Present with Impact
Aside from conveying creative ideas with compelling content, the key to presentations is to focus on influencing your audience and persuading them to a point of view.
Present with Impact—Advanced Intensive is a two-day workshop for experienced presenters who want more individualized instruction on methods for influencing internal and external audiences and effective delivery style. This two-day session includes 6 hours of group training and individual one-hour coaching consultations with each participant. Participants are videotaped giving two presentations and receive individualized feedback.
Present with Impact—Fundamentals of Presenting, is a one-day group training that teaches basic skills for developing clear messaging, memorable content and effective delivery style. This does not include videotaping or individual coaching sessions. This workshop is for business presenters who do not have extensive presentation experience.
Both workshops concentrate on developing skills in content structure, messaging, use of stories and analogies, and effective delivery style. Participants practice these skills by preparing a 2-minute spoken presentation for the group, followed by feedback from the trainer and fellow participants to identify opportunities to improve their impact. My training colleagues and I have decades of experience, and we excel at targeted feedback that is specific and actionable. As part of instructing participants, we encourage them to identify their pertinent real-life stories and use them to connect with audiences.
The workshop’s learning objectives are to:
Develop a well-organized and persuasive presentation
Identify and communicate a memorable key message
Construct a clear and specific call to action
Use stories and analogies to strengthen engagement and retention
Project confidence and authority through delivery style
Identify personal strengths and areas for improvement
“Susannah and all her associates are extraordinary teachers and know how to bring out the best in people. Their classroom facilitation skills are outstanding.”
—VP, Talent Development, Jackson Family Wines
Presenting to Senior Leaders
Effectively presenting to leaders demands a refined content and efficient delivery.
This workshop is a two-day presentation skills workshop that helps business presenters deliver effective and productive senior level presentations. Senior leaders demand a specific type of content, focused on data and decision making. They want presenters to be clear, concise, and confident. This workshop offers critical insights and successful strategies for influencing a senior level audience. This workshop combines group training and individual coaching sessions.
This workshop is highly interactive and utilizes real-life content from participants. During the workshop participants will develop a 2-minute presentation using a framework that is specific for a senior leader audience. Participants will practice presenting in small groups and receive targeted feedback from their peers. Each participant will have a one-hour individual coaching session to refine their presentation, practice delivery style, and identify key areas for improvement.
Presenting to Senior Leaders and Decision Makers can be conducted in a one-day program that does not include individual coaching. All programs can be modified for a virtual format.
The workshop learning objectives are:
Identify a clear objective for the presentation;
Develop a concise and compelling executive summary;
Organize content and logic flow to make a persuasive case;
Deliver the presentation with a confident and authoritative style;
Identify personal strengths and areas for improvement.
Storytelling that Sells
A well-told story not only captures audiences’ hearts and minds, but also influences listeners’ thinking and decision-making.
We are hardwired for telling and listening to stories. Whether spoken around the glow of a campfire, or conveyed in a corporate conference room, stories represent a natural, everyday form of communication that resonates with audiences and connects them to speakers.
In a business and sales context, storytelling acts as a potent tool for positioning a brand more memorably than mere charts and statistics, so that customers both understand and appreciate a brand’s value. By employing evocative analogies and emotive examples, stories play an integral part in preparing and delivering presentations that support ambitious sales goals. But even if we know good storytelling when we hear it, what goes into creating it?
Storytelling that Sells is a hands-on practical one-day workshop that teaches participants how to leverage stories in the sales process. It focuses on overcoming any misgivings or fears that salespeople experience about storytelling by reacquainting them with the natural act of speaking with an authentic voice.
The program identifies the skills for using stories to influence clients’ purchase decisions in a curriculum with goals that include:
Understanding how, when and where to strategically use stories, analogies, and examples in the sales process
Learning how to identify personal stories that create connection and deepen our clients’ understanding of the brand positioning
Delivering stories in a compelling and authentic style
Becoming adept at utilizing stories in:
- Presenting a brand narrative
- Overcoming objections
- Business development meetings
Women, Language and Power
Many women struggle to speak up, show their authority at work, ask for raises or promotions, and act on their career ambitions. There is a reason why they struggle, and it lies in our social conditioning.
This workshop is an exciting exploration of how gender and power influence women’s communication. Highlighting current research, we identify the three aspects of social conditioning that inhibit women’s ability to communicate powerfully and advance professionally. The session offers a variety of exercises and tools for making new language choices designed to connect women to their power, themselves, and their rightful place as leaders. It is offered as a half-day program and can be presented in a virtual format.
Since childhood, girls are told to sit quietly, lower their voices, wait their turn, and stay out of the spotlight. Boys, on the other hand, are free to talk loudly, communicate with their whole bodies, speak their minds, and push to the front of the line.
As we enter the workforce this cultural conditioning puts women at a disadvantage when it comes to leadership and advancement. Men are encouraged to develop their assertiveness to express authority, and to verbally command a room. These behaviors and communication skills are associated with leadership. In contrast, women are conditioned to consider others before themselves, contain their speaking, and always try and create collaborative interactions. All good skills until you need to step up, speak out, and embrace your power.
Language is one of the greatest barriers to our advancement and parity. But it can also be one of our greatest opportunities.
Susannah Baldwin, Ph.D.—a Silicon Valley-based leadership and communication coach—builds on the trailblazing work of female linguists and feminist scholars and helps us see how cultural expectations of women stifle our sense of self, our ambitions, and how we speak. Susannah details how, when it comes to our careers, we find ourselves without the agency and language to speak assertively, to lead decisively, and to actualize your potential. The result can be stalled careers, missed opportunities, and money left on the table. The solution is to change our language. She guides women to do just that—make new language choices that lead them to their power and the careers of their dreams.
Topics covered:
The 3 C’s of our social conditioning: Considerate, Contained, Collaborative
The language of certainty
The body language of confidence
Speaking about performance and accomplishments
Building a support network
Presentations that Sell
This workshop teaches the core skills needed to give presentations that establish the seller as a valued partner in advancing their client’s goals.
Fundamentals of Sales Presentations is a one-day group training that teaches skills for developing clear messaging, memorable content, and effective delivery style. This does not include videotaping or individual coaching sessions. It is designed for small team and large group sessions.
Advanced Intensive is a two-day workshop for experienced sellers who want individualized instruction on methods for influencing internal and external audiences and effective delivery style. This two-day session includes 6 hours of group training and a one-hour individual coaching session for each participant. Participants are videotaped giving their presentations and receive individualized feedback.
The workshop learning objectives are:
Develop a well-organized persuasive presentation
Identify a clear, compelling, and memorable key message
Use questions strategically to build agreement
Select stories and examples to increase engagement and support the key message
Project confidence and authority through delivery style
“Susannah’s impact on the success of our sales teams has been extraordinary. Participants in her programs walk away with a set of well-developed skills and frameworks and a greater sense of confidence about their ability to influence their audiences. She works with a broad spectrum of employees, from individual contributors to senior vice presidents and deliver the same level of care, quality and value.”
—Director Global Customer Learning, Twitter