Mastering Presentations: Be the Undisputed Expert when You Deliver Presentations

Introduction: Why This Book Was Written

“Just about everything that you have ever learned about public speaking is wrong!”

—Doug Staneart

When I gave my first business presentation, I was absolutely terrified.

I was just a few months away from graduating from college, and I was an intern for a huge oil company at a time when the price of oil had plummeted to about $16 per barrel. We were told that in earlier years that as long as an intern did a good job while working for the company, the company almost always extended an invitation for a full-time position upon graduation. However, I was in the acquisitions and divestitures (A&D) department of the company during the internship, and for the entire time that I was there, we never acquired any oil properties or oil interests. We were selling everything. As we did, more of the full-time employees were being laid off and being hired back as temporary contract workers.

I could see the handwriting on the wall, so I called the director who was in charge of the intern program and asked her what the real prospects were of me actually having a job when I graduated. She paused for a good 4 or 5 seconds before answering the question. She said, “Doug, my understanding is that, in this economy, we are probably only likely to permanently hire, at most, 4 of the 20 interns. In fact, I just found out that the company is discontinuing the intern program for at least one year.”

“Are you out of a job?” I asked her.

“No, it is not quite that bad yet. ...