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Adding fire pits to your business presentations is fun and unique way to engage your audience and keep their undivided attention. Everyone who has any public speaking experience knows how difficult it can be to break through to you audience and get them to lower their guard enough to deliver your message effectively. Although there are a number of key factors that you are in control of such as body language and eye contact that you can use to keep your audience engaged, there are also some other things that you can use to your advantage. Fire pits provide an interesting way to capture your audience’s attention and imagination during a business presentation.

In recent years, medical experts have discovered that the physical setting that a person is immersed in has a huge impact on their ability to learn and retain information. This is because the cognitive processes that drive memory and attention are directly influenced by the parts of the visual cortex that are dedicated to what is known as contextual process. Contextual processing is how the mind processes the physical setting that a person is in, and it is hardwired to focus on certain types of objects, such as faces and the fire in fire pits. The mind perceives fire in a unique way that relaxes the body while peeking a person’s interest in what is going on around him or her.

In fact, people have been giving presentations of one sort in front of fire pits for thousands of years. From Native Americans and other indigenous groups to stories told around a campfire, there is something about a fire in a pit that makes an audience settle down and take whatever a speaker has to say very seriously. As a result, people have been using fire pits to impart important cultural traditions or discuss defense strategies for thousands of years.

Everyone has been in a position where he or she has had to sit through endless business presentations that were given by boring speakers who were clearly just phoning it in. You owe it to your audience to give them a business presentation worth listening to, and using fire pits in your presentation is a great way to show your audience that you take yourself seriously. While it may take your audience a minute to get used to the idea, you will find that they will be taking about your presentation and the fire pits for long after your performance.

“With presentation skills, the work is in the preparation, the fun is in the presentation.” Colleen Kettenhofen

To improve presentation skills, allow plenty of time, if at all possible, to find out exactly who will be in your audience. Consider obtaining some of their names, phone numbers and email addresses so you can do a “survey” or interview to find out more about their needs, challenges and expectations before the day you present. Are they colleagues or clients you’ve personally invited? What will be the attitude of your participants? In other words, do they want to be there or is attendance mandatory? Are you going to be presenting any “bad news” or information they may not want to hear?

In my seminars, people often tell me that two of their biggest presentation skills challenges are “how to handle a hostile audience,” and “how to present bad news.” If you start by knowing who will be in attendance, what their expectations are, as well as their objections, you can then begin to prepare your presentation. Other than rehearsing, nothing will improve presentation skills more than knowing details about your audience.

Incidentally, studies show that by rehearsing and truly being prepared, you can reduce nervousness by 75%. If you take the word “rehearse,” and delete the “se,” what word do you have? “Rehear.” When you rehearse, you are actually rehearing yourself. In addition, 95% of the success of your presentation is determined before you present. So knowing something about your audience, and then rehearsing the information, will greatly improve presentation skills.

Your main source of information will be the individual who invited you to speak. When you ask questions, it also gives the impression that you’re conscientious and meticulous in planning and preparation. Also, find out if there are any issues sensitive to the group or topics to be avoided. What about any cultural differences or language barriers?

Before I give a keynote speech or lead a breakout session at a conference, I inquire about getting a list of all attendees, their phone numbers and email addresses. I like to “interview” at least 3 people who will be attending. Often times they’ll come up with other pertinent issues that the contact person may not have known about or simply forgot to mention.

If your presentation is to a client, or potential new client, keep apprised of their company news, goals and objectives. What is an average work day like for the participants in your audience? What are their greatest challenges? And if applicable, how does your product or service help solve their problem?

Presentation skills = defining your purpose. Ask yourself, “What is my purpose in being here?” And, “Why are they here?” Everyone is always tuned in to “Radio Station WIIFM,” which stands for, “What’s in it for me?!” So, how does what you’re talking about address their problem, the “what’s in it for me?”

In addition to interviewing individuals ahead of your presentation, do “meets and greets” if time permits. Get to know people one-on-one right before your talk. It will calm your nerves and you’ll no longer see them as total strangers. Also, it shows you’re taking an interest in them. Often by talking one-on-one beforehand, you discover a wealth of new information you may want to bring up in your presentation.

In improving your presentation skills by knowing your audience ahead of time, here are some questions to ask yourself:

o What is the attitude of the audience? Do they want to be there? o What are their approximate ages? o What is the percentage of males to females? o What are their levels of education? o What is their technical expertise? o What about their geographic locations in terms of home base? o What about their cultural make up?

Remember, 95% of your presentation skills success is determined before your presentation. What do you know about your audience? How can you incorporate that information into the tailoring of your presentation? The work is in the preparation, the fun is in the performance.

Copyright 2006 Colleen Kettenhofen

Great product reviews is the life blood of today’s successful affiliate marketer. Yet the biggest obstacle you will have is the growing skepticism from readers of product reviews that are found online. This is due to many having been burnt or scammed by such reviews that are simply rubbish. Yes in many cases, years of too good to be true product reviews have made readers sceptical and hard to reach. I myself and maybe even you yourself have been taken for a ride with a supposedly great product review(s) or a sales page. And how did we feel afterwards – scammed, stupid and a necessity to become hardened to what you see and read.

However, as sceptical as we may have become, reviews are still necessary to gauge a products general worth. So what is now happening is that readers are reading a lot more product reviews and carefully considering them before making a decision. That is why we need to make our reviews stand out from the pack and get noticed as a provider of reliable, honest, objective and quality product reviews.

So how do we write a great product review? Below are 5 very important tips or steps worth considering.

1. Evaluate the Affiliate Website

A good product to promote will always be supported with a well-structured web site that provides loads of support and information for affiliate marketers to use. This will make writing a great review a lot easier. Good affiliate web sites will invariably have information on the products being promoted that can help you to write a great review. It will also help you decide on what to write as you do not necessarily want to be rehashing what the web site sales page are saying. That is, you may need to adopt a “pre sales” style of writing a product review as the web site will be doing the sales. Where you do use information from the web site, make sure you do not copy verbatim and rewrite as much as possible in your own words.

2. Have the Reader in Mind

Before you start the review, have an end objective in mind, in particular, the type of reader you are trying to appeal to and what information he or she is likely to be seeking. The reader you may be trying to reach may be a beginner in say affiliate marketing and is likely to be after the basics rather than a technical approach to some aspect of affiliate marketing. Also keep the writing style informal, using the same types of words that you would use in speaking with a friend and avoid an overly professional approach unless that is called for. Also, try and ask yourself questions as to what that sort of person would want to know in knowing what to write and avoid rambling on. Remember, you are there to help the reader to understand a product better and to help them arrive at a decision that is right for them.

3. Your Personal Experience in Using the Product

Nothing convinces a reader better on a product review than a firsthand account of your experience in using the product. Products that you are using are good to promote for that reason. Tell your reader what you found good about the product and how it is helping you. It will help the reader see that you have enough conviction in the product that you were willing purchase the product yourself. If you do not own it, the best way to compile a review is to buy it and use it if your serious in promoting it. It will give you so much more to add into your review that other affiliates may not be picking up on and will make your product review more valuable to the reader. If the price is affordable, consider it as an investment.

4. What to Consider in the Product Review

- Features: What is the product? What are the physical and/or intangible features? List the products aspects such as weight, height, color, number of pages, delivery method, etc.

- Benefits: What does it do? Does it help you make money? Save time? Save money? Does it solve a problem? As buyers are mostly motivated by the benefits of a product, it must be carefully considered and articulated in the review.

- Results: What results have you or others received from using the product? Can you quantify them in an easy to read and understandable format? Do not make extravagant claims as this will destroy the credibility of your review.

- Difference: If this product is different from others on the market, explain exactly what it is. This is best accomplished using a table of quick facts comparing the various products with their respective features, etc. This is a style of presentation that people can read and understand very quickly and simply.

- Balanced View: Are there things you don’t like about the product? Share them! A product that’s all positive won’t seem realistic. You should always keep the review as objective as possible looking at all aspects of the product. If you are expressing a negative aspect, this need not be a bad thing. You can often turn that around by mentioning why the negative is not enough to deter anyone from purchasing the product if that is case. If there is a major negative, reconsider whether you should even be promoting it or show how this may not be a negative for certain types of readers or users of the product.

- Call to Action: You should have a clear call to action in all your marketing pieces and a product review is no different. In product reviews, this is generally accomplished by including a link to an offer, web site or further information on the product.

5. Review the “Product Review”

When I first write my review, it all sounds good and I am proud of it and the effort I put in. However, I invariably find that if I leave it and come back to it later with a fresh mind, I can generally find improvements in the way I am saying something or in what I have covered or not covered. This opportunity may delay you a day or two in publishing the review but the benefits of writing a great product review should not be under estimated. A great review that is well thought out, original and fresh is likely to get a longer shelf life than poorly written review and gain wider circulation amongst readers. Remember, that your reviews will be around for years or maybe decades and you are trying to future proofing the reviews as much as possible.

Finally, ask yourself questions such as “Would I buy based on this review?” or “Do I believe a single word of what I have written in the review? If yes, then you have written a great product review.