60-second Story - The Holton Consulting Group, Inc.

PRESENTATION SKILLS TIP:
USE THE 60-SECOND STORY

I just got home from a conference where one of the speakers read us every single slide! In my opinion, either he or his slides were superfluous! We didn’t need them both. While the content was useful, the presentation was a disaster. If only he had one simple technique in his public speaking arsenal: the 60-Second Story.

Here’s how the 60-Second Story works. Imagine the biggest problem your audience members are facing related to your topic. Think of a time you helped someone with that issue. What happened when they implemented your advice?

There you have it! That’s the meat of your 60-Second Story! Now all you need to do is give it some flow.

HERE'S WHY THIS WORKS:

As you can tell from the name of the technique, the story needs to be short. Of course, it doesn’t need to be exactly 60 seconds, but it should be as close to that mark as possible! Why? Two reasons:

Everyone’s attention span is dwindling, and you only have a minute to capture attention. But throw in several 60-Second Stories and you have an audience who is totally with you, hanging on to every word in order to hear your tips and advice.
By forcing yourself to capsulize your story into 60 seconds, you whittle it down to the most important elements and weed out all the extraneous details.(You’ll be surprised how much you can share in just 60 seconds!)

AN EXAMPLE:

The Story:

One of my clients, a VP of Sales, had an employee we’ll call Jake who was totally disengaged. In fact, he was actively campaigning to other employees to create dissatisfaction and poor attitudes. He was totally disruptive — but — he was also bringing in lots of dollars with his sales. Can anyone relate?

I encouraged my client to meet one-on-one with every employee. When he did, he realized the corrosive damage Jake was having on the entire department. Jake holding the company hostage because of his sales, but his attitude was keeping other employees from performing as well as they could.

My client ended up letting Jake go, then met with the whole department and asked a simple question: What do you need from me to amp up your sales and fill the gap created by Jake’s departure? Bottom line? Sales increased by 17% within the first two months!

You could use this story to lead into sales figures and how leaders can help their employees increase their sales; or share it as an introduction into the negative impact one disengaged employee can have on an entire department. It also provides credibility to you as the one who helped the VP figure out how to handle the situation.

There are lots of ways to use the 60-Second Story technique throughout your presentation. Just keep the formula in mind:

Problem or Pain Point for audience members (Remember, it’s about them, not you!)
Solution (which also shares a tip they can use)
Results

This one simple technique can transform your presentations from boring to brilliant!

Keep Presenting With Pizzazz!

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PRESENTATION SKILLS TIP: USE THE 60-SECOND STORY

HERE'S WHY THIS WORKS:

AN EXAMPLE:

PRESENTATION SKILLS TIP:
USE THE 60-SECOND STORY