Outcome: Improve the ability of any presenter to win the room, connect with audiences and persuasively inspire audiences to action.

The Post - “Work From Home” - syndrome!

Since 1989, the Louws Group had become a pre-eminent leader of in-person workshop type training in presentation and public speaking skills.

On January 30, 2020, when Covid was officially branded a pandemic in America. “Work From Home” corporate mandates became the norm, soon followed by the majority of corporate training moving to online formats.

As a company, we followed suit. However, within two years, we eliminated all online communications and interpersonal skills training, presentation and public speaking skills included, recognizing the results were nothing like those we had come to expect of our in-person training.

As trainers, it was like trying to coach a high caliber senior quarterback in college - who’d not thrown a ball in 3 years - to renew their skills via Zoom.

However, behind the scenes, our clients would readily admit that as a vendor, partner or client, presentations had become so painfully inadequate, demands were being made to just email the decks ahead of time, followed by a Zoom© or Teams’ meeting.

Then, with the rapid increase of “Back to Work” mandates starting in earnest in 2023, many previously outstanding presenters (both seniors and juniors alike) quickly discovered they’d lost their edge in connecting with clients, winning the room, building in person trust and most importantly the rigor required with in-person presentations both visually and in their delivery.

Fortunately, we had over 38 years of expertise to immediately draw upon to re-establish a training approach that we knew, without equivocation, would bring back the art of Telling One’s Story quickly and effectively. And boy has it worked wonders!

Skills Taught: Unlike the “Hollywood” version of Story Telling, Louws instead embraced the story telling fundamentals of contemporary and compelling masterpieces such as American Political Drama and Thrillers, House of Cards and Scandal with liberal sprinklings of insights from British Period Dramas such as Downton Abbey, Doctor Who and Spooks.

The genius of Blackadder and Monty Python is also incorporated while tapping into the brilliance of American Television Dramatic writers such as David Chase of Sopranos fame, Michael Crichton’s ER and Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under.

When it came to packaging a presentation, we spent 5 years investigating how 5 of the top 7 business consultancies presented to their clients. In the consulting world, where one’s key service is intangible advice and counsel, unlike tangible goods, trust and interpersonal skills are critical to success.

Consultancies were chosen as a vast majority of our brand clients considered them “best practice” presenters. Presenters that could not only command and win over a room but presenters whose audiences trusted had their best interests as a priority.

These included McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton & PWC.

Essentially, we figured out a way to take the artistry of Story Telling and unify it with Logical Persuasion.

1. Poise, Passion, Impact & Clarity - Six fundamentals to persuasive communications without ever addressing the symptoms of a lack of eye contact, voice modulation and gestures, let alone stage fright. (which magically vanishes)

2. C-Suite - structural template geared for senior get-to-the-pointers! Based exclusively on the “legal - prove your case” approach to persuasion, the approach most utilized by the consultancy and C-Suite world.

3. Project Management and Detail driven - structural templates for each whose flow predictively answers questions before they are asked.

4. Bringing stories alive - 12 techniques and tools to show vs. tell while avoiding the risk of “death by PowerPoint©”.

5. The Senses - achieving buy-in by tapping into all 5.

6. Opposition - facing up to questions & objections achieving emotional and psychological stability under pressure.