Steve Jobs’ Ten Commandments

Steve Jobs, the chief executive officer of Apple Inc., is widely know for his inspiring speeches  and his great oratory skills. In an article on Forbes.com, Carmine Gallo, a communication  skills coach, summarises Jobs’ rhetoric style in ten clear rules. I cite here the key headlines of  Gallo’s article, explaining them in my own words.

1. Plan in the analog world

Although Steve Jobs is a man who is spending most of his time in the digital world, he “prepares presentations in the old world of pen and paper.” Before you actually start outlining a Powerpoint presentation, you should first “storyboard” your presentation on whiteboards. Brainstorming is an important part of that.

2. Create Twitter-friendly headlines

Steve Jobs introduces every product with one short sentence, “a headline that can easily fit in a Twitter post.” For example, the iPod was presented as “it’s one thousand songs in your pocket.”

3. Introduce the antagonist

Symbolise the classic story of the hero (your product) fighting the villain (the competitive products) in your presentation. As Gallo states it: “Creating a villain allows the audience to rally around the hero – your product.”

4. Create visual slides

Steve Jobs’ presentations are not chaotic and do not display an enormous amount of information at a time. Steve Jobs does not use the classic enumeration markers in his slides. On his visual aids, images predominate and text fragments are very limited.

5. Practice, a lot

In order to make a great presentation, you should rehearse a lot. It is told that Steve Jobs practises two full days before every presentation. That is why his slides sound like “a piece of poetry” and why his presentations look like “a theatrical experience.”

6. Obey the 10-minute rule

After 10 minutes your audience will automatically get tired. Therefore Steve Jobs always spices up his conferences, which generally last 1.5 hours, with attractive videos, demonstrations or guest speakers to give his audience a thorough shake-up every 10 to 15 minutes.

7. Make numbers meaningful

In your business presentation you might have to announce a great ammount of numerical data. However, you should present these big numbers in a proper context. Telling your audience your sale of iPods represents 73% of the market contrary to Microsoft’s 1% market share is more illustrative than saying that you sold 220 million iPods.

8. Reveal a ‘Holy Smokes!’ moment

If you want people to remember what you said, you should insert a ‘Holy Smokes!’ moment in your presentation. Steve Jobs always has one “showstopper,” one “water cooler moment.” That moment, Steve Jobs presents something that everyone in the audience will certainly talk about once the presentation has finished. For example, Jobs introduced the MacBook Air “removing the computer from an inter-office envelope.”

9. Sell dreams, not products

The only way to differentiate your company from other companies is to love what you are doing, to insert passion, enthusiasm and emotion in your work. The iPod does not represent a music player in the eyes of Steve Jobs. Instead, he believes it is ” a tool to enrich people’s lives.”

10. Have fun

Enjoy your performance on stage, laugh and make jokes! Gallo resumes it in the following words: “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.”

It might be very helpful to consider these ten rules before making a presentation.

Source:
How to make a great presentation, Forbes

Lore Vandoorne