Episode #94 The 400 Face Presentation

Very few business presenters are able to really engage their audience. They are speaking at them rather with them. In today’s show we will deal with how to turn that situation right around and become a presenter who has the audience eating out of the palm of your hand.

Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show"

I am your host Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.

Why the Cutting Edge?

In this show, we are looking at the critical areas for success in business in Japan. We want to help advance everyone’s thinking so that we be at the forefront, the Cutting Edge, of how to flourish here in this market.

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.

There have been some changes in the way higher education is being funded in japan. Government spending on education in japan represents one point seven percent of public spending compared to the OECD average of three percent. Tertiary educational institutions in japan rely heavily on private funding at sixty eight percent, more than twice the OECD average of thirty percent. The amount of financial support provided by families as a percentage of income of university students has declined from seventy six percent in nineteen ninety six to sixty percent in two thousand and sixteen. During the same period the percentage of student loans increased from six percent to twenty percent. In other news, the Japanese government is encouraging firms to keep employing workers up to the age of seventy, to help ease the manpower shortage and ease the pressure on the pension system brought on by the twin factors of an aging and also declining population. The number of sixty five or older workers was eight point six two million or twelve percent of the sixty six point six four million people, fifteen or older who are working. Today twenty four point three percent of senior citizens have jobs. The pool of workers in the fifteen to sixty four age group has dropped five million since two thousand and twelve to seventy five million today. Finally, the Japanese domestic market for internet shopping has grown steadily at an annual rate of ten percent according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. In two thousand and seventeen, Japan’s on-line shopping market reached sixteen point five trillion yen or one hundred and fifty four billion dollars. This accounts for five point seven nine percent of total household spending.. The ratio in Britain, China and The US has already passed ten percent so Japan can expect to double in size over the next few years.

This is episode number Ninety Four and we are talking about The four hundred face presentation Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

Can we be successful as a presenter if we don't connect with our audience? Many presenters believe this simply is not needed. This connecting lark is rather fluffy and irrelevant for them because the content is king. The delivery is a sideshow, a trifle, a distraction from the main game. Solid high value information, backed up with verifiable data is the mother lode. Actually that is not true.

Solid, verifiable data delivered in a monotone, presented looking down to the reams of notes on the podium, in a disinterested manner is a communication killer. No matter how good the "goods" are, it is not much help if no one if getting your message. Why aren't they getting it? They are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Line instead. We cannot be so arrogant as to imagine our content can carry the day in this age of distraction. The younger generation are going to be the future business audience from Hell. They are growing up totally distracted all the time, with the concentration span of a dazed gnat. They have an addiction to being in touch with each other all the time and are unapologetically reaching for their escape vehicle - their phone - in a heartbeat.

If you are looking down at your note when speaking then the most valuable data is being withheld from you. Watch your audience like a hawk. If you see them disappear under the desk scrolling with their device, then you can kiss your message goodbye. Look them right in the eye. And do it for six seconds. Why six? Less is not giving us time enough to connect and any longer becomes intrusive - we start giving them sunburn from our intensity.

So the maths on that calculation are pretty simple. Six seconds means ten people per minute. A 40 minute speech means we are constantly using our eye contact to connect with 400 faces. Some will be the same faces, depending on the size of the audience. In a large audience, we may think we cannot connect with everyone but we can. Those seated far from us will imagine we are looking at them. The actual person we are looking at and the twenty people sitting around them, all believe we are talking directly to them. Our object should be to speak one-on-one to every single person in that audience.

But Greg, in Japan, we don't make eye contact. Not true. In a typical business meeting, continuous eye contact will be burn out the retinas of our Japanese counterparts, so we have to learn how to turn the eye contact on and off. A presentation is not the same thing though. This is a different role for us and we need to play the bigger game of being persuasive. To do so means we have to bring our full armory to the cause, to battle listener distraction and escape attempts.

Find out more when we come back from the break

Welcome backHow would you like to become a dynamite presenter? Sounds good doesn’t it, well here is the answer – the High Impact Presentation Course. Two days, two instructors, every thing video reviewed, massive individual coaching – this is the Rolls Royce of presentation training. The next programme in Japanese will run on November thirteen and fourteen. In English we may have another programme scheduled for November but that is not yet decided. We certainly will have one in English on February fourth and fifth next year. Details can be found at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com

Divide the audience up into six sectors, depending on the size. A smaller audience might become just three sectors. The point is to ensure we visually rove across the audience and speak to every single person, no matter where they are seated. We are not looking at the projection screen, our laptop monitor, the back wall, the front row or only one side of the room. We are circulating in a random fashion around the audience, trying to draw them into the web of our message.

We have in our mind those 400 faces we have to connect with, before our time is up. When we do this, the members of the audience feel more closely connected to us. They feel as if they are being spoken to directly and they feel flattered with the attention.

We can read their faces for reaction to what we are saying. This allows us to respond by varying our delivery, by using voice tone, questions and silence to keep them in the room with us.

If we have their attention then we have a chance of getting our message across. Even if they cannot remember all that we say, they will never forget us. Getting both would be a wonderful result, getting one is better than being totally forgettable like most speakers.

THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show is here to help you succeed in Japan. Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues, become a regular.

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Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. Please leave me some feedback on YouTube, I would love to know how this show helped and what other topics you are interested in for me to cover. Remember I am here as a free resource to help you, so just tell me how I can help you best.

You might also enjoy my podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts.

Don’t forget that the next High Impact Presentations programme in Japanese will run on November thirteen and fourteen. In English we may have another programme scheduled for November but that is not yet decided. We certainly will have one in English on February fourth and fifth next year. Details can be found at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com

In episode Ninety Five we are talking aboutWinning Sales Follow Through. Find out more about that next week.

So Yoroshiku Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!