London presentation skills: 3 things the city taught me

Despite having lived and worked in London for the best part of a year, the city still holds a unique fascination for me.

Clearly, as the most googled city on Earth, it does for many.

Every time I see the Gherkin poking its head out the City, I hear The Apprentice theme tune.

It’s hard to walk by the River Thames without visualising the Love Actually scene where Sam tells his stepdad he’s in love.

And good luck meandering through Soho without feeling you’re stepping into the album cover of What’s the Story Morning Glory.

For many, like me, London is a complete sensory experience.

It’s somewhere I feel the need to be on top of my game to fit in.

You have to be succinct, focused, energetic.

So here are three things I’ve learned about working in and visiting London.

To help you become the best presenter and communicator you can be.

1) Everyone is a salesperson

On the 11th December 2010, I interviewed for five different recruitment jobs in the same day.

I still have the email itinerary from my own recruitment consultant:

0830 – breakfast interview at Clapham Junction

1000 – Vauxhall

1200 – Liverpool Street

1430 – Charing Cross

1630 – Wimbledon

1800 – collapse in a heap inside a dark room

In each of the interviews, I was asked a variation of the same question:

“How much of your job do you think is sales?”

At Clapham Junction, I answered while watched my coffee go cold and my croissant stale as I fumbled around murmuring something about my people skills.

By the time I’d reached Wimbledon, I’d figured out the answer:

“100%.”

It’s true. Everyone is a salesperson.

(Perhaps excluding a lollipop man, as I was handily reminded at Charing Cross, but everyone else.)

Selling ideas internally, or externally, you simply have to be in persuasive mode.

That means having a clear goal in mind every time you open your mouth.

Considering the benefits to the audience before the benefits to yourself.

Selling, persuading, convincing: it’s all in a day’s work.

So write down your number one goal before any presentation.

That’ll help you make better decisions about what to say and how to say it.

2) You’d better hurry

I took the job in Wimbledon, partly because it was an eight-minute walk, rather than an hour-long commute.

The issue is, the company then moved to the City.

That meant a train to Waterloo, and the dreaded Waterloo and City line.

If Stalin had created an underground line, it would be the Waterloo and City.

A four-minute, mile-and-a-half underground drudge from Waterlook to Bank and back again, 208 times a day.

Always hot, always sweaty, always overcrowded, often dirty.

Transport for London will tell you 15 million people make that journey every year, and most of them seemed to be on the same carriage as me.

But the thing I noticed most from using the underground at rush hour, ten times a week, was that everyone seemed to be in such a hurry.

I assume that’s why everyone was dressed head to ankle in suits, and ankle down in trainers. They needed to be able to break into a run at a moment’s notice.

It’s true of many people in the office too.

People’s appetite for hanging around and waiting for you to get to the point, gets lower and lower every year.

Especially in London and unquestionably in the financial industry.

So challenge yourself to get to the point in the first ten seconds of your presentation.

And remember, that point should relate to them rather than to you.

Why should your audience care? Start there.

3) Drop the Britishness

London is a cultural contradiction.

On the one hand, it’s Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column.

Red post boxes, red buses, Union Jacks, royal weddings and stately funerals.

On the other hand, it’s the least British place you can imagine.

By that I mean that a lot of the cultural hang-ups we hold in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the north of England, disappear somewhere around the Watford Gap.

North, we worry an awful lot about how we’re perceived.

We watch The Apprentice and shudder at candidates talking themselves up.

So we go the other way, using words like ‘try’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘hopefully’ to help demonstrate we’re modest, likeable, humble.

I rarely hear these words in London.

Instead I hear people committing, using words such as “committed” rather than “try”.

“Determined” rather than “hoping”.

Describing themselves as “experienced” rather than “liking to think people might consider them reasonably experienced”.

And I can tell you that in our 34 years of operation, audiences respond better to the committed version than the weak one.

Because ultimately it’s us in the audience who stand to benefit from the presenter committing to promises and delivering on them.

So in your next presentation in London or elsewhere, remove the weak words and test it out. See how the audience reacts.

London presentation skills: now it’s your turn

I still hold a lot of love for the British capital.

Every time we run London presentation skills sessions, I get that same feeling of boyish excitement I did in 2010 (other than when on the Waterloo and City line).

It really does keep me at the top of my game.

By persuading, getting to the point and committing.

Long may that continue.

Something we can all do, every day, all around the world.

Andrew McFarlan runs Pink Elephant Communications.

Read more about him here.

London presentation skills blog written by Andrew McFarlan.
London presentation skills blog edited by Colin Stone.
All photos in London presentation skills blog by Pink Elephant Communications.