Seminar Delivery

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TRANSCRIPT:
Avish: Alright, we’re finally at the point of delivering the actual seminar with 23-24 tracks in. We’re finally to getting to be in front of the room delivering the seminar.

Fred: Which by the way, points out a very important point which is, you can have the most brilliant seminar in terms of what content you’re going to cover, but if you got no way to properly get people in to the room and to make that happen, you don’t have a seminar. You don’t have the business.

Avish: Very, very true! So now, let’s say we’ve got the people there. We’re delivering the seminar. Let’s talk about how to do it in a really great fashion.

Fred: OK.

Avish: First off, you would like to talk about the top three characteristics of a great speaker and how to develop them. Can you share those with us and let us know about that?

Fred: Yeah. The top three characteristics of a great speaker — I did this research a number of years back where I was travelling the country with career track and I clandestinely handed out the survey to people that were at my events. And it came out that there were the three top ones and they were away above anything else and the three most important elements of being perceived as a great speaker, a great seminar leader.

Are number one, sincerity, number two, content, and number three, humor. So, sincerity, content and humor and obviously, sincerity is how do you really teach sincerity? I don’t really know, but I know that I perceive someone as being sincere if the person I see onstage and the person off stage are the same person. And it is sort of like the Oprah factor which is that the people by watching you get the feeling like there’s no BS there, you’re being who you really are and that’s an important thing from a sincerity stand point. Content, again, a lot of speakers get up there at seminars and deliver infomercials. Everything’s just a disguised sales pitch. That won’t work. You also can be too dense in your delivery of content to the point where it’s just like — so much content, content, content. Content is great, but you’ve got to mix in the third component which is some humor and usually the best humor to use is self-effacing humor or you make a fool of yourself because you’re already out there in front of a group. You look like you are a designated big shot. But so if you take at shots on anyone to make them funny, take shots at yourself.

Avish: OK. So sincerity, content, and humor and are there good ways of developing those in yourself if you’re starting out in a seminar business?

Fred: I think that if we went through each one individually, sincerity — I think that the way that you develop that is try and convince yourself that you don’t need to put an act when you are in front of a group. You need to need to be you, the real you and I mean there’s different versions of you. There is the serious you, the funny, and you can make that determination at whatever point in the seminar or speech you’re at. But sincerity will come by dropping the façade and letting the people see who you authentically are. Content is developed by making that you understand. And again this idea of creating a blue print for people and making sure that you don’t leave out any steps and you give people references that are valuable when needed. And humor, we do a thing called, “The Speaking School” on a regular basis and improv comedy is some of yours in my background. The best thing that people could do to learn how to be more humorous in front of groups is to take an improv class.

Avish: Oh, yeah. Absolutely! Nothing develops your humor for speaking in front of a group like that.

Fred: Absolutely.

Avish: So those were the three foundational elements anyone is to be a great speaker. In addition to that, you’ve got a list of things that people can use to make this seminar more effective.

Fred: Yep!

Avish: So, I’m going to go through this list because I ask you to explain each one so they’re clear for people what they are.

Fred: Sure!

Avish: So, first of these, you say people love lists.

Fred: They do. What happens is that anytime you get the chance to put something in some kind of a list order, like the seven things you must do or the three things to avoid or the five deadly sins. I mean, the only list that people didn’t like way back was the 10 commandments but other than that, people are pretty good with lists.

Avish: OK. When you say using lists, do you mean got the overall for the title and subject of the seminar, do you mean, for some sections?

Fred: Yeah. Anytime you have a section of information, one those silos to cover, one of the items in there might be for example here we just use one — the top three characteristics of a great speaker seminar later, the top three. When it’s relevant and important to use that’s when you drop it in.

Avish: Oh, great. Next idea is to stimulate all of the senses.

Fred: One of the things you want to do is make sure that to make your seminars not boring , that you have, you get people up and you get them moving around. But stimulating all the senses is really about the sense of they’re seeing something, they’re hearing something, they’re feeling something, there might be even smelling something. Sometimes you have certain scents that you are lighting certain candles or lighting certain scents. Depending on what kind of seminar you’re doing. All of the senses that you have should be stimulated because again, people respond differently and each of those sense might be more prominent, more important to them. So find ways to incorporate each of your senses.

Avish: OK. Whereas a lot of people make just focus on the one sense of hearing like their telling information but you’re saying that mix things up so you get various elements in there.

Fred: You got it.

Avish: OK? How about exercises? A lot of people like to use exercises and ice breakers and energizers. What are your thoughts on exercises?

Fred: Exercises are a great idea as long as they prove a point. The problem is that so many exercises I’ve seen to get up and rub your neighbor kind of thing, which usually I don’t want to do that. I really like the idea of making sure that any exercises that you do proves a point and you can actually say it at the end of it, “Hey! This is what we did, debrief and this is why.”

Avish: Yeah. I think there are enough exercises out there that so prove a point that there really is no excuse for just doing random.

Fred: Agreed.

Avish: OK, how about administrative information? A lot of times a seminar you get a lot of admin work and some people start their seminars just to get it out of the way.

Fred: Yeah. Not a good idea. What you want to do is right of the box when you start your seminar get in to some good meaty material for about at least the three to five minutes. Get them engaged and then back up a little bit and say, “Oh, by the way, let’s talk about, we got to make sure that, there’s the bathrooms”, you’re going to break every 20 minutes – blah, blah, blah. So give the administrative information at close to the beginning but not at the very start. So just when you’re getting everybody going, all you got to do is give that information. That’s not a very good way to start anything.

Avish: OK. Here’s the interesting one. You say that people should watch good movies and read good books for speech construction.

Fred: Yeah. The reason is that if you’ve read a good book that really intrigued you or watched a movie that really sucked you in, the construction of that, either that book or that movie is very analogous to giving seminars because you want to watch for the pacing, look for how they suck people in, et cetera and again, very, very similar when you’re doing a seminar to try and create that same feeling of a little bit of up and down movement in terms of emotions and starting on a high not and ending on a big note, that kind of thing.

Avish: OK. So that same people watch a movie, read a book but then actually try to figure out how the movies constructed and apply the same thing to their seminar.

Fred: Exactly.

Avish: Got it. OK. You like to use something called the content action idea sheet. What exactly is that?

Fred: I do that in virtually every seminar that I do. I have people pull out a plain sheet of paper in addition to whatever workbook they’re using if they’re using a workbook and I tell them to put in a separate content action idea sheet. What I tell them is, “This is a separate sheet of paper. Take notes in your workbook or your handout.” That’s fine but the content idea sheet is when you get at home from the seminar or whenever that is, that – the content idea sheet will be all of the ideas that you have to implement upon leaving here and we’re going to go through that ion a regular basis and check what you have to make sure that when you go out the door, you have one sheet that gives you all of the things you have to do and the order in which you have to do them. So that people will really enjoy having that because – and also, at the end of the event, I usually – at the start of the event I set up people by saying, “Well, if you got three really great ideas from the seminar would your time here well spent?” and people almost always say, “Yes, yes, yes!” because most of them go to seminars, they get virtually nothing. If you get them to agree three or four ideas, whatever it is you say and then at the end of the event, you’ve overwhelmed them with 17 great ideas as proven by the content action idea sheet. When you have review, you asked, “How many of you had more than three?” and everybody raising their hand, “How many of you had more than five?” and most people, “more than 10?” — That kind of thing. What will happen is it really gives the perception that this seminar was packed full of content.

Avish: OK. Got it! So that helps people apply it afterwards, but it also has everyone leaving there saying, “Wow. This is really valuable.”

Fred: Absolutely.

Avish: OK? Next stop! This one seems like a no brain but still I may want to talk about it a little bit and that is always exceed expectations.

Fred: Yah! I mean, just briefly, you want to make sure that when people come to your seminars that they leave like going, “Wow. That was a lot better I thought it was going to be.” Because, how many time of you heard people rumbling in the hall after a seminar? “That sucked! Boy! That really didn’t deliver on their promises or they didn’t cover that thing that they really should have covered.” That’s what you make sure that not happen.

Avish: Yeah. I think I have been that person myself before.

Fred: We all have.

Avish: How about making it fun? Some seminars are very serious, very business-like but what about the idea making your seminar fun?

Fred: Well, I think it’s essential that you do that because I don’t care how critical the information is. Even on topics that are very sensitive like sexual abuse or something like that, if that were your topic. You can make — there are ways to put fun in the serious topics and I don’t think you should leave that out because frankly, making something more fun helps facilitate learning and helps it to stick.

Avish: OK. What about using real life examples?

Fred: I think it’s critical. A lot of times you see speakers coming up of their examples or stories that they’ve borrowed or used from someone else and so. I mean real life examples always help eliminate any point and you should find ways to use those.

Avish: OK. Now, you suggest that people mix up their media so they stories, quotes, stats and everything. What exactly do you mean by that and why is that important?

Fred: Well, I think that in addition to stimulating all the sense, which we talked about earlier, it’s also a good idea to every time you – when you put your workbook, your seminar outline workbook together, you should be looking at each of your points that you’re covering, asking yourself how am I going to illustrate this? Am I going to use a quote? Am I going to use a statistic? Am I going to use a story? Am I going to use a prop? Am I going to use a video clip? What am I going to use to illustrate this? And you really should answer that. There should be an answer for that. You make sure that you have something planned to make sure that that point comes alive at the point of presentation.

Avish: OK and you make that its custom variety so it’s not just story after story after story.

Fred: You got it!

Avish: OK? What about watching other good speakers?

Fred: Yeah. This is essential to getting goo at anything. I mean, I grew up hoping to play golf for a living and one of the ways to be a good golfer is by watching professional golfers both on TV and watching really good golfers live an in person! And seeing other people do speaking in seminars and watching what they do – don’t try to copy them but seeing what you like and adapting and adapting for what is you do. That’s really a great thing to do to get better.

Avish: OK. Now, I’m seeing something in your list called the index card idea. What exactly is that?

Fred: Index card idea is the following – if you hand out, this is just a suggestion for something that you may want to do. If you hand out index cards to everyone in your audience at the beginning of an event and have them write down the single most important thing they wanted to learn from that seminar. And so then what you do is, at the point where that question gets answered during the seminar, they are given permission by you to stand up, hold their index card in the air. Explain what the question was they had and how it is you answered their major question that they wanted answered. They have the right to then tear it up and throw in the air like confetti.

Avish: Oh! Nice! And what do you find is the benefits of doing that?

Fred: Well, the benefit is it reinforces the point. It assures everybody. Now, here what happens is that, let’s say by getting toward the end of the event, you get an hour left and you asked people, “Who still got an index card?” and you get 20 people with index cards so ask to collect them and right after a break, you cover those points on the index card and ask them for permission to tear up the index card throw in the air yourself so that make sure the reason for joining this is two things. Number one, to break the monotony of a seminar by having some physical activity and reinforcing the point as they do it but not only that, it made sure that at the end of the event, either you or them has covered every single one of every single person’s most important question and gotten unanswered.

Avish: So that everyone leaves their feeling they got what they came for.

Fred: Exactly. They got the most important question unanswered.

Avish: Got it. I know we touched upon this before but it’s worth repeating. What is correct way to use humor in your presentations?

Fred: Yeah. The only correct way to use humor is to usually to – you never going to try and put anyone down in the audience, certainly but the best way to use humor is humor where you are made to look foolish and you’re the buffoon because you’re already standing up there oftentimes on a platform. You have this elevated status by virtue of the fact you are the seminar leader and so I think you need to make sure that the humor makes fun of yourself and everybody will find that easy to laugh at and laugh with you.

Avish: OK. Creating physical movement. You mentioned this when you talk about ripping up the index cards gets people moving but what exactly do you mean by and what are some other ways we can get physical movement?

Fred: Well, like you said, that can be one of them that the other one is frequently, you will ask a question to your audience and might be multiple choice like for example, one of the things I always ask people is, “How many of you, your primary method of learning is via reading?” and I give them either their primary method is reading or it’s visual watching or it’s experiencing or it’s audio. I have a multiple choice that they have to answer. So rather than just asking the question, asking for a show of hand which has a little bit of physical movement often times I’ll have people get up and go to corners of the room that illustrate to the rest of the group including myself what their answer was to that question. So, A is this – go to that corner; B is this – everybody who thinks that, go to that corner; C is that – go to that corner so that people are moving around but with a purpose.

Avish: OK and that serves what purpose getting people to move?

Fred: Well, what it does is it breaks up the monotony of the seminar and sort of it breaks up people — sort of board them on their pattern so that it makes – so that learning is facilitated. And also the visual that they imprint in their mind from the answer to that question is going to make that point stick.

Avish: OK. It makes sense! So, a good seminar will oftentimes have Q&A and you say you got to repeat the questions if people ask them?

Fred: Yeah. For a couple of reasons not only if you’re recording it, which is essential but even if you’re not, it’s always good to repeat the question and oftentimes if you repeat the question you can modify it just a bit to make it easier for you to answer or more relevant for the audience. So again, always repeat questions when you’re asked.

Avish: OK. What about evaluations? Do you use seminar evaluations?

Fred: I do and I like to them put – make them very simple and easy to follow. Usually what I do is, “What do you like best? What do you like least?” and then I put on a scale of one to ten. “What do you think of the presentation in terms of the presenter’s presentation mode?” and then the content but then I always have a section called, “Feel free to give us your comments.” And one of the main reasons why I want evaluations handed out is so that people can write their comments because there is a little check box that says, “Can we use your comments on our promotion material?” So it’s a way to get testimonials is by handing over evaluations to people and frequently that will give you – if you’ve done a great job, they’ll give you some really effusive praise and it’ll be in writing so it’s good and by the way, I’m saving all of those because if you use them on your website, you want to be able to produce the document that they signed to say it as OK to use.

Avish: That makes sense! It’s common and maybe you can speak to us a good idea or not to hand out and agenda on what you’re going to cover but then you say not to use the exact times on the agenda.

Fred: Yeah. In other words, I can put the seminar in the order that I’m going to cover it but if I put very precise times and something happens where we spend a little more time or a little less time on something. You’ll always have some real anal moron in the audience. Excuse my French that will say, “When is that gets 12:15 and we’re not going–“, you know like that kind of stuff. So, you want to make sure to put in the order when you cover them but not give precise times just because somebody out there is getting really ridiculous and say, “Well, it’s 12:17 when are—“, that kind of stuff.

Avish: Yeah. And so, it’s—you’re sure of what time was out there but you think it’s a good idea or an important idea to hand out an agenda or it’s OK to just do the seminar without giving people that information?

Fred: No, I think it’s a good idea to hand out the agenda but I would give—in other word, if I knew that these topics are going to be covered in the morning and these are going to be covered in the afternoon, that’s fine and I don’t have specific breaks for lunch because I can hard break but I also don’t want to give precise minute by minute times and that’s what I’m trying to avoid.

Avish: OK. Makes sense! One other thing that you recommend is that you as the presenter take notes. What do you mean by that?

Fred: Well, I keep a workbook upfront which is the same thing or which is a handout only, I keep whatever it is I give to my participants. So I can take notes to remind myself to make some changes, to modify something, to add something to it. So I have notes to myself when I’m done as to what I can do to make the seminar better.

Avish: OK then you review those afterwards so that the next time you do it you have some ideas?

Fred: You got it! And you make your seminar get better and better each time.

Avish: Got it! Well, that is a whole lot of ideas and information. Is there anything else you can think of that you want to talk about when it comes to delivering a great seminar?

Fred: Nope. I’m done.

Avish: Alright! Super!