Programs Offered by Paula Lyons

Principal, Bates Communications, Inc.

Selling Your Ideas:
How to Persuade, Motivate and Inspire Others to Action

This program helps executives learn the art of persuasion. The curriculum focuses on how to influence decisions and activities and be an effective leader. Participants learn skills and competencies that help them succeed in every situation—presenting their ideas, gathering feedback, building consensus, asking questions, listening and making things happen.

This program isn’t your typical “sales training.” The program highlights the core competencies of persuasion, outlining how to understand your audience, build their needs into the equation, and find common ground for agreement. The course also focuses on how to answer objections and deal with skeptics.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Use the most important words in persuasion
  • Ask the right types of questions
  • Understand your audience
  • Apply 180 degree thinking: It’s not about you
  • Take conversations to a deeper level
  • Uncover needs and wants
  • Use the keys to active listening
  • Overcome objections
  • Win others’ trust

This program is not another sales “technique” class that shows you how to cold call or close a deal. You’ll learn the secrets to building rapport, learning about others’ needs, and asking great questions, so you don’t turn people off with an approach.

 

Leading Great Meetings:
What Leaders Must Know about Why Meetings Fail, and How to Fix Them

This program is tailor-made for professionals who want to master best practices in how to plan and manage highly productive meetings. Participants learn how to customize these practices to build teamwork and get more accomplished in an effective, efficient way.

Topics include:

  • Types of meetings
  • Deciding who participates
  • Creating an agenda
  • Starting and ending on time
  • Encouraging discussion

They’ll learn how to:

  • Manage difficult people
  • Create accountability
  • Listen and synthesize ideas
  • Demonstrate leadership

 

Speaking in Meetings:
Get Your Ideas Heard!

This program is designed to address one of the biggest complaints we hear about meetings: how to speak up and be heard. Organizations are frustrated when the best ideas don’t get on the table; individuals can feel unimportant or even disenfranchised when they don’t get their turn. While some of this is related to culture, group dynamics and meeting leadership, we show participants how to take ownership for being heard.

Our step by step approach helps participants understand how to set themselves up to contribute, long before the meeting starts. It takes personality out of the equation, and shows them how to look at the agenda, think about a contribution, write it out, practice and deliver it. We also show them how to prepare to answer even the toughest questions. The goal is to empower people to share their wis¬dom and experience, speak up when the time is right, and feel they have a voice in the organization.

Participants learn:

  • How to come to every meeting prepared
  • What to do when they want to jump in
  • How to project confidence and poise
  • How to be succinct and compelling
  • Management of non-verbal language
  • Techniques for dealing with interruption

 

How to Give a Great Elevator Pitch:
Make it Natural, Meaningful and Memorable!

It’s supposed to be a short, pithy description of what you do for a living, stated in terms that will attract others, jump start your business or enhance your career. But too many have turned Elevator Pitches into long, boring, overly-detailed infomercials! How do you get it just right?

How to Give a Great Elevator Pitch unlocks the secrets to creating a pitch that helps others under¬stand in an instant what you do and how it might benefit them. It’s helped hundreds of business owners and other leaders create pitches that resonate with each audience, leave a positive impression and make the speaker memorable. They also learn to deliver their pitches in a natural, conversational style. After all, an Elevator Pitch is meant to be a conversation starter, not a turn off.

You will learn:

  • The elements of a great pitch
  • How to simplify for a general audience
  • How to make it memorable
  • How to create different versions for different audiences
  • Delivering your pitch naturally, and with confidence
  • When not to use your pitch at all

This program includes a highly interactive session where volunteers can stand up, give their pitches and get on-the-spot help from the group or the facilitator.

 

Your Communication Style

This program helps participants identify and understand their own style of communication, as well as the styles of others. The program is based on the BEST Profile, a two-page assessment that helps the participant understand which of four communication styles are dominant for him or her: Bold, Expressive, Sympathetic or Technical. As one of our liveliest programs, this curriculum makes understanding different styles fun.

Once participants determine their own styles, they get together with others of similar styles to analyze the pros and cons of the style. In the third step, they do exercises and role-play—interacting with other styles--to learn what really works.

Participants will learn:

  • Assets and liabilities of each of the four styles
  • How to recognize those styles
  • Characteristics of personal communication styles
  • What works with people who have a different style
  • How to persuade and influence
  • The best way to connect in person
  • How to manage by phone and email
  • Create an action plan to improve

 

First Impressions, Lasting Impressions

This program is ideal for new or experienced professionals, executives, experts, authors, or political candidates who must make the first meeting or encounter an impressive one. The curriculum is an overview of how impressions are formed and how to manage those impressions.

Learn how to:

  • Manage professional image
  • Demonstrate meeting etiquette
  • Utilize appropriate handshakes and introductions
  • Make small talk
  • Network effectively
  • Understand body language
  • Manage wardrobe and grooming

 

Presentations for Executives and Leaders:
Pack a Punch with Powerful Content and an Authentic, Natural Style

Presentations for Executives and Leaders has helped hundreds of leaders learn the secrets to delivering successful presentations. Participants walk away understanding the strategies and skills they need to successfully deliver a high content presentation, and a natural, authentic style. They learn how to organize, prepare and deliver powerful speeches and business presentations.

Focus is on:

  • Organizing presentation outlines with powerful ideas
  • Creating memorable messages
  • Using stories, analogies, humor
  • Developing rapport with the audience
  • Overcoming anxiety and appearing confident
  • Using effective gestures, body language, voice
  • Practicing and preparing effectively

 

The 7 Elements of Executive Presence:
Why Leaders Stand Out in the Crowd, and How You Can, Too

Executive presence seems like a "mystery," but it's actually the sum total of a set of professional/ personal competencies and skill sets everyone must learn. When someone develops a high level of these competencies and skills, and blends them together, they send the right signals; people see them as a leader. Developing executive presence helps professionals create a strong personal brand, inside and outside their organization. People know who they are, what they stand for, and see them as powerful and effective in their role.

The 7 Elements of Executive Presence helps participants clearly identify and understand the 7 elements or competencies which constitute the unspoken "language" of business leaders. The 7 elements are:

  • Substance
  • Personal style
  • Physical presence
  • Vocal quality
  • Manners/etiquette
  • Receptivity/listening
  • Work space

 

Media 101:
How to Manage Media, Avoid the Pitfalls and Get your Message Heard

This program helps participants understand how to make media interviews or campaigns a success. The program provides an overview of what the media want, and how to manage even the most difficult interviews. Participants learn the difference between how print, radio and television newsrooms work. This is a completely practical guide to getting a story told.

They’ll learn how to:

  • Identify stories and topics that work
  • Know the difference between marketing and news
  • Create powerful message points
  • Prepare for interviews by thinking like a reporter
  • Answer difficult questions
  • Bridge to key messages no matter what is asked
  • “Trigger” the brain to articulate insights reporters want

 

More programs are available and each program can be customized. To inquire about more programs or Paula Lyons’ availability for a keynote speech, breakout session, or panel, please contact Meredith O’Connor at 800-908-8239 or Contact us.