Ep. 76 Does Your Presentation Need a Little Salt?

Mark Brown, does your presentation need a little salt? What? That's the question of the day. What is this little guy? If you're listening to the podcast, you can't see it. It's on YouTube. But Yukon Cornelius, one of my favorite characters ever, so I have a little figurine in my office. Yukon Cornelius. What does he have to do with your presentation? He's a famous character from the Claymation Rudolph. What does he have to do with your presentation? And you being unforgettable.

Unforgettable.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation. AHAs. Let's dive right in.

All right.

For our listeners who don't know Yukon Cornelius or the Claymation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, let me bring you into the loop. But first, were you curious about what he has to do with your presentation? It's a lot, so listen up. But Yukon Cornelius in the TV animation, Clay animation, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was this happy, positive, just awesome character. Loved him. He would take his pick. He was a prospector. He'd take his pick and throw it up in the air and it would land into the ice and it'd take it and it licked the end of it and say nothing. He was looking for that indication he should dig more. He was looking for gold. But he was using that little pick to just lick the end and see if there's a taste of gold, to see if he should go deeper. So your audience wants to know if they should lean in or lean back.

Well, Darian, now you've got me really curious and hopefully our listeners as well. And I know you're going to reveal for Taurus today a couple of techniques that will make more sense. When you think about putting salt, I mean, people think of salt as you add a little flavor, you know, maybe put a little more humor in there or make a character more unique or interesting. That's adding salt. But I don't think that's your direction today, so help me out. What do you mean if I need a little more salt in my presentation? Come on, dude.

Well, this is unforgettable Presentations podcast. This is not average. Anyone can give a presentation podcast. So we're trying to help you be unforgettable. And this was a lesson learned actually, just when I started coaching. I didn't know prior to 2002 this idea, and I actually learned about it from a client who will remain nameless. But he was my first coaching client and I was working for his company and he was talking about the idea of salting his presentation. And even though I was coaching him, I didn't quite know that term or what he meant. And what he was saying was finding a way to get people to want to know the information before you actually give them that, aha, that new idea. Give them the answers too soon. It's not good to give it up too soon, metaphorically speaking.

So.

So we've gotta tease them a little. So salting, let's say, is teasing people to want to hear what you're about to say. It gets them to lean in and want to know it. Sometimes if we just spoon feed them or hand them the answers, it's not very sticky and it slides off. It's like a skillet with that new cool Teflon that just goes away and it doesn't stick. So we've gotta use a little salt, tease the audience a little to get them to want the answer. If we just give them the answer, it's not going to stick.

Yeah. And I have found that when an audience finds themselves engaged in the process, when they're leaning in, when they're actively involved, it makes it stick more. They feel valued and they feel that they're actually a part of their learning process. They aren't sitting back in a college, what do you call it, Amphitheater, with a lecturer and a slideshow going for, you know, 90 minutes and you can put a recorder down and just la, la, la, and walk out. They're engaged, they're involved, they're leaning in, they want to know how. What do you mean by that? How do I accomplish that? And you and I, by using salt. Well, in our presentation can create the atmosphere where the audience wants to hear more and they're more prepared, not only receptive, they are eager to hear what you have to say.

Yeah. One quick example that I love to use, I use all the time, is to take a poll or ask my audience, which I did it in a live setting. It works even better in virtual because we can use a poll or I can have them type in as a chat. I did it a couple times this weekend for some presentations. One to Kuwait and one to Idaho. So two foreign countries. Just kidding.

It's cold, man.

Yeah, it's cold in Idaho right now.

Ching. Oh, man, he's on a roll today.

On a roll. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So it's getting people to want to know the information. So sometimes people have that ego. They kind of think they know their answers. I've been around for a while. I've been given presentations. I've taken a lot of courses. So one of the questions I ask in our webinar, too, if you're a toastmaster, if you're a presenter, if you're a professional speaker. Right now, it's contest season, so check out speechcontestwebinar.com It's a free thing that Mark and I offer. Speechcontestwebinar.com, nine do's and nine don'ts of the speech contest. But in that we ask a question, we say, what is the most important part of a presentation? And when I was doing it live, I always heard your message, your audience, your opening, your closing, and it was all over the map. But actually, it was those same four or five answers in one wording or another. The wording might be different, but those are the answers we get. And then I say, you're incorrect. Now, I clarify those aren't wrong answers, but they're not the most important answer. Now the audience is leaning in. What is the answer? That's salting. I could have just handed them the information. I could have just handed them the answer that this is what you have to understand. You have to have the mindset that. But instead I get them curious, salting the presentation to get them to want to know the information. And then I reveal it's the thought process in the listener's mind. It's not the audience that's too general. It's not your opening. It's how your opening affects our thoughts. It's not your slide. It's how your slide affects our thoughts. It's not your message, it's how your message affects our thoughts. The audience itself is just too generic. That's not specific. That's why we teach people to crave feedback. We've got to know what the audience is thinking when you tell this story this way. So maybe we need to tell it a little differently.

What?

We need to know what they're thinking about what we're saying. So I clarify that, and that helps that point be stickier.

You know, we could talk about this for a long time because we do this technique in a couple of different ways in our programs. And it's interesting to see how the audience gets the aha. And one of our habits is to ask our audience for keepers. And very often when the keepers come in, they realize, ah, what I thought was true really isn't. And we ask some simple questions. Sometimes you could ask your audience as a, as a presenter or a trainer or a workshop presenter. You could ask an audience what may seem to be a very, very obvious answer. You may not have five or six. You can ask an A B question or a 1, 2 question and you get, you know, 55 A's and 33 B's. Oh yeah, the A's win. Woohoo. Woohoo. Woohoo. And then we reveal, well, they're all good answers, but the answer really is, well, that depends. So you can get the audience heading in a direction where they are convinced they are pretty sure they know what the answer is. You could say to your audience, hey, you all, you and I all know a rock band, you know, the audience always opens with what, their best song? And you go, no, they open with their second best song. And here's why, right? You want to end on a high note. The lesson is you want to end on a high. They end with their best song, open with their second best. So we gave away two secrets. Here's a point though. As you think about your audiences and the material you have to deliver and the way in which you deliver it, could you be doing yourself a disservice not giving your audience a chance to engage? Because you need a little salt in your presentation. So here's a request I have for you listening, and for those of you who are watching as well, review your presentation, particularly in places where you allow the audience to make an assumption or to draw a conclusion. Is there a place in your presentation, your training program, in your workshop where you can create this idea of curiosity, where you can get the audience to want to ask you, well, how? What does that mean? How do I do that? What are you talking about? To give them a chance to ask the question and then lean in for you to deliver the answer. And all it takes is simply reviewing what you currently have, changing a couple of statements into questions, and let them reach for it rather than you just give it. If all you do is the talk, talk, talk, deliver, deliver, state, state, state, and never ask questions, never pause to make them go, maybe your presentation needs a little salt.

Yeah, you can't change their thinking if they're not actively thinking.

Oh, wait, wait, wait, you need to say that again, brother.

You can't influence their thinking without knowing what they're Thinking, I think that's what I said, but I'm not sure. Have to roll the tape on that. Go back to the replay, Don up in the booth. But here's where I learned this when I was working with this search engine optimization company out of Boston. Okay? I'm working with their sales presenters. They're going out and they're these young millennials who are out doing presentations, and they knew their stuff. But how do you convince people who are, let's just say, more senior than you, who are the buyers who are making that decision? How do you influence them to realize, hey, we know our stuff? See, when you salt actively and do it right, you actually up your credibility and make the audience realize maybe they don't know as much as they thought they did and maybe they should listen. So what they did early on, how we applied it early on in my first coaching clients, is we would get them to ask. So one of the ideas was getting the audience to understand the landscape search market. Like, who had what market share? How much did Google have? And Yahoo. And back when I was coaching them, I was like, ask Jeeves, like, how much of the market share was out there? Because if you want to be found, there wasn't just one search engine. But they always asked, what's the number one search engine? And of course, everyone would be like, Google, Google, Google. And they would say, okay, what's number two? And by how much? That I don't know. And then they would, now I'm oversimplifying it a little just for the purpose of this illustration, but then they would show the search engine landscape to show this client that, hey, for you and your industry, being found on this and this and this instead of Google might actually be better than Google or being found on Google and this one. So they're not just going to help in one search engine, they're going to help in many search engines and how the strategies would work together. And all of a sudden, okay, I'm listening. As Ed Tate would say. So it was getting them to show their credibility, letting people think they knew the answer, but yet now really want the real answer that impacts their bottom line.

Yeah, anything is when you can get someone to ask you the question. You could use this in an interview format, for example. You know, somebody will say, well, Darren, you know, you're a pro speaker for a long time and, you know, what are some of the keys to good communication? You say, well, and this is an old example. This is an old example. But you could say, well, you know, Frank, the Truth is, already you've used one of them. So he says, well, Willie, what have I used? And can keep going in your conversation. They want to know what that one thing is. You know, there are three keys already you've used one. It could be eye contact, it could be listening. Well, it could be how you phrase your question. Whatever the answer may be, when you tell the, the interviewer or the audience, I can tell already most of you have already done step two. They're going to want to know, what is that? Until you get to step two, they're thinking, what have we done already? We didn't even know. I didn't even try. What are you talking about? I've already done this. How you generate interest and curiosity early on in that particular way, that's one more technique for salting the presentation. So they will not rest until you give them that answer. And this may sound kind of a little bit off track, Darren, but it occurred to me that sometimes in our introductory marks, we say, you know, before you leave here today, in the next 59 minutes, you're going to learn six of the most important keys to delivering an unforgettable presentation. In their brain, they're saying six. When you get to four, they're like, okay, what's the last two? In a subtle way, it isn't exactly the best example, but in some way, when you tell them what to expect, they're going to want to know what it is. And the more you can make it intriguing, the more you can tease them with it, the more flavorful your salt is. Not just regular table salt, but pink salt, salt from the Himalayas.

You can do that, the pink salt.

More likely the audience is going to want to hear more from you. So, I mean, sincerely, think about what method you're using right now and how can you tweak that to add a flavor of salt to get them to want to know more? Look back at what you've been doing the last week, the last month, the last year. Have you been salting or have you been missing salting opportunities? It will take one small change to, to what you currently do is going to make people. So, ah, now I want to know. It's almost like marketing in the middle of your presenting.

Yeah, I like what you said, Mark. Go back and inventory what you already have, the points that you make, and then just look prior to that, are you setting up the points to get us curious to want to hear the points? That curiosity will open their brain and allow that point to go deeper into that subconscious mind or Even the conscious mind, they're more likely to remember it three days, three weeks, three months later. And Mark, when we're talking about this thought process in the listener's mind, I don't know if you'd consider this salting, but an idea popped into my head. In my early days of stand up comedy, I used to do a joke about being half French and half Polish. And later on after that, if they didn't laugh and it was a self deprecating joke on me being Polish, and I said I would always get some kind of interaction or somebody would be teasing me in a playful heckling, which I encouraged at that point. And I said, well, what do you expect for an $8 cover charge? Now Mark, at the time it was always a $10 cover charge. It was not 8. But what I learned over time is that the audience, someone has to correct you when it's an obvious mistake. Now I did it intentionally because I wanted that person to correct me because I knew what process in the audience's mind would be. So they actually, it helped me create a setup where I would say, well, what do you expect for an $8 cover charge? And somebody always yell out, It's 10 bucks. And I said, well, I guess this Polish joke would be on you then. So again, it's the thought process in the listener's mind. Your audience wants to correct you because they're pulling for you. In the standup comedy world, it was a little different. Different like, ah, okay, it's wide open field. But the, the principle is still the same, the thought process in the listener's mind. But I use that to get them to almost fall into my trap.

How evil that is. You know, the funny thing is, Darren, we can begin to salt before the presentation, even in our program description. If your program description reveals the single most common mistake every leader makes in the opening, you know, like, you know, we're going to cover today. A lot to cover today. But you know what? I found there's one mistake almost every leader makes. The single most common mistake. We're going to address that today. Now, if I'm a leader and I come to a workshop and I hear the single most common mistake every leader makes, I want to prove to you I don't make that mistake, but what is the mistake? And I can't rest till I find out what it is and what you have as a solution for it. So I'm eager until you get to it. You've done set me up. You've already set me up to one find out what it is. Two, to confirm I don't make that mistake. And three, if I do, you offer me a solution early on. You can set that up. And the way you do it playfully can really. I mean, if the atmosphere is appropriate for it, even playfully, you can have your audience almost salivating. Not saltivating. No salivating. That was bad. I know. Really, really bad.

Mark Brown. There you go.

But they say. They say salt makes you want to drink water, Right? So it makes you sound.

That was not salt. That was gravy. Well, Mark, I think. I don't want to belabor the point. I think we've got the point across. And it's also the term open loop. What you did was you opened the loop. Here's the number one secret. I think that that is a way to salt a presentation by opening a curiosity that you're gonna. You're gonna answer later. But now they're. It's. It's hanging. Don't leave that hanging. Don't leave that hanging. You better close that loop. And we see some emerging presenters who don't even realize they're opening a loop, and then they never even close it. Yeah, that's another podcast. Yeah, but you go, make sure you open the loop. Make sure you close it. So look at your points that you're trying to make stick and ask yourself, just go back a step and say, am I getting them to want this information? Rather than just saying, stage time, stage time, stage time. And expecting that's enough. That. That's not enough.

And.

And you gotta get me to want to know what's the most important habit to create. So what's the most important habit? Well, this. It's da, da, da, da, da. No, no, no. Stage time, stage time, stage time. Never turn down stage time. But then I've got to prove it. Which again, is another podcast. But for now, we're just sticking to salting. Like my little buddy here, Yukon Cornelius. I just love that name. Yukon Cornelius. That's just brilliant. That's a. That's a character. By the way, check out episode 27, I think it was, where we talked about characters. I think that was the number. But we did some on characters. Yukon Cornelius.

But remember, funny I gotta say this. You said Yukon Cornelius. I'm thinking back in the old school disco time when you had you Don Cornelius. Not. Never mind. Go ahead, Darren. It's one of those days.

We're going to talk about making other mistakes on a live podcast, Pushing the limit. But, Mark, any other insights into salting your presentation? I Just think it's so critical. And most people don't take the time to sit back, just like you said, and look at what's the point? Okay, what am I doing strategically to get them to want to hear that information?

One idea for you, Darren. If you could have four key ideas that you want to share with the audience, and this might seem a little disingenuous or not as frank and honest, but just hear me out for a second, Darren. You could have four key points. You want to share on a topic for the audience, and you could tell them, we have three keys to success in this area and a bonus. I hear the word bonus, I'm thinking, okay, I'm getting something extra. I'm gonna lean in. Oh, yeah, I want to hear the three. But when you say bonus, I'm like, what is a bonus secret? Again, that's just me. Because honestly, it has happened to me. Somebody said a bonus secret, and my brain goes, I cannot leave until I get what this bonus secret is. And then they give the bonus after the Q and a. So guess what? I ain't leaving during the Q and A. I want the bonus secret afterwards. Right?

Get them to stick around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, that's a structural thing, right? You're not being dishonest. But if you let them know that's a bonus coming after the Q and A, I want to know what it is. It happened to me. It drew me in, I stayed. And hopefully that may be a technique you could apply as well. Because now the audience is curious, what more do you have for me? What more gold can I mine? When I threw my pickaxe in the air and I land. Yep, I got something, Darren.

I'm going deeper. One more quick technique that you could use, Mark, play along with me here. So when I'm teaching presenters, I say the second biggest problem in presentations is self doubt. At the beginning of a career, that we doubt our own value of our own presentations of our own life, of our own stories. We doubt that. That is the second biggest problem.

But, Darren, what's the first? He didn't tell me the first one.

Wow. I'm glad you asked. So using that idea of the second biggest mistake and then you give them one, now they're curious what the first one is.

Exactly. Exactly.

Very simple technique and effective. But number two's gotta be good. It's gotta be like, yep, I can see that. So you can't just use the technique. And I think this is a problem with just techniquing yourself to be unforgettable it doesn't work quite that way.

It's gotta be. You're right, Kazir, when you hear two. Second biggest one. If the second biggest one. Darren, you said it has to be good. Let's not brush that by too quickly. If the second one is that good, I'm thinking if the second one is that good, how good is the first one? I have to hear the first one now. And my pen in my case, pencil is up. I want to know what that is. Which speaks to one key ingredient that overrides everything we talk about. You have to have good content for this to be really effective. You know, Darren says technique is nice, but you have to have content that works.

Yeah. Good content delivered with intent. How's that, Mark?

Good content. Good content delivered with intent.

Yeah, because if your intent is to sell or self serving, they're going to sense that. So, Mark, the second biggest problem is self doubt. So what's the biggest problem? I don't want to leave that loop opened. The biggest problem is what I had after seven years as a speaker. Ego. We start thinking we're too good. We start, as I've heard Alan Weiss say, you start believing your own press releases, you start believing your own brio. You think you're better and you think you can't learn more. Mark and I do this podcast. We love interviewing some of the top presenters in the world because I'm curious, how'd you come up with that? What was the strategy? So I think that intention of ours helps serve us, but it also helps make this podcast better. Because if we were just kind of going through the motions, we weren't enthusiastic about it. They'd be bored and they wouldn't subscribe. Subscribe. If you like us, subscribe. Very, very subtle.

I am. Yes, definitely. Well, Darren, I'm glad you mentioned ego real quickly because you know what? If we put our ego aside and avail ourselves of every tool, every tip, every technique, every tip, if we work hard to deliver the best presentations, then we will acknowledge that maybe our talk might need a little salt. We'll apply it, use it well. We'll add the flavor that we need and eventually our presentation will be unforgettable.

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