A friend of mine asked me to interview one of his sales team to find out why his closing ration was below par.  He is such an enthusiastic chap and passionate about what he does, so why doesn't he close deals. 

In my opinion business and particularly sales is no different to a social relationship.  It's all about being genuine and connecting.  This is the first principle and the rest flows from there.  Once you have the trust of the other person and he sees you as genuine and interested in solving his problem, you are half way there.

Yes, you need to be good at what you do, your company needs to be good at providing the product or service, and you do need to convey your message clearly so that the other part y"gets it!".  But even if you got the last thing wrong, if your client or potential client connects with you, (s)he will give you the time of day and encourage you to explain it better.

So in my opinion public speaking and doing effective presentations is about being genuine, letting the real you come out, accepting yourself, being confident and comfortable in yourself and trusting yourself that being you is good and what you have to say is in the genuine interests of the person you are selling to.  Of course if you don't believe in what you are selling then get out now . . you can't be genuine if you don't believe that the thing you are selling will really benefit the person in front of you.

So what I am saying is that public speaking training and doing good presentations is about being yourself and being comfortable in all situations.  Most people never learned how to be themselves, they have adopted what other people said about how they should behave, which causes misalignment between who you are and who you "pretend" to be.

The Effective Presentations course in Public Speaking is actually a personal transformation course.  Ask me, I went on it and it was awesome.  It completely changed me and the people who were there.  I find it so comfortable now to talk to anyone, whether its someone who works for me, someone I am reporting to, or an audience.  just feeling comfortable in myself . . so I highly recommend The Training Corporation's Effective Presentation course  for public speaking training and on how to do effective presentations.  Get a team of 10 of your staff together and you will not believe the benefits that will come out of it by making your life and management easier and improving your bottom line.