This is a course for those of you who want to up your executive game by delivering jaw dropping, powerfully persuasive audience engaging presentations. My name is Blair cook and I've been a CFO to corporate director in both public and private companies. Let me begin by asking you a question. What makes for an effective presentation? ponder this for a moment. I'm sure your brain is already shouting out answers to that question.

Keep thinking about it. Let your brain process the idea for a few more seconds as this will provide us a foundation for today's discussion. Perhaps think of a recent presentation that you found to be particularly effective. What were the elements that contributed to this impression? Hmm. Let's see if I can read your mind a little bit.

Some of you probably identified this speaker is one of the key elements. What was it about the speaker that made them effective? You know, likelihood you are positively influenced by their enthusiasm, their authenticity, their sincerity, their confidence, their credibility, their sense of humor, their optimistic spirit, their poise and committed to the audience. Ultimately, their ability to connect with you. the speaker's a big part of the equation, but what else? What else makes for an effective presentation?

Some of you probably considered the content of the presentation. But what was it specifically about the content that made it effective? All presentations have content. So as you think more about content, you might be thinking more about how the content was presented. Perhaps it was presented at just the right level, neither too high nor too detailed. Perhaps the content was supportive with engaging visuals, graphs, images, videos, colleagues, conceptual models.

Perhaps the content was presented to you as a story that helps you remember Remember the content? Perhaps the presentation made you feel a part of the content in some manner by engaging you in the discussion. So we have the speaker and the content. But what else might be floating around in your thoughts about what makes for an effective presentation? perhaps some of you identify presentations that moved you in some way. Perhaps it changed your perception.

Perhaps it motivates you to take action. There are lots of different elements that go into an effective presentation. Few of these happen by accident, great speakers design and deliver presentations intentionally using techniques. We'll discuss more in this course. Another question I could ask you is what makes a presentation effective? This is slightly different than the question what makes for an effective presentation, because now I want you to consider the outcome of the presentation presenting just because we were asked to or it's expected of us so Getting paid to present?

None of these reasons lead us to a specific outcome. Recall a presentation that you've been to or delivered recently. What was the specific outcome? And was the presentation of effective in achieving that outcome? Some presentations you have in mind probably had a very low expectation, perhaps to convey information. Can you in all honesty and with conviction tell me that this outcome has been achieved?

And On what basis? This question has been studied to death by researchers. And the statistics are that on average, an audience will only retain 15% of the information presented within 30 days of your presentation, rather ominous and depressing, isn't it? So that's an issue we need to deal with in this course, improving retention. But back to this idea of outcomes. We often use presentations for other purposes as well.

We may want our own audience to take in action of some sort, perhaps as to approve your business plan, lend your company money, invest in your stock, a doctor recommendations, there are any number of desired outcomes. In this case, we need to influence and persuade our audience to see the world our way. This is truly one of the great challenges of presentations and the crux of executive influence, that is to get others to follow. in finance, we face a number of unique challenges in making our presentations. First of all, we need to address complexity, finance, accounting, tax and reporting matters are technically complex areas. Our challenge is to explain these concepts to audiences that may have different levels of expertise, and in most cases, let's face it very little.

Second, we need to deal with the volume of information. There is so much information that we could communicate, we want to communicate we feel it's important to communicate challenge is to distill it down to a level that is both meaningful and insightful. Finally, let's face it, some members of our audience just don't get excited about the numbers and various financial topics as we might. So our challenge is to present information in a way that holds attention, improves retention, and achieves persuasion. This course is about improving your presentation skills, so that your next presentation makes an impact. In our first lesson, we're going to discuss the principles of audience engagement, influence and persuasion.

In our second lesson, we're going to tackle planning and outlining our presentations. Do you know why TED Talk presentations are limited to 18 minutes. There are some very good scientific reasons behind this that will change the way you present from now on. In our third lesson, we're going to focus on nailing a great opening heck not just great, fantastic as your seat killer opening to get your presentation kicked off right now. In our fourth lesson, we tackle the body of the presentation, we will talk about the importance of storytelling and techniques to engage your audience and the qualities that will make your message more sticky. In the fifth lesson, we're going to focus on making our presentations more visual.

Did you know you can improve the dire retention statistic from 15% to 65%, just by incorporating visuals, that's an amazing 433% improvement that you cannot afford to miss. Imagine if you can hit a golf ball 433% further and you could now you can drive all the paradise of your golf club with a seminar. In the sixth lesson, we'll look at wrapping up our presentations with pizzazz. Think of the finale of your presentation as a giant bow and handing it back to your audience to consider and act on. In the seventh lesson. We'll look at presentation techniques.

How should you stand? How should you sit? How should you set up the room? What should you be doing with your hands Finally, we've got the q&a sessions to consider in our last lesson. That's a lot to consider for one course. But we've never shied away from a challenge.

And nor should you. I hope you'll join me in this little adventure to not only improve your presentation skills, but more importantly improve your executive presence. Click on the first lesson to begin