech?
Regular readers may recall that I write … and rant … a lot about Elevator Speeches, the simple answer to the often-asked question ‘What do you do?’ Sometimes maligned and often done poorly, Elevator Speeches are still a fact of life when you network.
Verbs Beat Nouns
Here’s a Quickie Rant about Making Words Matter that might challenge some of your word use habits, like the one you carried over from those 500-word essay days in high school – Noun Phrases.
Typo Theory
I’ve been a professional writer my whole career. So, how embarrassing is it to have a careless typo in the very first sentence of last month’s eLetter! Even worse when an astute reader – and friend – called me on it within a few minutes of publication.