7/30/2019 Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
1/5
Vijay Jha< [email protected]>
Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations1 message
SmartDraw Software< [email protected]> Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:36 AM
Reply-To: [email protected]: [email protected]
Ten Secrets that Made Steve Jobs' Presentationsthe World's Best
And How You Can Use Them to Astound Your Audience
Genius. Legend. Visionary.
These are but a few of the
superlatives that have been usedto describe the late, great Steve
Jobs.
But beyond his business acumen,
the man behind
Applecomputers and Pixar
Animation Studios was perhaps
the greatest keynote speaker ofour time. There are more than
57,000 links to his presentations
on YouTube.
What made his presentations so
amazing that people all over theworld want to see them? More
importantly, how can the rest ofus learn from Steve to inspire
our audiences the way he did?
In his excellent book, ThePresentation Secrets of Steve
Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great
in Front of Any Audience,
Carmine Gallo takes us behind
the scenes and offers Steve's tensecrets that you can use for
presentations that will inform,
engage and, yes, astoundyour
audience.
"My presentation was supposed to
knock your socks off. I guess I gotcarried away."
Buy SmartDraw now and
save $100 for a limitedtime.
Page 1 of 5Gmail - Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
29/10/2012http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=ca7f72c4d3&view=pt&search=inbox&th=13a...
7/30/2019 Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
2/5
Holy Smokes, Bullets Kill! (And Other PresentationTips)Before planning your presentation, according to Carmine Gallo, it is critical to know
the question that matters most to your audience: "Why should I care?"1 You need to
think about how to inspire your audience. Simply trying to sell them something
doesn't cut it. As Carmine writes, "Your widget doesn't inspire me. Show me how
your widget improves my life, and you've won me over."
2
Here are Steve Jobs' ten secrets for insanely great presentations.3
1. Plan in analog. Brainstorm in advance of creating your presentation. You can
use pen and paper, a whiteboard or, better yet, a mind map.
DO NOT use PowerPointto create your presentationit will be used only in the
final step! (More on this later.)
2. Create Twitter-friendly headlines. Describe your product or service in 140
characters or less. Preferably, a lot less. Steve introduced the MacBook Air
assimply, "The world's thinnest notebook." About the first-generation iPod
, he
tweeted: "It's one thousand songs in your pocket."
3. Introduce the villain. Steve saw a presentation as a three-act play that must
tell a story, but what is a story without a hero and a villain? Before he
introduced the famous 1984 ad to a group of Apple salespeople, he set the
stage, casting "Big Blue" as Goliath. "IBM wants it all," he warned, and
defiantly asserted that only Apple stoodin its way. His dramatic moment sentthe crowd into frenzy.
While the villain doesn't have to be a competitor, it must be a common foe that
your audience will want to join with you in rallying against. Your product is
then revealed as the conquering hero.
4. Create visual slides. As Carmine writes, "Neuroscientists are finding that the
best way to communicate information is through text and pictures, not text
alone." As for bullet points, Steve never, ever, used them and neither should
you. Carmine has a section in her book titled, "Bullets Kill" that describes why
you should avoid using PowerPoint to create your presentation.
"Think about what happens when you open PowerPoint. A blank-format slide
appears that contains space for wordsa title and subtitle. This presents a
problem. There are very few words in a Steve Jobs presentation. Now thinkabout the first thing you see in the drop-down menu under Format: Bullets &
Numbering. This leads to the second problem. There are no bullet points in a
Steve Jobs presentation. The software itself forces you to create a template
that represents the exact opposite of what you need to speak like Steve!"4
Take a look at the following comparison of bullet-point slides compared to the
Page 2 of 5Gmail - Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
29/10/2012http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=ca7f72c4d3&view=pt&search=inbox&th=13a...
7/30/2019 Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
3/5
same information, presented visually.
5. Practice, a lot. Most people read their presentations off of their PowerPointslides. This is why most presentations are boring. Steve treated every slide as
piece of poetry and every presentation as a theatrical event. He wasn't a
natural presenter; he worked very hard at it. Rehearse your presentation, toss
the script and look at your audience. Practice at making it look effortless.6. Obey the ten-minute rule. It's a scientific fact that the brain gets tired after
ten minutes. Steve's presentations typically lasted an hour and a half. He
would break them up into short intervals of ten minutes or less by
interspersing videos, demonstrations, or guest speakers. Don't let your
audience get tired or you'll lose them.
A great way to keep your audience's attention when presenting information is
though sequencing, which builds the story within a visual one step at a time,
making the information much easier to digest.
7. Dress up your numbers. We often deal with large numbers or data that an
audience can't comprehend without context. Breaking them down and
presenting numbers visually can overcome this. Notice how much more
effectively the chart below illustrates sales figures as opposed to a matrix of
Page 3 of 5Gmail - Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
29/10/2012http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=ca7f72c4d3&view=pt&search=inbox&th=13a...
7/30/2019 Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
4/5
data.
8. Reveal a 'holy smokes!' moment. Maya Angelou said, "People will forgetwhat you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how
you made them fe el." Steve Jobs always produced a memorable moment in a
pre sentation. When he introduced the MacBook Air, he told his a udience that
while everyone had seen manila envelopes floating around the office, what
they had never seen was someone pulling a notebook computer out of onewhich is precisely what he did. The audience went wild and images of that
moment remain emblazoned in people's minds four years later.
9. Sell dreams, not products. When it looked at the iPod, the world saw a
music player. What Steve Jobs saw was a tool to enrich people's lives. Howard
Schultz of Starbucks didn't have a passion to sell coffee; his vision was tocreate an experience: a 'third place' between home and work where people
would want to gather. The dream met the customer's need and the product
sales took care of itself.
10. Have fun! When was the last time you saw someone enjoying giving a
presentation? Steve Jobs had fun in every keynote. He made jokes at his ownexpense. While most people give presentations to deliver information, Steve
always created an experience that his audience would enjoy and remember.
Most importantly, he sold them on becoming a part of his dream, not his
product.
SmartDraw Can Help You Create Powerful, ProfessionalPresentations that will Knock Their Socks OffSmartDraw is the best tool for helping you to create an insanely great presentation -
it offers mind maps and storyboards for the creative process and an array of
templates for creating amazing visuals. One of the great things about SmartDraw is
that you don't have to be able to draw to use iteverything is automated andsimple.
PowerPoint, on the other hand, sucks you into thinking about slides, transitions,
animations and themes without carefully considering more important concepts like
content, message, and sequence of information. As mentioned, the very design of
the software forces you to use text and bullets that are the exact opposite of a greatSteve Jobs type presentation!
You can build a well-organized, visually rich and animated presentation using
SmartDraw. Once your work is finished, SmartDraw will convert it into a PowerPoint
slideshow that is ready to present with one click. Amazing but true!
Get Started NowSay goodbye to boring presentations. Impress your audience! Discover for yourself
the powerful benefits of SmartDraw. Click the button below and save $100 today.
Now that you're part of the SmartDraw community we invite you to keep intouch with us on your favorite social networks.
Page 4 of 5Gmail - Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
29/10/2012http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=ca7f72c4d3&view=pt&search=inbox&th=13a...
7/30/2019 Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations
5/5
Buy and save $100 for a limited time.
To read more
about
sequencing and
presentations,
download this
white .
To watch a video
showing how to
use sequencing to
make your visual
presentation evenmore engaging,
click here.
If you prefer to
contact one of our
product
specialists,
click here.
You control the e-mail you get from SmartDraw Software: Unlist
SmartDraw Software, LLC | 9909 Mira Mesa Blvd. | San Diego, CA 92131 | USA
PowerPoint
is a registered trademark of Microsoft
Corporation.
Apple, MacBook Air
and iPod
are registered trademarks of Apple Inc.
All Rights Reserved. 2012 SmartDraw, LLC
1Carmine Gallo, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any
Audience, McGraw-Hill [Kindle Edition], Loc. 223-31.
2Gallo. Loc. 201-7.
3For a slideshow presentation of these 10 tips, see Carmine Gallo's Forbes e-zine
article:http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/08/steve-jobs-presentations-technology-meetings-09-tips_slide.html
4Gallo. Loc. 249-63.
Page 5 of 5Gmail - Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets for Great Presentations