6 Worst Presentation Mistakes Made by Millions

Each time you engage in a conversation, dialogue or speech with the intention of convincing another person to do, think or act upon anything, you are making a presentation. You
don’t have to be in front of large crowds to be giving a presentation or using visual aids such as PowerPoint to be giving a presentation. Presentations are given everyday and are one of the most powerful communication tools exist and has the ability to propel your business, career and sales to ultimate levels. Master presenters get their status by mastering the art of delivery from setting up their content, structuring the flow, controlling non verbal and verbal actions and delivering a powerful message that is engaging and memorable. They master techniques to ultimately reel their audience in and leave them wanting more so why do 99% of the presentations fail?

Mistake # 1: Failure to Focus on the Audience

How many times have you sat thru a presentation where the entire focus was only on the person presenting? Did you feel as though you were sitting thru a “sales presentation”? You know the ones, “My company is great, we do this, and we do that and blah, blah, blah…. Most likely you tuned most of their message out. One of the biggest mistakes presenters make is focusing all of their presentation on an “introduction to my company” with historical data, statistics and overview of why they are so great” versus focusing on the audience and their reasons for inviting you to present. To avoid this mistake personalize your presentation to demonstrate that you have a complete understanding of the audience needs, objectives and decision criteria. Customize your presentation to hit on your audience’s objectives and deliver your key messages in a way that your audience feels that those key messages are just for them. Lastly, successfully connect the dots between the audience’s objectives and your own objectives with clear and concise delivery methods that create an emotional connection.

Mistake # 2: Lack of Clearly Defined Objectives

Too many times, presenters fail to successfully connect the dots between the audience’s objectives and their own objectives. They have a tendency to focus on features rather than highlighting benefits and never clearly state what they hope to get out of the presentation. If you are not clear, your audience will not know what specifically they should be focusing on. You need to develop an uncanny skill to present from a benefit position and clearly build the roadmap to the audience’s goals. As Craig Valentine states in his Free Audio Series “7 Step World Class Speaking Toolkit”, It is important to make a “Big Promise”. What specifically brings you here today, what will your audience gain from listening to you today. Lay the framework for their audience and clearly state what their audience can expect over the next 45 minutes and keep your presentation on task to support that objective.

Mistake # 3: Information Overload

One of the first questions I am always asked by every presenter is” How Many Points should I include in my presentation”? Or “How Many Slides”? Another big mistake presenters make is
they try to squeeze too much information into one presentation. Rather than your audience retaining your key messages, they will retain nothing because of information overload. There is an old wise saying “when you squeeze your information in, you squeeze your audience out”. Selecting the right balance of information for the timeframe allocated to your presentation is a critical decision that a all presenters need to master. As a rule of thumb, most audience will not retain more than 3 key points in an hour presentation. If you are asked to present with less time, adjust your key points down. It is better to be focused and deliver concrete information and leave something out (that you can always direct them to) rather than jam too many points, facts and theories into the time that you have. Too many times a presenter will not adjust their presentation and focus on trying to communicate everything. Be sensitive to the time, adjust your material accordingly and master the art of follow up for the additional points.

Mistake #4: Putting the audience to sleep!

A presentation that is not engaging and exciting is a complete bore. Nobody wants to be subject to a boring presentation and if you do not make your exciting, chances are you’re your
audience will be angered at the fact that you wasted their time. Remember, time is our biggest asset and people do not give it away freely. Bad presenters fail to grab the audience’s attention and make that emotional connection that connects their key messages and usually leaves their audience feeling bored and unfulfilled. Master Presenters know how to use techniques that tease and make their audience wanting more, they know how to adjust the tone of their voice and to pause at the right moment. They effectively use images to reinforce the emotional element of their presentation and they use stories and provocative questions to engage the mind as the audience waits for the answer in the presentation. Master Presenters are skilled at creating an event and making an emotional connection with their audience each and every time. I often refer to Steve Jobs and his product presentations which are exciting, engaging and powerful. If you have never seen this master at work, I would recommend visiting Apple’s website and taken a look at one of his videos.

Mistake # 5: Death by PowerPoint

Misusing visual aids is a common mistake many presenters make. They try to take all their content and jam it into a slide so they don’t forget what they want to say. To make it worse, they stand up in front of the crowd and read the entire slide deck. Chances are your audience is wondering why they are being read to and are not connecting to the material and the content. Visual aids should be used to enhance a presentation, not be the presentation. The use of images can be one of the most effective ways to stimulate emotion and when used correctly, can really hit home a key message. An example would be – Suppose you want your audience to answer the question “how big is an acre of land”?, you could put statistics up on the slide that state the numerical dimensions and square feet and hope that your audience can relate to numbers, or you could put up a photo of a football field and state “it’s about the size of a football field”. The impact would be completely different! To go a step further to making an emotional connection, you could tell a simple story about the football field and make it relevant to reinforce one of your key messages. Learn how to drive the message home using images without overwhelming content and you will avoid this common mistake.

Mistake #6: No Call to Action

The last mistake focuses on failure to ask for what you want. If you were invited to do a sales presentation, ask for the business. If you were invited to introduce your company, ask for the next meeting. Every presentation must have a call to action or the audience will not know what you want them to do with the information you are providing. Give them a task to do after the presentation. This action will reinforce your key message and get them thinking about what they have just learned. Master presenters know how to leave their audience with a task to perform and always go for the close.

©Kellie D’Andrea & Associates

Want to use this article in your newsletter or web site?You can, just include this complete blurb with it: Kellie D'Andrea is the creator of the BLAST system and publishes "The Marketing Edge" a FREE award winning ezine for small business owners who want to gain the competitive edge with strategic marketing and branding techniques that actually work. Find out the 23 Common Mistakes Most Entrepreneurs make with a FREE report offered at http://www.kelliedandrea.com/.

5 Reasons to Publish Your Own Ezine

What if you had the power to increase your marketing reach by thousands for a fraction of the expense of traditional direct mail? How about the ability to position yourself as an expert in your field simply by writing an article? This is was publishing an ezine can do for you in just a matter of weeks. An Ezine is just a fancy way of saying E-Newsletter and is one of the best marketing tools available to business owners today. Now there are a dozen of reasons why an ezine can help build your business and drive profits, but here are my top five.



1. An ezine helps you position yourself as an expert in your field.An ezine is a great medium for communicating to your clients and prospects. Through articles you establish yourself as an expert in the topics you write about and by supplying informative and great content, you can create a loyal base of readers who are all potential clients. You create credibility, expertise and trust with each article by showing your readers what you know, how much you know about that topic and providing them with insight into you as an individual. By showcasing your knowledge and expertise, not only will you attract more clients, but you will also attract other media attention resulting in your articles being published in other ezines, directories, newspapers and magazines and overall, increasing your reach beyond your current client list. If you content is good, people will want to read more from you and will find out how to subscribe to your list to get it.

2. An ezine provides you a very effective way to promote your business and to stay in touch with your customers and prospects. Staying in touch with your customers is one of the most important techniques in retaining customers. You need to remind them that you are still around and that you still have a valuable product and/or service to offer. An ezine provides you with another way to reach out with very little effort. It is noninvasive and contains valuable resources with great articles and recommendations that your customers will begin to look forward to. It is great way to keep them informed of what you have been up to and what your plans are to move the business further. Do anything to stay out in front of your competition and in front of your customers at all times.

3. An ezine provides you with a method to grow your customer and reader list to market and sell your products to over and over again. The most effective way to build your business is through creating relationship and recurring revenue. One of the biggest assets a business has is their client and prospecting list. People buy from people who they like and trust. Not only will they buy from you once, if you are providing true value in your product and/or service, they will buy from you again and again. They will become your greatest cheerleaders and sales people by promoting you and your business to everyone they know, forwarding your articles and providing you with an opportunity to start the list building process over to your new audience. The greatest thing about an ezine is that you can stop marketing one to one and begin marketing to hundreds, thousands or even millions at once. Law of averages, if you increase your reach in terms of numbers, chances are you will increase your conversion to sales.

4. An ezine allows you to grow your business outside your market and allows you to spread the word about your product and/or services.The World Wide Web has had a tremendous impact on the way business is conducted today. It has provided opportunities for the little guy to play in the same ocean as the big fish. The internet has provided boundless opportunities to expand your reach and to evolve your business beyond your local radius and beyond your four walls. A reader of my ezine, brought an opportunity to me to expand my ice cream store into a mobile cart business located into the city. Another reader forwarded my ezine to a friend who happened to own an internet gift service business. This individual contacted me and together we created http://www.sayitwithicecream.com/ a place on the web where you can order ice cream cakes for your kids away at college, business associates or family members. An ezine is the catalyst for growth. Once you connect with your readers, the connection keeps on growing and your list continues to build and your reach will go far beyond your wildest dreams.

5. An ezine is inexpensive and easy to publish. Most likely you are using traditional marketing methods to spread the word about your company including direct mail campaigns. Maybe you are sending out postcards, newsletters or product announcements and go through the process of designing your piece, creating and verifying your addresses, creating labels, stuffing envelopes and bringing to the post office for delivery. After your campaign is said and done, you have spent a lot of money on design and postage and no way to verify receipt. In some markets this is a very effective marketing technique but with the onset of e-mail marketing, there is a less expensive way to accomplish the same goal and verify receipt. Email marketing allows you to consolidate your marketing for a fraction of the cost of traditional direct mail methods and gets the word out faster. In addition, with the fancy systems out there geared towards the novice but created to capture data, you will have a complete understanding of your delivery rates and even can easily measure and track who opened your email, who forwarded your email and who bought from your email.

©Kellie D’Andrea & Associates

Want to use this article in your newsletter or web site?You can, just include this complete blurb with it: Kellie D'Andrea is the creator of the BLAST system and publishes "The Marketing Edge" a FREE award winning ezine for small business owners who want to gain the competitive edge with strategic marketing and branding techniques that actually work. Find out the 23 Common Mistakes Most Entrepreneurs make with a FREE report offered at http://www.kelliedandrea.com/.

“Navigating the Changing Winds: 6 Master Strategies to Building Customer Loyalty”

The winds – “they are a changing my friend”…. The current state of the economy, a new President, failing financial systems, fluctuating prices and high unemployment have caused many of us to pause and evaluate opportunities to reduce expenses and to optimize our performance. As our economy continues to fluctuate, controlling expenses and optimizing service levels from partners and vendors is going to become the focus for all of our customers. We all must be sensitive to these “changing winds” and enhance the experience of our customers each time we interact with them. We must go back to the basics of serving our customers and take the actions that make a difference. The simple actions – a patient ear, a please, a thank you, a quick update on status (even if you don’t’ have update to give – the fact you are reaching out to let them know you are working on their problem goes a long way) and a smile that can be heard over the phone are all simple things that we can do each and every day to stand apart from our competition.

The art of hospitality can be very profitable, but it does take some practice and effort. To succeed, you must be dedicated to customer service first, always demonstrating that you care about their issues. Although customers may not always be right, we all must agree that it is okay for them to be wrong. Treat everyone with concern and compassion. After all, our business is not about us – it’s about the people we service and that single fact is more critical now as we navigate the changing winds…

Below are 6 strategies that when applied, will evolve your customer service to the next level – customer loyalty.

Master Strategy # 1: Know your customer

Customers are not a dime a dozen…they come with a variety of different characteristics, desires, needs and expectations. It is important to know everything that you can about your customers to ensure you are offering the most value. From basic information, name, address, title and area of responsibility to wants, needs and pressures and everything in between, it is important to understand your customer to enhance communication, articulate your proposition and to develop the foundation for trust.

Master Strategy # 2: Develop a customer strategy

Companies spend a lot of time and money developing strategic plans for their business, their technology solutions, operational strategies and financial strategies but rarely develop a customer strategy. Developing a good plan to enhance each client’s individual experience will result in uncovering areas for improvement and areas where you excel that may easily translate to another client. By writing a strategy on each client and personalizing that strategy based upon what you know about your customers (Master Strategy #1), you will memorialize a systematic approach and philosophy that will be easily followed by all in your company.

Master Strategy # 3: Deliver on your promise

Customers bought your product or service based upon a promise that you or your company has made. Make sure that you always deliver on your promise and therefore maintaining trustworthiness with your customers. Customers want to purchase from companies and people they trust to deliver the product and/or service they need and with the value they expect. According to the book, Trust Based Selling, Trustworthiness consists of four factors: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy and Self-Orientation. The combination of these factors used in the right combinations will develop a connection with your customers that will lead to a long time relationship.

Master Strategy # 4: Educate your staff

Educate your front lines with your customer knowledge. The characteristic of your customers, what they are buying, the promises that were made and train your staff on how to not only deliver customer service but how to go over and beyond the basics. They should know how to react in all situations and be empowered to respond to the customers’ requests. They should know it is okay to tell the customer that they don’t know the answers, but will find out and get right back to them. Customer service is a culture and a theme that must permeate your entire organization.

Master Strategy # 5: Over Promise and Over Deliver

Make sure you provide true customer service. In today’s market, service has become a buzzword thrown around by every company, but it is important to understand that customer service is now a baseline expectation and not considered an added value. Customer service is no longer a key differentiator but going over and above the call of duty, well that will set you apart. I recently heard of a story of a retail store owner, selling women’s clothing, overheard customers in her store looking for a place to eat. She not only made a recommendation but picked up the phone and called the local restaurant to make a reservation on behalf of her customer. – She went over and beyond the basics. Here is an great opportunity to over promise and over deliver. Set yourself apart from the competition and be unique. Be creative and personalize your service specific to your individual customer. One size does not fit all in this case and offering personalized customer service will assist you in developing your unique brand.

Master Strategy # 6: Make it easy for your customers to do business with you

Leave all the guess work out and make it easy for your customer to do business with you. Have your staff go through the same process and channels that your customers will so they can experience the same exact experience your customers will have. Make adjustments to your current process if needed and always put on your customer hat and understand how your services are being evaluated through the customer eyes. Is it easy to request your product or service? What if there is a problem? Is it easy to escalate an issue? Is it easy to check on a status? Is there a long wait time? Is there a consistency each time the customer calls? These are all important questions that you must understand in order to make it easy for your customers to do business with you.


By taking the time to apply some or all of these strategies, you will create a culture centered on top notch customer service. By educating your team on expectations and providing them the roadmap to deliver the serviced you expect, will not only make your customers more loyal but will make your business more profitable. Simply stated, happy customers buy more and tell more friends about their experience. Use that as an opportunity to build upon your already stellar brand!



©Kellie D’Andrea & Associates

Want to use this article in your newsletter or web site?You can, just include this complete blurb with it: Kellie D'Andrea is the creator of the BLAST system and publishes "The Marketing Edge" a FREE award winning ezine for small business owners who want to gain the competitive edge with strategic marketing and branding techniques that actually work. Find out the 23 Common Mistakes Most Entrepreneurs make with a FREE report offered at http://www.kelliedandrea.com/