Marion is the Customer Experience Manager for Hino Australia, a Japanese manufacturer of commercial vehicles. In this role she leads the company’s customer experience department with responsibility for customer experience initiatives, the Hino Care Centre and CRM technology platforms. Marion grew up in Switzerland and now lives in Sydney.
What kind of presenting do you do at work?
I present in a lot of different situations. I present each year to our dealer network at a national conference (up to 200 audience members). I also present at our all of staff meetings that we call ‘town halls’, to my Board of Directors, to my own team of customer experience experts, and I also have the opportunity to present to visitors from our head office in Japan.
What prompted you to study with Michelle?
Our National Dealer Conference is a very important part of our calendar. It is where we catch up with our dealers, update them on innovation in our business and specifically it’s where I get to communicate our customer experience insights.
Our National Sales and Marketing Director engaged Michelle to work with all speakers at our national dealer conference 2 years ago and the feedback after everyone presented was extremely positive.
Our Chairman and CEO, Steve Lotter said, “The standard of presentation by all Michelle’s Hino students was up by several notches and the positive feedback we received was both encouraging and exciting. Many thanks”.
Our Sales and Marketing Director Bill Gillespie said, “I’ve never witnessed such a vibe or buzz go through a dealer network all in one wave. To the guys who presented, thank you for the fresh approach you all took. You all know how positive the feedback was from everyone. You should and must be very proud.”
It was really great to be a part of such a positive result. So when Michelle came back to work with us this year, I decided to seize the opportunity and embrace the refresher training that she provided for all speakers.
I took the chance to do a few new and challenging things in my own presentation with Michelle’s help and the feedback about my presentation was overwhelmingly positive.
How did Michelle’s teaching change your attitude to presenting in business?
- I have a much more positive attitude towards presenting because I know I can depend on the framework.
- I now have a much more structured approach to creating a presentation.
- Since English is not my mother tongue, Michelle’s book called, ‘How to Present’ (Wiley) and her training, has provided me with great speech examples that I can customise for my own presentations.
In what specific ways have your presentation skills improved since learning with Michelle?
- A more structured and quicker approach to creating a presentation.
- How to pace out objections.
- How to manage a Q&A effectively.
What were your top three take aways from Michelle’s teachings?
- How to deliver inclusive statements and build rapport with the audience.
- How to motivate the audience to pay attention with the WIIFM technique.
- How to proactively manage audience objections using the POO technique.
Note from Michelle Bowden: Hello readers! I really want you to know something exciting about Marion. She did such an incredible presentation this year at her National Dealer Conference that I received unsolicited feedback about her from people I knew in the audience (not staff of Hino). They said she was the STAND OUT presenter at the event. This excellent result can be attributed to her excellent presentation structure (yes, she followed my 13 steps), her efforts at engaging the audience through fascinating interactive exercises that she crafted all by herself (not easy with an audience who sell trucks!), and her poise in delivery that comes from her natural personality, her rehearsal and her hard work. Congratulations Marion. You have done me, your business, and yourself proud! Three cheers! Mx