There’s a new book out there for all you marketing, sales, and product folks who do a lot of presentations. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, In the book author Carmine Gallo reveals the techniques that Jobs uses to create and deliver mind-blowing keynote presentations. Here’s a quick recap of the key elements:
1. Always have a headline. Steve Jobs positions every product with a headline that fits well within a 140-character Twitter post.
2. Always have a villain. The idea of conquering a shared enemy is a powerful motivator and turns customers into evangelists.
3. Keep the slides simple. Less is more, Steve Jobs has a total of seven words in 10 slides. Stay away from cluttering up your presentation with wordy and complex slides that the audience won’t be able to digest.
4. Keep them engaged with a demo. Neuroscientists have discovered that the brain gets bored easily. Steve Jobs doesn’t give you time to lose interest, ten minutes into a presentation he’s demoing a new product or feature.
5. Have a “holy smokes moment.” Every Steve Jobs presentation has one moment described as an “emotionally charged event.” The emotionally charged event is the equivalent of a mental post-it note that tells the brain, Remember this!
6. Sell dreams. Charismatic speakers like Steve Jobs are driven by a nearly messianic zeal to create new experiences. When he launched the iPod in 2001, Jobs said, “In our own small way we’re going to make the world a better place.” Where most people saw the iPod as a music player, Jobs recognized its potential as a tool to enrich people’s lives.
Read the full article here, check out this slide show and watch a video interview with Carmine Gallo about how he researched his book. And have fun with it!
