In The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (McGraw-Hill, 2009), Carmine Gallo cites a few tips early in his narrative. They may seem simple but don’t be fooled. All of the greatest public speakers will tell you that it took them many years (about 10,000 hours) of deliberate practice to master them.
1. “Plan in Analog”: Think of the presentation as a story that has a setting, a plot, characters, conflicts, increasing tensions because of unsolved problems and/or unanswered questions, a climax, and a brief concluding lesson.
2. “Answer the One Question That Matters Most”: Those in the audience are asking the same question, “Why should I care.” Disregard this question and you will lose the audience almost immediately.
3. “Develop a Messianic Sense of Purpose”: Gallo notes that Jobs was worth more than $100 million by the time he was 25 and it didn’t natter to him at all. That wasn’t what he was about. “Understanding this one fact will help you unlock the secret behind Jobs’s extraordinary charisma.”
4. “Create Twitter-like Headlines”: Develop headlines into 140-character sentences. Less is more.
5. “Draw a Road Map”: Jobs effectively uses the most powerful principle of persuasion, The Rule of Three (i.e. three new products, three objectives, three barriers. three parts, three new features).
6. “Introduce the Antagonist”: In each of Jobs’s greatest presentations, he introduces a common enemy against which everyone unites, becomes emotionally engaged, prepares to do battle, agrees to make sacrifices, etc.
Note: It could be waste, a foreign country, the New York Yankees (“the Evil Empire”), a product, a competitor. Whatever.
7. “Reveal the Conquering hero”: At each presentation, Jobs introduces a hero that the audience can rally around. It could be a person, a product, a goal, or a destination.
Few (if any) of those who read this book will then be “insanely great in front of any audience.” However, there are valuable lessons to be learned from what Steve Jobs learned about effective presentations.
Head’s up: Gallo’s next book, Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March (2014).