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The Presentations Japan Series

The Presentations Japan Series

Auteur(s): Dr. Greg Story
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 Persuasion power is one of the kingpins of business success. We recognise immediately those who have the facility and those who don't. We certainly trust, gravitate toward and follow those with persuasion power. Those who don't have it lack presence and fundamentally disappear from view and become invisible. We have to face the reality, persuasion power is critical for building our careers and businesses. The good thing is we can all master this ability. We can learn how to become persuasive and all we need is the right information, insight and access to the rich experiences of others. If you want to lead or sell then you must have this capability. This is a fact from which there is no escape and there are no excuses.Copyright 2022 Développement commercial et entrepreneuriat Entrepreneurship Gestion et leadership Économie
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  • Omnichannel Presenting

    Omnichannel Presenting
    Aug 11 2025
    We normally think of omnichannel in relation to the medium being used to contact buyers. We can also use this idea when thinking about planning our talk. We automatically revert to the brain when we start this exercise. Our logical, rational, analytical mode is needed but that is not enough for audiences. We need heart, value and sex appeal for our messages to resonate. We tend however to get stuck on the first rung of the planning ladder, the intellectual angle. We all know though that we are emotional creatures, running around justifying our emotional choices with a veneer of logic. Our talk need to access all of our human instincts. We need our brain to be working well. Logic is required to make the argument make sense to our audience. It means we need to be piling on the evidence, proof, data, statistics and testimonials etc. The navigation of the talk should be logical, so that it flows like a good novel, making it easy for the audience to follow where we are going with this content. I have mentioned before a talk I attended, where the visiting VIP just rambled through this maze and mist of an esoteric discussion, peppered with his vague musings, which was totally impenetrable. It lacked structure, logical flow and clear, concise communication. It was totally self-indulgent. To this day, I still have no idea what he was on about, but his personal reputation and his organisation’s reputation were both shredded that day. Some members in the audience will be analytical types who love the logic, the detail, the nitty gritty, the evidence and they will be happy to see it. They will be calibrating everything we say and running it through their mind looking for inconsistencies, gaps, flaws and mistakes of fact. We will win this group over if we are well organised, however they are not the only personality type in the audience. We have to go omnichannel to appeal to other personality types. Some will be more swayed by their hearts. We need to get them in touch with their emotions and feelings during our talk. Novels and movies are emotional engagement masterpieces in many cases. We are drawn into the characters in the story and what happens to them. I am a pretty logical guy, but I remember being captured by the heroine in the Japanese television drama Oshin. Her rise from crushing poverty to running a massive retail empire was a true story, which appealed to my logical brain, but her travails were all pulling at the heartstrings. We do not have multiple weeks like a television show or three hours like a movie or hundreds of pages in a novel to emotionally engage our audience. We can have some elements of the human drama of what we are talking about. Because we are in business there is absolutely no shortage of drama which we can relate. There are the full spectrum of characters to draw upon as well, from amongst our colleagues, subordinates, superiors, suppliers and clients. Everyone loves a gory tale of corporate value destruction, factional bloodletting spitting out winners and losers and the dirty deeds done dirt cheap by business nasties. Another instinct is the gut and this is where we are appealing to value for money. Is what we are talking about bringing concrete value to the audience. Have we proffered some information or insight, which was previously unknown to them? Are we making their business or personal life substantially better? Are we tuning into the conversation going on in in the minds of the audience and suggesting questions which they want answers to and then magically unveiling the solutions? The “what is in it for me” question is always the uppermost thought in an audience’s mind, when they sit there listening to us pontificate about a subject. I attended a talk by a big shot executive from one of the largest companies in the world. She was talking about personal branding, so she pulled a good crowd. However, it instantly became apparent that she was talking about how to brand yourself within a mega monster of a company like hers, when the audience was full of punters from small to medium sized enterprises. There were zero take-aways and zero value on offer that day. The last omnichannel is sex appeal. Is your topic sexy, will it fill the seats? The title is always a key. A lot of thought needs to go into the best shorthand description which will grab attention. Sometimes we need a provocative title to break through the daily detritus filling the minds of our potential audience members. “How to” titles also work because we are flagging you will learn something if you attend. The delivery is another aspect of sex appeal. We have to be excellent in giving the talk, looking for every opportunity to engage with our audience. We want them thinking, writing down our stuff and often we have to branch into edutainment. I am not good at snappy repartee, quick wit, zinger one liners or being a skilled ...
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    13 min
  • Sourcing Ideas For Speeches

    Sourcing Ideas For Speeches
    Aug 4 2025

    Usually when we have an opportunity to make a presentation, we get busy thinking about what we will talk about. The organisers may have set some rails by specifying the theme of the event or they may have asked us to speak on a particular topic. We are busy and often we start with creating new slides and scanning previous presentations for slides we can recycle. This is a poor strategy. What do we bang on about to our staff – plan the event or the project before you get started on the nitty gritty details. However, we neglect our own sage advice when it comes to presenting.

    Part of the planning process should involve boiling the key message down to a nub that cleverly, succinctly and concisely summarises the whole point of the talk. Before we go there though we would be wise to consult others for ideas. It is a bit odd isn’t it, because we are always recommending collaboration and crowd sourcing of ideas for projects. How we seek those ideas though is a bit tricky.

    Bounding up to someone for your presentation and suddenly saying , “do you have any ideas for this talk I am going to give” may not work all that well. Teamwork featuring excellent levels of collaboration is a concept, a sacred concept in most firms, but rather undefined. What is the environment for collaboration? Are people’s ideas welcomed in your workplace? Are we able to go outside the workplace and source broader networks for ideas? Do we have trustworthy networks in the first place?

    I had to give a keynote speech to a relocation industry conference in Osaka. I called my contacts working in that industry and asked them about their issues, headaches and challenges. I have never worked in that industry and neither had anyone in my company, so I needed that broader network to help me. The irony was that after all the work I had put into crafting that piece de resistance , Covid put the whole event to the sword. I never did give that talk. It would have been brilliant of course!

    Jokes aside, the idea of involving others is a good one, because we only know what we know. “Two brains are better than one” is ancient wisdom, but how often do we avail ourselves of outside input. I was getting my book “Japan Sales Mastery” translated and was struggling for the best title in Japanese. My friend Tak Adachi and I were having lunch and I mentioned my problem. He said why don’t you just call it “Za Eigyo” or “The Sale”. My son, later said to me why don’t I drop the katakana for “Za” from the title and just use “The” from English, to become “The Eigyo”.

    This was a smart idea because I am an Australian writing in Japanese about selling in Japan, so the title combines both languages, to differentiate the book as a how foreigner would look at the world of sales in Japan. I would never have come up with those ideas on my own, so it demonstrated the value of collaboration.

    The problem is we all recognise this in theory and we should be applying it to our presentation preparations, but we turn the whole thing into a solitary affair. We emerge from our cave, brandishing our slide deck and away we go. Getting more input is a better road to take, but there are some caveats. People we consult on the spot, will give us the very shallowest of ideas. We need to set this up, explain the theme and then fix a date a few days later, to allow them to digest the theme and work on some ideas. We are looking for diversity of views here and are not going to make any snap judgments. We should listen quietly – no interrupting, jumping in over the top of them or ending their sentences. We then thank them and privately reject, modify or incorporate their ideas.

    If we ask them to give some feedback on our ideas, always frame the response. We want them to tell us what they like about it first and then tell us how we could make it even better. Confidence is a key aspect when presenting and that includes the preparation phase as well. This whole effort doesn’t have to take a lot of time, so we are not going to be caught in a time crunch and have to rush things, to be in time for the talk. More ancient wisdom says we don’t plan to fail, but we often fail to plan. We can incorporate more ideas into the preparation phase, if we simply plan for it.
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    11 min
  • How To Be A Star in Business Interviews

    How To Be A Star in Business Interviews
    Jul 28 2025
    Being interviewed by the media can be a high risk affair, depending on the publication, the journalist and the business zeitgeist of the moment. These types of interviews come up relatively rarely in business. More common are panel discussions at business events hosted by Chambers of Commerce and more recently interviews on podcasts. I have been on both sides of the microphone, so let me share some observations which may help you prepare for your interview. Chamber panels and podcasts are usually not “gotcha” interviews, as we will encounter with some journalists doing media interviews. Generally, we are going to be treated well and it would be rare that the interviewer really went after you. Having said that though, we have to expect the interviewer to want to dig down deeper into something you have said. This can be of two basic varieties. One is a high level statement you made where the context and detail is obvious to the speaker. This may not be obvious to the audience though, so the interviewer will seek more detail and clarification. In this case, that is not a problem, because we have the depth of mastery of the subject. The other variety is a statement that may be accepted wisdom or it might be something we have said without giving too much thought to it. This is when we will get into trouble, because as soon as the interviewer starts to dig in, it becomes plainly obvious we don’t know all that much about it and out pours fluff instead of substance. The answer here is to talk about things you have experienced, read about in detail, have researched deeply or where you have listened to experts. This sounds obvious, however we don’t know where we will go with the questions and we can be drawn to stray into areas where our intellectual coverage is pretty thin. There is nothing wrong with honesty. Just say, “I don’t have much to say on that subject because I am not an expert in that area. However something I do feel passionate about is…”. Don’t just end it with telling the audience you don’t know much, because we are starting to damage our personal brand. Avoid leaving the conversation hanging in the air with us having admitted we are babbling on about stuff we don’t know too much about. Immediately segue into an area where we are knowledgeable and talk about that. Always seek the questions in advance. With media people they will do that, but often they have a couple of silent assassins ready which they will hit you with unexpectedly, to throw you off balance, to gain their “scoop”. Business panels and podcasts are usually not like that. Generally, for panels, they will let you know, in general terms, what is the broad discussion they are looking for. In the case of a panel, it is unpredictable where the conversation will move, but at least there are broad rails bounding the subject matter. Again, it always better to say you don’t know, than trying to snow the organisers or the audience. Instead make a comment about some aspect you do know well and preserve your expert status. For podcasts, you should expect they will have a set list of questions and you should get those in advance. If the interviewer says something like “I let the muse guide me”, then I wouldn’t recommend joining that podcast, unless you are massively confident about the subject matter. Generally, there will be prior episodes, so you can get a sense of whether you are in the presence of real genius or a total nutter. Often there will be a pre-meeting, to go through the episode theme and for them to get a sense of what sort of a guest you will be. You can also get a sense of who they are too. Prepare for the questions, but understand you won’t be able to read from notes. The pace will move too fast for that. You can glance at your notes, so it is better to have them arranged for easy reference, if you indeed need to do that. Just having mentally calibrated the questions is usually enough. Remember you are there because you know about the subject, so it will be easy for you to speak about it. That is often the real problem. We do know a lot about the subject and we talk for too long and say too much. Media interviews are an area where the more concise you are the safer it is. Panel discussion hosts don’t like guests who want to hog the limelight, so they will unceremoniously cut you off, effectively signalling to the audience that you lack self-awareness. Podcast hosts may just edit the hell out of you. There is a balance, but being concise comes across a lot better than rambling. If what you say is a bit too circumspect, the interviewer will draw you out further. If you hear yourself talking too much, then you probably are, so you need to conclude your remarks on that point and stop. Rehearse your remarks based on the questions. Remember these are public occasions and just as you would rehearse for a public speech, you need ...
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    13 min
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