No.

Anyone can be a great presenter. Presenting well is not a rare talent, like playing concert-level violin, or shooting 6 under par on a golf course. Presenting well is a skill that anyone can learn with a little focus; it’s more like making tasty Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies, if you follow the recipe and pay attention, you will create a satisfying final product.

If you have ever had a single interesting conversation with one other person, then you already have all of the technical skills you need to be an excellent presenter. You already know how to talk, engage and be understood. So for most people, when learning how to become a great presenter, they do not have to learn a new skill set such as when learning how to play polo where you have to learn out to ride a horse, swing a mallet, aim a ball through a goal, etc.

For most people, fear and nervousness mess them up and psych them out of delivering a good presentation. Once they learn how to stop their nerves from screwing up their presentation, the speaking comes easy because all they have to do is throw in a little organization and add some stories.

I see average executives and salespeople transform into great presenters every day in my training studio here in midtown Manhattan and in conference rooms around the world where I coach people. But don’t take my word for it. Just look at some of the most well-know and well-regarded speakers in History.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. received a grade of “C” in public speaking class while in college.
President John F. Kennedy was such a nervous speaker that people who sat behind him saw his legs shake while he spoke.
Conservative radio talk show Rush Limbaugh host barely passed his college public speaking course.
Reverend Jesse Jackson had a horrible stutter as a child.
Joe Biden (at the time of publishing Biden will either be the Vice President of the United Sates or the 2008 Democratic nominee for Vice President) had a horrible stutter well into his college years—and yet spoke his way into the U.S. Senate at age 29!

Excellent presenters are made; they are not born.

However, becoming great at presenting is a lot easier than becoming great at, say, playing basketball. Just look at the competitive landscape. Every single day millions of young boys and girls around the country and world practice their basketball skills for 1 to 5 hours a day. Millions receive formal instruction from paid coaches. That is a lot of competition. I hate to sound pessimistic, but chances are slim- to-none that you will become a good enough basketball player to play professionally for the NBA. You might even be dedicated enough, fast enough and hard working enough, but if you aren’t nearly 7 feet tall, you just don’t have the raw material needed.

Luckily, presenting isn’t like that. People don’t grow up practicing their presenting skills. People don’t get coached daily for years on their presenting skills. So you and I as presenters have very little completion! The reality is that most presenters are awful, untrained, unrehearsed, boring and ordinary. So you don’t have to do that much to seem great in comparison.

It’s easy to seem great in anything if your standard of comparison is bad enough. For example, I am an awful golfer—I shoot around 150 for a par 72 course. I don’t play a lot of golf and I have no great confidence in my golfing abilities. But imagine if you told me I had to play in a golf tournament against people who had never seen golf before, never held a club before, never heard of golf and didn’t know what clubs to use or even that the goal is to hit the ball in the hole.

Next, imagine you give me 24 hours to prepare, go to the driving range, and perhaps get a lesson. Now it’s time for the golf tournament. You would probably be willing to place a bet on me winning the tournament and I would too. Because in this environment, I would be “great” compared to everyone else. I might even break 140 while everyone else is shooting 200. Tiger Woods doesn’t beat his competition by that great a margin! This should be your mindset when it comes to seeing yourself as a great presenter.

It is crucial for you to realize that you already have all the talents and abilities you need, not to be a competent presenter, an OK presenter or above average presenter. You have everything you need in order to be a great, foolproof presenter.

No, chances are you don’t need a deeper voice or a better voice than the one you naturally speak with.

Most people hate the sound of their own voice. If you video record or audio record your voice during a rehearsal and then listen to it, chances are you won’t like yours either. Here’s why: when you listen to your voice coming out of a TV or a speaker, you are hearing your voice in a non-distorted manner; this is how everyone else hears your voice on a daily basis.

But that’s not how we normally hear our own voice. All day long we hear our own voice distorted through the bones in our own skull from both inside and outside. So when we hear our voice coming from just a speaker and not from within our head, we are all of a sudden not hearing the distortion. The result? It sounds so different to us that it is disorienting and we don’t like it. They we think we need to change our voice.
Not so fast!

Chances are your voice is fine; it’s just different from what you are used to. Different isn’t bad; it’s just different.
In theory, it is possible to have a voice so awful, shrill and annoying that it seriously detracts from the person communicating. But in 25 years of training and working with tens of thousands of people around the globe, I have never encountered anyone whose voice was that bad. In fact, I have rarely worked with anyone whose voice is as bad as Barbara Walters’s voice and she makes tens of millions of dollars a year with her voice!

So the solution for most people is to simply get used to their voice by hearing it more and getting over it. Often, women and men feel they need to speak in a lower, deeper voice because they believe this will make them more authoritative and believable. This is very dangerous. Most audiences are very good at detecting someone who is acting phony or trying to put on airs. If you try to sound like you have a rich, full, deep voice and you don’t, you’ll end up a joke—don’t try it.

I have read various clinical researchers who purport to have proof that audiences respond better to deeper voices—I don’t buy it. Look at the most successful news anchors and talk show hosts. They don’t all sound the same, but they tend to have very full ranges to their voices, they hits highs and lows without fear of sounding less authoritative.

There are voice coaches out there who can dramatically help anyone improve the quality of their voices. If you really feel you need help in this area you could try to find one. But I don’t find this a useful or productive way for most presenters to spend their limited time to improve themselves. Instead, I would urge you to use your time creating interesting ideas, messages and stories for your audience and then rehearsing in front of a video camera. This will score you more points than if you suddenly start to sound like the guy who does the voiceover for the lottery commercials.

Very few people, myself included, have voices that are so great that we could make a living as professional voiceover actors. But that’s OK since I don’t want to be a professional voiceover actor and chances are you don’t either. To be a successful voiceover artist you need a voice that is so distinctive and unique that it instantly stands out and gets remembered. Typically this is true of only one in a million people.
But nearly every person can use his or her voice effectively when presenting in front of people as long as the presenter can be heard and understood and has interesting memorable messages.

Everyone says the occasional “uh” and “um.” Don’t beat yourself up if you do. Bill O’Reilly and Martha Stewart both say “uh” and “um” all of the time and they both make tens of millions of dollars a year by speaking! So let’s put your problem in perspective. Martha and Bill are still successful because they have messages that audiences find interesting. Your biggest problem is always making sure you have something interesting to say, not whether you have too many “uhs” and “ums.”

However, all things considered, the few “ums” and “uhs” you have cluttering your speech, the better. The first thing you have to do is actually determine if you have the problem. In my experience, executives and sales people who think they have a problem with too many uhs and ums rarely do. Those who think they don’t have a problem often do.

There is only one way to find out. That’s right, let’s go to the videotape (or audiotape). Record yourself and then note how often you say uh, um, like or any other annoying filler words. The video will not lie to you.

Although the occasional uh or um isn’t the end of the world, you do want to pay especially close attention to how many come out of your mouth the first 30 seconds of your presentation. This is when you are making your first impression in front of people. Sadly, they will interpret your uhs and ums to mean that you are scared, nervous and possibly unprepared. Of course it’s OK to be nervous, but we don’t want to let our audience know that.

Saying a sound like uh or um is the equivalent of filing up your pauses with punctuation; these sounds are like extra comas. Imagine if someone sent you a cover letter and a resume to apply to work for you. Imagine their resume is perfect. But their cover letter has a comma after every word in the first sentence. You could still read the letter and you could still understand it, but the extra commas would be annoying and a serious distraction. That is the problem with too many ums and us.

So how do you get rid of the uhs and ums? You should not have someone stand in the back of the room and ring a bell every time you say uh or um. That will only make you more nervous.

You need to re-condition your brain. No, I will not have to hook up your brain to a painful electric shock (this has been suggested to me many times!). I simply place stickers with the word “uh” or “um” in small type surrounded by a red international no sign. I place this sticker on my client’s watch, cell phone, computer monitor or combination of all three. What happens is you look at your watch or cell phone dozens of times a day, and now you see the visual reminder to Not say uh or um. After one day, you still say the annoying sound, but you are at least aware of it.

After a couple of days, just as you are about to form that sound of uh or um, the image of “don’t say uh or um” pops up into your brain. You almost catch it…but it still comes out. Drats!

But after one week, the image will come up in your brain and you will be able to hold the uh or um in. Now, you can simply pause, and this will make you sound more comfortable, confident, and authoritative.

You don’t have to use my stickers (although I’m happy to send you some for free if you send an email to freestickers@tjwalker.com); you can just create them yourself. Type several uhs, ums, likes or whatever your annoying verbal tic is in small 10, 12, or 14 point type. Next, print out the sheet of paper. Now, put a red international no sign around your word. Next, cut out the word. Finally, tape the word on the 12 on your watch and somewhere on your cell phone where you are likely to see it. Within one week, your uh or um problem will have been minimized to the point where it is no longer a problem.

(Note to editor-we need to include the artwork of the um with the no symbol here. Kris in my office can send that to you kris@mediatrainingworldwide.com)

This goal is not to have zero uhs and ums, so don’t beat yourself up or wince in the middle of the presentation if one slips out. This solution I’ve outlined sounds simple, but it really does work—just not instantly. I’ve used this technique on billionaire fund managers and politicians around the globe and it works for them—it can work for you too.

This is one of the most common fears that presenters voice to me. You are likely feeling vulnerable when someone, especially a boss or important client or prospect asks you a question and you can’t answer it. I sympathize with you; really, I do. But it is important to keep your potential problems in perspective.

Every time I speak to a large audience of 100, 500 or more, I ask the following question, “How many of you remember a time when you saw a presenter who couldn’t answer a question and it was embarrassing for the presenter?” Sure enough, 10 or 20% of the hands go up. So yes, this is real and legitimate concern.

But then I ask a second question, “How many of you remember hearing a presenter talk and the person was so boring, so deadly dull, that you didn’t remember anything that person said?”

Guess how many hands go up this time: 100%. So this should be your bigger concern, actually saying something that doesn’t bore your audience to tears! Don’t worry about the hangnail when you have a potential heart attack waiting for you.

But back to answering questions. Here is the real secret: it’s not important that you have a full, complete, great answer to every question. What most audiences remember is not your answer to the question, but your reaction to the question.

Quite often, when a presenter is asked a tough question, he or she reacts with one or more of the following:
1.    An expression of “oh crap!!!” flashes across the presenter’s face.
2.    A quick nervous look upwards to the heavens as if waiting for divine intervention.
3.    Beads of sweat break out on the presenter’s forehead.
4.    The presenter mutters under his or her breath something like “ugh, this is such a tough question…I wish you hadn’t asked me that…”
5.    The presenter breaks out in nervous laughter.
6.    The presenter slumps and sighs as if to convey to the audience “You got me! I am a fraud! We all know that I am supposed to know the answer to this question. I stand exposed. I am so ashamed! Please let me go home now and I promise to never bother you again!”
7.    The presenter looks back at the questioner with a barely concealed look of contempt.

It is these emotional and physical reactions that become so memorable to audience members. So the real trick is not as difficult as suddenly having a brilliant answer to every question. The solution is just to not look or sound embarrassed in any way when someone asked you a tough question.

There is no one perfect answer or dodge to tough questions, but here are a few possibilities:
1.    “I know that Jim Smithers in our organization has the complete answer to that question. I will find out from him and email you the answer by 4 PM today.” The trick is to look comfortable and confident the whole time you are speaking. Don’t look evasive. And then actually get back to the person with an answer by 4PM as promised.)
2.     “I don’t know. What I can tell you in general is that… (And then bridge to something you do know that touches on the subject of the question).” Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know, but always bridge to something else so you are not only say “I don’t know.”
3.    “That’s an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.” This works well if the person asking you a question was incredibly long-winded, seemed to contain a mini-speech, and was a little wacky. (This works well for politicians who get crazy questions at town hall meetings.

You can come up with your own answer and it will work, as long as you seem completely comfortable, relaxed, confident and not bothered it will work in the sense that people won’t remember that you bungled a question. Remember there can be no “gottcha” moment in your presentation if you don’t act “gotten.”

Now that you know how to answer tough questions during your presentation, you can now get back to more serious business, like making sure you have an interest and memorable message for your audience.

This is a common situation. You’ve been told you have 30 minutes to make your presentation to the board on what your department has been doing for the last quarter and why you deserve to continue to receive funding. But at the last minute, the organizer whispers in your ear, “We’re running behind schedule. You need to speak for no more than 15 minutes.”
“Egads!”

What do you do now? You have 30 minutes worth of material. You’ve rehearsed it, just as you know you should do, and you got the time down to exactly 30 minutes. This is unfair! This can’t be happening! You played by the rules, why can’t everyone else stick to the rules?
Relax. You will get through this.

Here is the first option. It is the most popular option—by my estimation this is what 99% of business people do when they are presenting in these situations.
1.    Comment at the beginning, middle and end that there is not enough time to cover all of your points.
2.    Apologize for not being able to cover all of your points.
3.    Eliminate all of your stories, examples and case studies to “save time.”
4.    Speak faster than normal to cover all the key points.
5.    Sweat.
6.    Apologize one last time in your conclusion.
7.    Walk away at the end with an annoyed look on your face.

If you follow these seven steps you will be in good company because this is what most people do. However, you won’t actually communicate anything and your presentation will have accomplished nothing. You will have failed miserably.
But you don’t have to fall into this trap. Here is what you should do in these situations:

1.    Determine the order of importance of all of your key points and then eliminate the bottom half.
2.    Never waste even a second of time by talking about the fact that you don’t have as much time as you’d like.
3.    Speak at a normal speed in a completely conversational manner, as if you had all of the time in the world. You do this because you know that if you speak faster, people won’t understand you and they’ll just think you are nervous.
4.    Deliver every single story, anecdote and case study you had prepared for the top points you cover.
5.    Never apologize—not even once.
6.    Finish in your allotted time and act as if this was the best presentation you have ever given and that you are completely satisfied with how it went.
7.    At the conclusion, give people paper or electronic handouts that cover all of your key points just covered as well as the points that had to be cut from your spoken presentation.

It is actually a blessing to have your time cut moments before you present. It provides a great opportunity for you to demonstrate in front of your boss, colleagues and clients that you have the coping skills to adapt quickly, that you can survive under pressure, and think on your feet. Too many salespeople, account managers and executives get put into this situation and all they can do is feel sorry for themselves and make excuses—it’s never pretty.

The foolproof presenter realizes there is never an ideal environment for speaking. There will always be distractions in the form of noise from next door, poor lighting, or noisy people in the back of the room. The foolproof presenter simply sizes up the opportunity given what is available in terms of time and resources and then makes the best of it—every time.

Don’t tell anyone!
Don’t show anyone!
It really does come down to following those two principles.

Everyone makes mistakes when they present. We forget a point, go out of order, and talk about a slide that is two slides away instead of the one that is coming up next. Everyone makes mistakes. But not everyone reacts to their mistakes the same way.

The average presenter will literally say “I’m sorry” in front of people and have a look of extreme sheepishness crosses his or her face. But here’s the fundamental insight:

No one noticed the mistake of the presenter. But everyone noticed the react in the speaker had to the mistake.
When you combine this blunder with the probability that the average speaker is unemotional, bland and boring through the rest of the speech, then you end of with the situation where the only emotional moment in the whole presentation is when the presenter looked and sounded embarrassed. This “moment” now stands out as the most interesting moment of the whole presentation and therefore the most memorable. Disaster!

The foolproof presenter, being human, doesn’t aspire to flawless perfection when delivering presentations. But he/she does have one trick up the sleeve that other presenters don’t have, and that is the knowledge that if you don’t tell audiences you made a mistake, they will likely never figure it out.

Let’s say you go out of order when it comes to delivering points from your presentation. Well “order” is a concept in your brain or on your notes; the audience doesn’t have an order. They don’t have your notes or speech text in front of them. They are just listening to you and trying to understand what you are talking about. So if you realize you’ve gone out of order, just go back to the points you missed without telling anyone.

Let’s say you are in the middle of making a point and suddenly your brain freezes and you can’t remember what to say next. The average presenter will have a look of horror shoot across his face, turn bright red, grimace, apologize to the audience, and then mutter something about having a senior moment. But here is what you do once you are a foolproof presenter in these situations where your mind has gone blank:

Stop. Look at one person in the audience like you just said something so brilliant, he or she needs a moment to think about it. Next, perhaps ask a question of one person or the whole audience to see if they are with you so far. Or, just quietly walk across the room as if to signify a planned, natural transition. Inwardly, you are thinking “crap, I forgot what I was supposed to say. What comes next?” But outwardly, you are projecting serenity, calm, purposefulness, and a focus on your audience.

Trust me; this technique will work for you the vast majority of the time when you blunder. Obviously, if you say something that is glaringly, factually wrong that everyone will notice, I.e., “the moon is only 93 thousand miles away from the Earth” then you should instantly and immediately correct yourself, but without unnecessary self-flagellation.

Every so often, I will start talking about a concept and a story that is supported by a video clip or image that is 2 slides away in my PowerPoint. So when I advance the slide, the wrong slide will come up. But I never panic and I never comment on it. I just calmly advance the PowerPoint to the next slide that I need. Then, I go in reverse when I am ready to go back to the missed point. Then, I have to advance twice to get back to the right place. Guess what, no one ever notices this blunder when I quiz them on it immediately after the presentation. This is because my face never shows distress. My words never utter apologies. My tone never shows concern. I just keep going and the whole mistake becomes so unmemorable that it is forgotten moments later.

So if you make a mistake, don’t panic. You now have the skills to minimize the damage in the eyes of your audience. And if you master the skill of ignoring your weak moments, you will condition your audience to do the same.

There really is no such thing as a formal presentation or an informal presentation—from the perspective of our audience. There are really only two kinds of presentations in the entire world:
Good ones.
And bad ones.
Really. That’s it.

Think about when you are in listening to someone speak or present in front of you. Are you thinking, “Wow, I sure am glad this presenter is being formal and grabbing a lectern and standing in front of the room?”
Of course not.

There are typically only two things going through your head when you are listening to someone else present to you. It’s either
1.    “Wow, this person is saying something interesting and useful. I’m going to pay attention and tell other people about this.”
Or
2.    “Uh oh, this presenter is really boring. I think I will pretend to pay attention and take notes on my Blackberry which will give me an excuse to check our stock price. Oh, let’s see how the Jet’s did last night. That reminds me, I’ve got to add skim milk to my grocery list, and then there’s…”

Those are the two reactions you as a presenter are likely to get from your audience. Your job is to figure out how to get the first reaction and to stay away from the second reaction.

The challenge for most presenters is they get caught up in these notions of the “formal presentation.” You must realize that the audience doesn’t ever think in these terms, so you should not either. You focus must always be on how you can present your ideas in as interesting and memorable and as conversational manner as possible.

I get very nervous when one of my clients tells me he or she has to give a formal presentation. Typically, what that means is the person takes all of the interesting stories, anecdotes, case studies, humor, pauses, and conversational style that work so well for them when they present one on one and throw it out the window. Then, they replace it by listing or worse, reading, a whole bunch of bullet points from a slide or a piece of paper. To make matters worse, the person projects his or her voice louder to sound more official and monotone—ugh! This is not a “formal” presentation; it is simply a “bad” presentation.

Most presenters confuse setting, length of presentation and audience size for formality. For you the presenter it may feel scarier and therefore, more formal, to speak to a much larger group of people than you are used to. But from any one audience member’s perspective, it’s still the same—they are listening to one person trying to figure out if you are worth listening to or not.

Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are or were very different speakers with different philosophies, but they all belong in the category of great speaker. Why? One reason is that they never let their formal surroundings make themselves sound “formal.” All three are masters of speaking in an informal, conversational manner. They didn’t change their styles just because the venue changed. Whether they were talking to 2 people or 2 million, they still had an informal tone of voice that sounded real, fresh, conversational and interesting—the opposite of the typical business speaker giving a formal speech listing bullet points off of a slide.

So please remember that it doesn’t matter if you are given a strict time limitation, or if you are using PowerPoint or you are speaking to a much larger group of people than normal. Don’t tell yourself you are giving a “formal” presentation. Instead, just focus on how you can speak in a conversational tone of voice and convey your ideas in an interesting and memorable manner. Then, from your audiences perspective, you will be delivering a “good” presentation.

Don’t do it! It doesn’t work. Imagine you are going on a date if you are single, or try to remember a time when you were single going out on a date. How impressive would it have been at the beginning of the evening if your date said, “I’m sorry but this is going to be a really lousy date because I’m not good at this sort of thing, and I didn’t get enough sleep last night, and my mom picked out this ugly shirt…?”

Would that have made the date go better, or would it have just soured things from the start?

I routinely see entrepreneurs, business people and political candidates start off their presentations by saying things like this:
“Sorry, but I know my presentation is really boring!”
“I’d like to apologize for some of my slides being out of order.”
“Let me get through this tedious stuff and then we can have fun with your questions.”
“I know you won’t be able to see my slides but…”
“Gosh, I’m really scared to be in front of you today.”
“I missed my plane and flew all night so I am really tired….”

These are awful ways to start a presentation. What you are really telling your audience is that you hold them in such low regard you didn’t adequately prepare for them. You are disrespecting them so they should respond in kind, by ignoring you. Is this any way to start a new relationship?

The reality is that you aren’t going to help yourself by making excuses or trying to minimize audience expectations. But here is the more important reality: your audience already has very low expectations for you and every other speaker. Why? Because most presenters are really boring and tedious. Most presenters waste the time of the people they are presenting to. A fairly high percentage of presenters start by making lame excuses or trying to minimize expectations.

You, on the other hand, can really distinguish yourself by being interesting and great from the moment you start presenting. As a presenter, you need to look at things from the standpoint of the audience. As an audience member, chances are you are rooting for the presenter. You want the presenter to do well. You and the presenter have a mutual interest in the presentation going well because if it is awful, you the audience member will suffer. Most audiences in the world are rooting for you the presenter. They want you to do well otherwise they would have figured out some way to avoid being in the room with you when you are talking.

The one big exception is for comedians who have to present in front of a paying audience that is expecting a huge belly laugh every ten seconds or they will be disappointed. That is the hardest audience to please. But most business audiences are pleased if you just don’t bore them to death. So take this reality and accept it. Then use it to your advantage to give you confidence and to set you straight from the very beginning of your presentation. Although you don’t want to openly articulate this, everything you communicate with your words, energy, enthusiasm, and body language should convey “this presentation is going to be freakin’ fantastic, for you and for me!”

You can beat the expectations of your audience very time you speak, not by lowering the expectations, but by exceeding the already low expectations that other presenters have created before you.