How To Present Like Steve Jobs

Have you seen how Steve Jobs presents his keynotes? Wow. He is not your typ­i­cal, loud, elo­quent speaker. But he’s really fun­da­men­tally sound and he’s really good at bring­ing his point across. I think he’s one of the coolest speak­ers I know. It helps that he has had really good prod­ucts to sell.

Check part 2, and part 3. And see what I mean.

This arti­cle is from Carmine Gallo of BNET​.COM. I have sum­ma­rized and high­lighted some parts of the arti­cle for AngPere​grino​.Com’s read­ers’ convenience.

Com­par­ing a Steve Jobs pre­sen­ta­tion to most pre­sen­ta­tions is impos­si­ble — he’s in a league all his own. Apple’s chief exec­u­tive is arguably the most charis­matic pitch­man in busi­ness today. His pre­sen­ta­tions are bril­liant demon­stra­tions of visual sto­ry­telling that turn cus­tomers, employ­ees, and the entire com­puter indus­try into evangelists.

STEP 1: Ignite Your Enthu­si­asm
Goal: Engage your lis­ten­ers’ pas­sion by tap­ping into your own.

Steve Jobs is pas­sion­ate about design­ing cool, fun, and easy-to-use com­put­ers, dig­i­tal music play­ers, and now phones. And he’s not too bash­ful to admit it. His words and phrases reflect his enthu­si­asm. These are quotes from the iPhone launch and from pre­vi­ous presentations:

“We’re going to make some his­tory together today…”

“Today we’re intro­duc­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary products…”

“We’ve got amaz­ing stuff to show you this morning…”

“This is an awe­some computer…”

“This is an incred­i­ble way to have fun…”

“This is the coolest thing we’ve done with video…”

“We are so excited about this. It’s incredible…”

The les­son here: If you hon­estly believe that some­thing is “amaz­ing,” go ahead and say it. After all, if you’re not pas­sion­ate about the topic, how is your audi­ence going to be?

STEP 2: Nav­i­gate the Way
Goal: Present your theme as a mantra to help your lis­ten­ers remem­ber it easily.

Jobs has always been able to craft a vision so vivid and pow­er­ful, he ral­lies his lis­ten­ers to the bet­ter future he sees and, in so doing, per­suades them to go along for the ride.

“This is a day I’ve been look­ing for­ward to for two and a half years,” Jobs said dur­ing the iPhone launch. “Every once in a while, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­uct comes along that changes every­thing. One would be for­tu­nate to work on just one of these in your career. Apple has been very for­tu­nate to intro­duce a few of these in the world.” At this point in the pre­sen­ta­tion, Jobs reminds his audi­ence about the Mac­in­tosh and the iPod, giv­ing lis­ten­ers per­mis­sion to believe in the vision he is about to describe: “Today Apple is going to rein­vent the phone!”

Rein­vent the phone. This is a mantra so sim­ple and yet so bold, and reflects a con­cise core pur­pose that is easy for lis­ten­ers to remem­ber and to rally around.

Step 3: Sell the Ben­e­fit
Goal: Explain the real-world prob­lem, then offer your solution.

Once Jobs reveals his one-liner — his core vision — he imme­di­ately launches into a dis­cus­sion of why the world needs a new phone. A solu­tion is inspir­ing only when it cures a real-world pain. While most speak­ers describe the solu­tion before the prob­lem, Jobs flips it around to make it eas­ier for the lis­tener to follow.

Jobs sells the ben­e­fit of the phone by first describ­ing the cur­rent state of the indus­try. The prob­lem, he says, “is [smart­phones] are not that smart, and they are not that easy to use. We want to make a leapfrog prod­uct that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been and super easy to use. That is what iPhone is.”

Jobs con­tin­ues to describe the prob­lem on most smart­phones: key­boards, which take up more than one-third of the phone whether the per­son is using them or not. The Apple solu­tion is to cre­ate a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary inter­face” that will get rid of the but­tons and cre­ate one giant screen. This brings up the prob­lem — how do you get around the screen with no scroll wheel or stylus?

Again, Jobs sets up a prob­lem and offers a solu­tion: “We’re going to use the best point­ing device in the world,” he says. “A device we’re all born with. Our fin­gers.” Jobs then describes Apple’s new “multi-touch” tech­nol­ogy that accu­rately responds to the touch of a fin­ger to bring up appli­ca­tions on the phone.

Step 4: Paint a Pic­ture
Goal: Use a cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­line to struc­ture your presentation.

Jobs tells the iPhone story by using sev­eral techniques:

1. Stick to the rule of three. We remem­ber lists in groups of three. Jobs unveiled the iPhone and built drama at the same time by say­ing, “Today we are intro­duc­ing three rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­ucts. The first is a wide-screen iPod with touch con­trols, the sec­ond is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary mobile phone, and the third is a break­through Inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions device.” For added empha­sis, he repeated the three prod­ucts three times, then deliv­ered the knock­out: “These are not three sep­a­rate devices. This is one device! Today Apple is going to rein­vent the phone!”

2. Tell per­sonal sto­ries. Dur­ing one sec­tion of the pre­sen­ta­tion, Jobs’s clicker sud­denly stopped work­ing. He men­tioned it with a smile, know­ing that some­one back­stage would take care of it, then told a story about how he and Apple cofounder Steve Woz­niak had built a TV jam­mer and used it to block TV sig­nals at Wozniak’s col­lege dorm. He used the oppor­tu­nity to make an emo­tional con­nec­tion with his audi­ence. Once the prob­lem was solved, Jobs con­tin­ued as if it had all been planned. Effort­less but powerful.

3. Keep it visual. In a Steve Jobs pre­sen­ta­tion, you will not find bul­let points, mind-numbing data, or lists of num­bers on slides. When Jobs men­tioned each of the three prod­ucts — an iPod, a phone, an Inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tor — a slide with an image of the prod­uct appeared. When he dis­cussed the “ulti­mate point­ing device” — your fin­gers — all the audi­ence saw on the screen was an image of a fin­ger touch­ing the iPhone.

Too much text on the screen dis­tracts from the speaker’s words. Strike the right bal­ance between visual and ver­bal by cre­at­ing slides that are big on images and low on text.

4. Rehearse. Jobs rehearses pre­sen­ta­tions for hours. Noth­ing is taken for granted. He knows the flow of his story, how he is going to build up to a big moment, what he is going to demon­strate, and how he will open and close the pre­sen­ta­tion. He appears effort­less — but only after hours of rehearsal. Moti­va­tion takes preparation.