Do you need to tell stories as part of your job? Do you need to inspire, motivate and lead with words? Do you need some discreet, effective executive presentation coaching?

You know that you are truly alone only twice. When you stand up and make a speech and when you die. Especially if you are in front an AGM packed with hostile shareholders and the press are gathering like vultures. Because then your career could die too.

Most people – especially Brits – almost believe in the fiction of James Bond, 007.

There is a problem with the fiction of faultless and effortless performances. Without preparation or practice, it is just that – fiction.

It could take you 20 years to get your place at this table – and just 20 minutes to lose it!

You know how lonely it can be at the top. Sharing ideas with colleagues, subordinates or superiors can be fatal. Politics-free, disinterested honest feedback is rare and unlikely. Asking for it is seen as weak. But you need someone to talk to. To bounce ideas off. To test ideas and words and angles. To speak freely with. Someone on your side.

I do just that with a lot of clients. Talking, listening. Not editing or worrying. Some of the ideas we come up with are mad or stupid or impossible. At first. But some win elections and referendums. Some turn around companies. All these meetings are confidential.

So that is part of what I offer. Discreet, independent, robustly honest outside advice on tap. From someone who has been in the room with serious grown ups. At Board level. Someone who has been doing what I do for over 20 years.

Clients like that. They say it can make all the difference – whether it be a full strategy session, a corporate focus day, a chat over dinner or just a quick, or not so quick, phone call.

It might have taken you 20 years or more to reach your position. A bad presentation, pitch, speech or decision could lose you that position in 20 minutes.

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Many presentation “coaches” have no training qualifications or real world business experience.

Professionally trained (with over 24 000 hours experience) I also have real world P & L experience.

Sent in initially as a Crisis Manager in 1996, I was appointed Group Prokurist of a German manufacturing group with 400 staff and £75 million turnover.

I was subsequently appointed MD of an ailing subsidiary group in the former East Germany with over 130 staff, ca. £8 million turnover, 2 sites and losses of over £1 million. Due to onerous conditions imposed by the Treuhand which had sold the formerly cooperatively owned companies, redundancies were effectively prohibited. Closing the companies was not an option as it would have triggered enormous penalties based on the conditions of purchase from the Treuhand.

Within 18 months, by reducing Cost of Sales from 56% to 47%, improving unit margins, bypassing sales intermediaries and developing an in-house sales team, losses were reduced by 90%+ to ca. £100 000. In the following 18 months I prepared the 3 companies for sale, 2 of these companies were sold as going concerns and one as an asset sale.

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Presentation and communications clients include: Bilfinger & Berger, Mercedes, SAP, Thyssen Krupp.