How to own a room in 7 seconds

I was at the B4B event at the Belfast Metropolitan College last night. Can’t for the life of me remember the full title of the main presentation, something about owning a room in 7 seconds. Perhaps it was “How to own a room in 7 seconds”. Anyway, it was a fabulous evening.

Carole Ann Lowe from Blue Moon Communications demonstrated the right way to give a presentation by having us all enthralled for nigh on an hour. She gave us lots of tips on how to improve our own presentation of our businesses and told a few very amusing stories. However, the thing which made the biggest impression on me was not the content of her presentation, but the way she presented it. Only 7% of your first impression is given by what you say, and for me Carol Ann brought home the truth of this. 55% is based on appearance (Carole Ann looked fabulous in a black suit with embroidered design on back and sleeves). I am familiar with this fact - it’s why I wanted to help people look their best and trained as an Image Consultant. However a whopping 38% of your first impression is how you sound. An article Carole Ann wrote states “Intonation, inflection, amiability and appeal are all key. For me Carole Ann demonstrated admirably how these can be used to best effect.

Anyway, I hope to be able to put some of her tips into practise next time I’m talking about “In The Looking Glass”. For anyone else who attended this event, what was your favourite part? (And perhaps you can tell me the title of the evening?