You just delivered an awesome business presentation. You leave the conference room feeling elated and very confident that they will use your services/products and you have generated a great sale.

You wait a few days a follow up since you have not heard from the business.  You are told that they decided to go with a different company.

What Happened?

It is very common for companies to do Internet Research before completing the buying decision.  What are businesses finding out about you and/or your business?  Are they finding a professional website and a professional Internet presence?

Internet Presence Matters!

Make sure that your Website matches the message you are conveying in your business presentation – people do look.  If you have a website that is:

• Not Functional
• Not Organized
• Not Branded
• Not a good representation of your Products/Services
• Not easy to use or understand
• Not able to be found
• Does not exist

…then you are in trouble.  Your website is an extension of your business.  Make sure it gives a consistent impression to the message you are delivering in person.  It should back up your business presentation.  When the decision makes come a calling make sure they are getting the right impression – this will make it easier to close the sale.

This article by:

Dotty helps business owners with both their Websites and Marketing Online. She is the local expert for establishing a Web Presence and getting your Marketing Message out on the Internet. You can learn more from her websites:
Web Design
Online Marketing Training

The best way to manage stage fright is to understand it. Stage fright results when a presenter develops a fear of negative evaluation.

Stage Fright Cycle – Stage fright doesn’t flip on like a switch. It starts with your thoughts and then grows the more you think about it.

Stage Fright occurs in four stages.

1. Initial Predictions – We make predictions about everything we are about to do. Whenever you are going to make a presentation, you make a prediction of how well you will do based on your knowledge of the content, how artfully you will deliver it, who will be in the audience, and how you judge your own speaking ability. When you experience stage fright, it means that your predictions about the outcome are negative.




2. Anxious Response – When you believe something bad will happen and you can’t cope, your body reacts to these thoughts with symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, shaking hands, sweating, red skin, and shallow breathing. Psychologists refer to these symptoms as indications of the “fight-or-flight response.”
   When you are speaking, your level of anxiety can make you feel either challenged or overwhelmed. When challenged, you are focused and present. You remain “in the moment”. All distractions disappear, and your brain is firing on all cylinders with the sole aim of accomplishing your goals. When anxiety becomes severe, it spikes right past “challenged” and goes into “overwhelmed”. When you are overwhelmed, your mind goes blank, and this interferes with accessing the material you know well and want to present. Your thoughts are consumed with survival. (You can think yourself into a state of high anxiety.)




3. Self-Monitoring –Your brain is wired so that you can only perform one complex thinking task at a time. Focusing on the physical manifestations of stage fright will only make matters worse. The more attention you assign to self-monitoring, the less you have for your talk. When you see a speaker stumble over content he knows well or have the deer-in-the-headlights look as he stares blankly at the audience, there is a strong possibility his attention is focused on self-monitoring.




4. Making Mistakes – If you continue to split your attention between your talk and the distraction of self-monitoring, the chances that you will make mistakes increase dramatically. Or it may be more serious – blanking out and becoming confused. Self-monitoring is the presenter’s biggest problem. But preparation and practice will allow you to manage it.

The two types of stage fright:

Competence – One of the most common fears people have is forgetting what they are going to say. They are afraid that they won’t appear competent.

Acceptance - The second type of stage fright has to do with how accepted you feel by the audience.

Perception versus reality - Your perception of your presentation, while you’re giving it, is usually at odds with reality. What feels uncomfortable to you looks normal or comfortable to your audience. What feels comfortable to you can look uncomfortable to your audience. Practice animating your movements, changing your volume and pitch and add in occasional pauses.

Ways to deal with stage fright:

1. Performing relaxation and visualization exercises. Breathing Exercises.




2. Shifting Your Perspective by Changing Your Thinking – Think positive about what you are presenting and always keep in mind your audience. Imagine having a conversation with people you care about, and that you are providing valuable information that can be of help to them or their friends.




3. Changing Your Behavior – The easiest way to attack stage fright is by changing your behavior, which is directly under your control.
   • Rehearsal – verbalize your information over and over then practice, practice, practice. Practice not only refines your presentation, but it also reduces nervousness.
   • Practice distractions to reduce your level of stage fright.




4. Authenticity – Be yourself. For some unknown reason when presenting many people feel the need to be an actor or try to project themselves different than how they normally act. Doing this only makes it harder to make a good presentation.

Excerpt from “Own the Room” by David Booth (see Educational Material section).

Don’t start you presentation by immediately telegraphing that the rest of your presentation will be traditional, predictable and tedious. Although many openings are polite and gracious, they most often lack specific details, they use standard phrases we’ve heard many times before, and what is missing is the speaker’s personal insight or perspective. They do little to engage the listener. They represent the opposite of novelty and surprise. And none of them are driven by a singular objective.

A boring opening signals a boring presentation.

From the book “Own the Room” by David Booth