In this workshop, I will help you to tell your story in a crystal clear way; whether you need to communicate to your boss, your team, a prospect or a very big audience.

For 16 years now I have been focusing on the topic ‘business presentations’ and I always see people struggling with the same issues: how to deal with their stress, how to grab and keep the attention of the audience, how to use their PowerPoint or prezi…but the main problem is actually this: how can you tell your story in such a way that it ‘sticks’? I have interviewed CEOs and VPs in multinationals to understand what they expect from a business presentation and they all want a clear story!

I have developed my own ‘Simply Talking model’ that helps you to build your ‘sticky’ story. The big advantage of the Simply talking model is the flexibility. You might think you have 20 minutes to get your message across but in the end you only have 5 minutes or less. How do you deal with that? Talk fast? Skip some slides? The model helps you deal with this!

The ‘Simply Talking model’ is based on my 15 years experience as a speaker, on feedback from people I coached, on the many books I read and the interviews I did. Especially the interviews taught me that an audience doesn’t want comment on slides, and that is often what we do… My first interviews resulted in my book ‘Stilte, ik spreek!’ for which I have collected 30 presentation stories from women in top positions in Belgium. I am currently writing my new e-book ‘storytelling in business presentations.

I actually use all my built up experience in my training:
– I have studied English at university and 80% of my work is in English. The rest is in Dutch, my mothertongue
– My first work experience was as an executive search officer (2 years) where I interviewed lots of people. In these interviews you need to connect with people and look for stories to learn their experience. I use storytelling and connection constantly in my training and coaching.
– Then I worked 2 years for IBM (HR department) where I presented for the first time for big audiences and gave my first training sessions in how to deal with stress.
– In 2000 I became a freelance trainer and very soon I discovered that ‘presenting’ was my favorite topic.
-Where I really learned how to deal with stress was in my TV job as a newanchor. I presented the news for 7 years (2 years VT4 and 7 years TV OOST) and actually experienced stress for every presentation. So the question is not how to get rid of stress because you can’t. The question is how to deal with it and make a strong impression!