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In Pictures: 10 Presentation Tips From Steve Jobs

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Apple's San Francisco music event on Sept. 9 marked the return of the world's greatest corporate storyteller. There are more than 40,000 YouTube links to Steve Jobs' presentations, reflecting the intense interest in his legendary keynotes. For more than three decades, Jobs has been turning product launches into an art form. In The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, I break down exactly how Jobs turns the typical dull, plodding presentation into a theatrical experience. Whether you're a CEO, small business owner, entrepreneur or educator, here are 10 tips to help you sell your ideas the Steve Jobs way.

Carmine Gallo is a communication skills coach for some of the world's most admired brands. He is a popular keynote speaker, seminar leader, media training, and presentation skills specialist. Visit him at http://www.carminegallo.com.


JOHN G. MABANGLO/AFP/Getty Images

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Plan in the analog world

Steve Jobs may have made a name for himself in the digital world, but he prepares presentations in the old world of pen and paper. He brainstorms, sketches and draws on whiteboards. Graphic designers who work in PowerPoint rarely open the software program as the first step in creating a presentation. They "storyboard" their presentation before transferring their ideas to a digital format.


AP Photo/Tsugufumi Matsumoto

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Create Twitter-friendly headlines

Can you describe your product or service in 140 characters? Steve Jobs offers a headline, or description, for every product. Each headline can easily fit in a Twitter post. For example, when he introduced the MacBook Air in January 2008, he said that is it simply, "The world's thinnest notebook." That one sentence speaks volumes. In 2001, Jobs introduced the iPod. The tweet: it's one thousand songs in your pocket. Jobs fills in the details during his presentation and on the Apple Web site, but he positions every product in one sentence.


AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Introduce the antagonist

In every classic story, the hero fights the villain. The same holds true for a Steve Jobs presentation. In 1984, the villain was IBM, big blue. Before he introduced the famous 1984 ad to a group of Apple salespeople, he created a dramatic story around it. "IBM wants it all," he declared. Apple would be the only company to stand in its way. It was very dramatic and the crowd went nuts. Branding expert Martin Lindstrom has said great brands and religions have something in common: the idea of vanquishing a shared enemy. Creating a villain allows the audience to rally around the hero--your product.


AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Create visual slides

Whether it's iPhones, iPods or Snow Leopard, the new Mac OS, Apple products are easy to use because they eliminate "clutter." Steve Jobs' slides during a presentation are equally as simple. For example, there are no bullet points on his slides. None at all. Photographs and images dominate a Steve Jobs presentation. Text is either limited or paired with a photograph. Neuroscientists are finding that the best way to communicate information is through text and pictures, not text alone.


AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Practice, a lot

A former Apple employee, Mike Evangelist, wrote a piece for The Guardian in which he said Apple spends hundreds of hours on a five-minute demo. Jobs, he wrote, rehearsed two full days before the presentation. Jobs spends hours rehearsing every facet of his presentations. Every slide is written like a piece of poetry; every presentation staged like a theatrical experience. Jobs isn't a "natural" presenter. He works at it and makes it look effortless.


AP Photo/Ben Margot

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Obey the 10-minute rule

Neuroscientists have found that the brain gets tired after 10 minutes. In other words, no matter how engaging the speaker, audiences will tend to tune out after approximately 10 minutes. A Steve Jobs presentation lasts about 1.5 hours, but every 10 to 15 minutes he breaks up the content with video, demonstrations or guest speakers. He doesn't give his audience time to get bored.


AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Make numbers meaningful

In every Apple presentation, big numbers are put into context. On Sept. 9, Apple Vice President Phil Schiller said that 220 million iPods had been sold to date. He placed that number into context by saying it represented 73% of the market. He broke it down even further--and took a jab at the competition--by saying Microsoft was "pulling up the rear" with its 1% market share. Large numbers must be placed into a context the audience can understand.


AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Reveal a 'Holy Smokes!' moment

People will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. There's always one moment in a Steve Jobs presentation that is the water cooler moment, the one part of the presentation that everyone will be talking about. These showstoppers are completely scripted ahead of time. For example, when Jobs unveiled the MacBook Air, what do people remember? They remember him removing the computer from an inter-office envelope. The image of a computer sliding out of an envelope was immediately unveiled in Apple ads and on the Apple Web site. The water cooler moment had run according to plan.


AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Sell dreams, not products

Great leaders cultivate a sense of mission among their employees and customers. Steve Jobs' mission is to change the world, to put a "dent in the universe." According to Jobs, "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to do great work is to love what you do." True evangelists are driven by a messianic zeal to create new experiences. When he launched the iPod in 2001, Jobs said, "In our own small way we're going to make the world a better place." Where most people see the iPod as a music player, Jobs sees it as tool to enrich people's lives. It's important to have great products, of course, but passion, enthusiasm and emotion will set you apart.


AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Present Like Steve Jobs

How the Apple chief uses body language to engage an audience.

Have fun

When is the last time you had fun giving a business presentation? Steve Jobs has fun in every keynote. He even makes jokes at his expense. In September 2008, when his illness was first rumored, he appeared on stage and pointed to a slide that read: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Jobs' comment: "Enough said." During his January 2007 Macworld keynote, his clicker failed to advance the slides. Instead of getting rattled, Jobs paused and told a funny story about the time he and "Woz" (co-founder Steve Wozniak) built a TV jamming device and had fun messing up TV signals in Wozniak's dorm at U.C. Berkeley. Once the slides were fixed, Jobs moved on as if it had been planned. He smiles, laughs and seems to genuinely enjoy himself on stage.

Where most people give a presentation to deliver information, Steve Jobs creates an experience. It's info-tainment intended to inform, educate and entertain and to sell you on becoming part of a dream.