Page 71 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

62 CREATING THE PERFECT PRESENTATION

would want to couch the retelling in different words so it didn’t
sound like you were memorizing a spiel off a tape in your head.
For example, you might say:

My hope, then, is that if we do our jobs right, I might be able to
find on my next visit to London that our products are on the

shelves not only at Harrods, but every other department store, as
well . . . and in France and Germany and Italy and eventually
even in Eastern Europe. And I see another day soon when those
cash registers will begin to ring again at Bloomingdale’s and all
over this country; then all over the world—when people are
buying [product X] from Seattle to Singapore and from New
York to New Delhi.

This could be a new CEO with a new worldwide strategic plan

talking to her own troops for the first time. By referring back to the
Harrods and Bloomingdale’s anecdote, she has reminded everyone
that she is on top of the problem and has a solution.

3. Call for action: ask the audience to do something you want them
to do. You can ask for permission to begin a project; ask for money
from the board to pay for that project; ask for help, endorsement,
ideas, cooperation, authority, consensus—anything. As any good
salesperson will tell you, sometimes if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Sometimes you don’t even get the order if you don’t ask for it.
A politician will often ask for help, or the vote. An evangelist
might present his case (you’re going to Hell) and then ask you to

accept God. A senior corporate officer chairing a meeting of dispa-
rate and perhaps competing elements of the same company might
demand cooperation and ask for consensus. The head of a nongov-
ernment organization (NGO) might make an appeal for fi nancial
support to her audience like this:

So I’m asking you to join with us today—right now—to try to
help make a better life for so many with so little. I’m asking you
to write the check and to write your congress person and senator,