Take it Personally

I'm taking my seat in the 10,000-seat MGM arena in Las Vegas for the start of the Arbonne Global Training Conference.

Now, I've attended hundreds of conferences on business down the years - usually waiting to take my turn as a speaker - but today I'm here to learn.

I should explain. Three years ago my wife Caroline was asked to become a consultant with an international network marketing skincare company. The person asking her was Sue Cassidy, whose husband David in the ‘70s had a bigger fan club than the Beatles.

Today 130 of Caroline's 7000-strong team have flown the Atlantic to attend the conference - so we've all spent a lot of money to be here.

I watch speaker after speaker tell their own personal story. You can hear a pin drop when they describe their struggles, their setbacks, their triumphs and their disasters.

What comes through time and time again transcends all that. It's their ATTITUDE that's taken them where they are.

But there's something refreshing about the presentation. What is it? What's different about this conference compared to many I've taken part in? 

Let me tell you - they're sharing PERSONAL EXPERIENCES which are gloriously free of business JARGON.

And there's something else. When they click to bring up another slide, we're looking at a child rather than a graph or bar chart.  We see a funny picture rather than a statistic we're unable to read from the back of this vast stadium.

So today we're hanging on every word as each consultant speaks from the heart.  They are ANIMATED and ENTHUSIASTIC rather than straight-jacketed and dull.

Is it because they're American and natural speakers?  No - one of the best presenters is Iain Pritchard - a hugely-successful friend from Guildford in Surrey, who is massively successful in my wife's business.

I debated for an hour last week with one group of clients in London how personal stories, great illustrations, emotion and enthusiasm will beat unreadable, unintelligible PowerPoint presentations.

At first our clients disagreed....before making splendid pitches without PowerPoint.  They've since changed their minds.

In short, they are following a Broadcasting Business principle: Use visual aids to engage your audience, rather than confuse them with unnecessary statistics and complex models.

I'm looking forward to the closing session of the Arbonne conference today - because the speakers will again ENGAGE me.

We need more conferences like this in the UK - but first we have to give up our addiction to badly-constructed PowerPoint.

Once we do that, we're liberated...free to use emotion, experience and enthusiasm to tell a story and win the audience over.