Tweet

Business Presentations - What's Your Personal Best?

Guest post by: Milly Sonneman

Article Overview: Curious how to find your personal best in business presenting? Follow the lead of star performers and challenge yourself to greatness. Discover how professionals in public speaking raise the bar to continually set new heights.

Business Presentations - What's Your Personal Best?

Curious how to find your personal best in business presentations? Follow the lead of star performers and you can achieve greatness too. Star performers share a single trait: they challenge themselves to always strive for their personal best. Whether in business, sports or the arts, masters are at the top of their game because they never stop seeking to get better.

For a professional role model for performance, consider Michael Jordan. Even if you're not a basketball fan, Jordan was famous as the top player when he was playing for the Chicago Bulls. How did he stay at the top?

Jordan is known for continuously challenging himself. At the end of each season, word has it that he spent the entire off time picking apart his game. He never stopped looking for weaknesses, and how to get his game better.

The same goes for great painters, filmmakers, actors and dancers. Great stars work hard -- and never stop. Find a personal role model and look further than your business, industry or professional area of expertise. Look to the arts, sports, and entertainment.

Who is your role model for inspiration?

While you may not have celebrity status in your industry, you can do the same practices. Set your own personal standards and never stop raising the bar.

Use these 3 tips to continuously dissolve obstacles and seek out your unique personal best.

Tip 1: Don't Settle

Good is good. But it's not great. Don't settle for second or third when you could be first. Go for being the very best at what you do. The single trait that characterizes winners is never stopping or settling for "OK" performances.

A simple way to do this: after every single presentation ask yourself: what could I do better? Keep a journal. After every presentation, record your ideas and reflections. In the next presentation, adapt your delivery to include a specific improvement.

Tip 2: Invest in Learning

The single trait that marks leaders: investing in learning. Learning is a lifelong process -- if you are committed to be the best you can be. You don't have to be perfect or know everything right now. In fact, you will never know absolutely everything.

However, you can grow your skills and dramatically improve your ability to convince, influence and persuade.

Great performers know that learning takes many forms. Reading, studying, watching videos are all key components in a living plan for learning.

In addition to self-study, learn with teammates, mentors and coaches. One-on-one instruction is particularly helpful for interactive skills, such as facilitative presentation skills. An expert coach can show you new skills in seconds, which would never be obvious in weeks of reading.

Shoulder to shoulder instruction is often the fastest and smartest way to improve interpersonal skills. This type of coaching is also possible with direct contact with an expert coach - either in person or virtually.

With advances in technology, video feedback with an expert coach is a cost effective and quick way to get personal attention and immediately advance your skills. Consider personal presentation coaching as a smart option if you are serious about finding your personal best.

Tip 3: Make Mistakes!

The key in being the best is to encourage experimentation and accept failure. It sounds like a contradiction. But it's not.

When you make mistakes, you learn. Plus, your learning is personal. It's a visceral experience that no one can challenge or take away. You know in your gut -- because you have lived through it.

The important things about mistakes:

First, fail fast.

Make mistakes quickly so you can solve problems. Push the edge to find out what does work - and what doesn't.

Second, make new mistakes.

Don't make the same mistake twice. By making different mistakes, you will quickly raise your personal standards.

Third, keep records.

Keep track of what you learn. Notice patterns and notice what works. This is absolutely essential if you are serious about achieving your personal best.

With these three tips you have a treasure map to the hidden land: your home-zone of best.

What do you notice? Your peak performance is always changing. It's not a static zone of set standards and repeated behavior. Instead, it's a living land in dynamic flux. By keeping your skills fresh you are constantly moving forward and finding your own greatness.

Develop your personal best presentation skills by constantly challenging yourself and working with a coach. With one-on-one feedback you can quickly find out how to win at presenting.

Related Articles
  For Good SEO You Must Go Back To Basics
  AoM Presentation: Studies on Developing Leadership / People Skills
  Getting to your North Pole
  Powerful Relationship Selling
  Ten Major Causes of Powerless Presentations According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  “Tips On Effective Business Presentations From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach”
  The Two-Hour Sales Presentation Vs. A Seven-Minute Attention Span
  How to close the sale
  Focus on the WIIFT for a Powerful Presentation
  End Your Canadian Franchise Lending Worries – Financing & Funding Lenders & Solutions For You !
  How to Keep Tabs on the Greatest Presentations Made Everyday
  Presentation Show and Tell: Presentation Skills for Senior Executives
  Presentation Tips for Success
  Canadian Franchise Finance Isn’t What You Think! Financing a Franchise Business Properly
  Art in the Corporate Environment
  5 Tips For Giving Presentations That Consistently Sell
  The 411 On B I L / CSBF – The Real Deal On the Federal Government Small Business Loan – aka ‘ SBL ‘ Loans
  Continuous Learning
  Little Known Special Cure for Presentation Anxiety
  Attitude always win over knowledge

Article Tags: business presentation, presentation coach, visual story



Related Forum Posts
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I know this is a naive question but i'm really not sure: What do you tweet ? Business? promote your business? Personal? Are there things you can't do? ALSO :Is there a rule book? Is there a success formula using twitter?
Re: New Year - New Resolutions? - Business goal: To not procrastinate and to take action on my plans. Personal goal: To be more physically active as sitting on the computer all day isn't good for you.
Re: Hello from a San Diego-based marketer - Welcome Aaron! Whats the next stage for your business? Ben
Re: New, young entrepreneur - Congrats H20ismyLife! Do you have a website so we can see any of your work? Whats the next step for you?
Why should I hire a virtual assistant for SEO purposes? - Do you find it hard to find time for rest because of promoting your business or your website all by yourself? Well, perhaps it is the right time for you to hire the services of an SEO virtual assistant. Virtual assistants for SEO services will help you on the process of improving your rankings within search engine results to achieve an increase in natural traffic. The higher your site in the search engine results page, the more traffic and sales conversions you will obtain. Using the services of virtual assistants (VAs) certainly is the best method to move in order immediate results and in reduced operational charges. This provides a great answer especially for a small business owner whoever company is actually considerably expanding, and the jobs have normally doubled. Here are some of the services that a virtual assistant can do for you: • Traffic Geyser • Main Street Marketing • Data Entry • Web Research • Market Samurai • Managing Facebook • Managing Twitter • SEO • Local Business Listing Robot • Traffic Revolution • Infusionsoft • Senuke • Angela’s Banklink • Linkjuicer • Blogging • SMM • Virtual Assistant • Personal Assistant • Article Writing • Spinning Article • Press release • Email Response Handling • Online Order Processing • Word Processing • Forum/Comment Posting • Social Bookmarking • Video Editor • Internet Marketing • Email Marketing • Link Building • Powerpoint Presentations • Web Development • Other Administrative Support


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Executives and Elevators Perfecting That Pitch

Selling On Ebay The Good The Bad And The Ugly

2011 Global Brand Trends Letter

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.