Partners in Performance Blog

Truly Persuasive Presentations: Don’t Goof Up Like the Olympic Officials


I was glued to the Olympics this past month. The athletes were spectacular but the presenters at the ceremonies, not so much. Wouldn’t you think with four years to prepare they would have had truly persuasive presentations, speaking from their hearts rather than reading from a script?

I guess four years or four days isn’t going to make a difference if you’re not following truly persuasive presentation guidelines.

If they had followed these three simple tips, they would have made a much stronger connection with the viewing public:

  1.  Never have every word written down in your notes:  That causes your eyes to stick to the page like a magnet, even if you know the material. “Good evening and welcome to the 30th Annual Olympic Games” is not difficult to remember and should not be written down.
  2. Your notes should reflect bullet points that you want to cover:  Use key words and phrases that will trigger the message:  SPECTACULAR GAMES, THANK YOU TO VOLUNTEERS, ATHLETES, AUDIENCE…
  3. If you must look at your notes, lift your eyes to speak, finish a sentence while you’re looking up, then drop your eyes back to the page to absorb the next key message.

I’m volunteering some presentation skills coaching for the next Olympics!

In the meantime, don’t waste the next four years before becoming a spectacular, gold medal presenter! Start by reserving some training time for truly persuasive presentation skills with our Upfront Persuasion one hour webinar series starting in September. You can find out more about our September 13th webinar, 13 Expert Tips to Create Truly Persuasive Presentations by clicking here.


This entry was posted by TanjaParsley on August 30, 2012 in Persuasion, Presentation Skills, Upcoming Live Webinars. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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