How to Give a Knockout Presentation – in Just 7 Minutes with Diane Diresta

Related Links and Resources:

The tool that I have for everybody today is an audio course called "Seven Deadly Mistakes Speakers Make and How to Avoid Them for Maximum Success." You can find that at www.diresta.com

Summary:

Diane DiResta, CSP, is Founder and CEO of DiResta Communications, Inc., a New York City consultancy serving business leaders who deliver high stakes presentations. Diane is Past President of the NYC chapter of National Speakers Association and former media trainer for the NBA and WNBA. She was featured on CNN, and quoted in the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, London Guardian, and Investors Business Daily and Bloomberg radio.

She is a Certified Virtual Presenter. And her blog, Knockout Presentations, made the Top 50 Public Speaking blogs. She has the unique ability to get to the core of the message and translate complexity into simplicity. Diane is also a licensed Speech Pathologist.

Here are the highlights of this episode:

1:40 Diane’s ideal Client: My ideal client is a thought leader or CEO who is out there promoting their brand but they're challenged by giving presentations. So, it could be a Founder who's pitching for funding, CEO giving a high-stakes presentation at a conference, or it could be a solopreneur who needs an elevator pitch.

2:04 Problem Diane helps solve: The principle problem is presence; how to show up powerfully and have that presence when they are on the platform. Whether it's in person or on an electronic platform. A lot of times, what happens is they're leaving money on the table because they're avoiding speaking or they're not doing it well. Speaking is one of the most cost-effective and powerful marketing strategies, but you need to know how to do it.

2:48 Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Diane: The primary problem or feeling in their body is usually nervousness and anxiety but one of the symptoms that tells me they lack presence is that they don't engage the audience; they stand up there like a talking head memorizing their script and there's no connection, or they're reading their slides. That's one of the issues. Another issue is that they don't know how to connect on an eye level, so they haven't learned how to take the audience or a big group and make that a one-on-one experience. Those are some of the ways that I know people lack presence and the big killer is monotone. If you're dispassionate, then you do not have presence.

3:47 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Diane and her solution: The biggest mistake that most people make across the board is being speaker-centered; and that's all about 'me, myself, and I'. So, they talk about their topic as if that's the most important thing to the audience. Here's the truth - the audience doesn't care; they only care about their self-interest. I work with people to show them listener-centered communication which is a model that helps them dig-in into the audience needs, find a hook and then lead with that hook. And when you learn that process, you can give a knockout presentation literally in seven minutes and more often we do it in six.

4:39 Diane’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): What you can open up on Facebook is your own green room, and that allows you to do Facebook live right into that room because it's private, nobody can see it. And so, that lowers the risk and you can store your videos there, so it's a great practice area.

5:15 Diane’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): The tool that I have for everybody today is an audio course called "Seven Deadly Mistakes Speakers Make and How to Avoid Them for Maximum Success." You can find that at diresta.com.

5:49 A lot of people right now are thinking "I need to work on my presentation but I can't really hire a coach. What can I do?" There are two things right away. First, you can go to my YouTube channel: youtube.com/dianediresta, I have over 100 videos there. And you can get my book "Knockout Presentations" which is online and in bookstores. It has everything from 'soup to nuts'; from checklist, to the listening centered communication model, to quizzes. It is literally a seminar in a book. I wrote it that way so it's the next best thing of having me there.