Public Speaking Books

Five books in 14 languages.

Books

Presenting to Win

Thirty million presentations will be given today. Millions will fail. Millions more will be received with yawns. A rare few will establish the most profound connection, in which the presenter and audience understand each other perfectly…discover common ground…and, together, decide to act.

In this fully updated edition, Suasive founder Jerry Weissman shows how to connect with even the toughest, most high-level audiences and move them to action. He teaches presenters of all kinds how to dump those generic PowerPoint templates once and for all and tell compelling stories that focus on what’s in it for the audience.

Weissman’s techniques have proven themselves with billions of dollars on the line. Thousands of his elite clients have already mastered them and this book makes them now available to you.

Presenting to Win is the shortest path to applause for any presenter. It will be your bible for the PowerPoint Age. It’s loaded with easy actions and real examples that really work. I’ve used them. I know.”

Scott Cook

Founder & Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit, Inc.

“We see 4 presentations every Monday and a dozen more the rest of the week, every week. Storytelling does not seem to be in the DNA of the presenters. Presenting to Win is the remedy for the problem. Don’t send me technologists, send me storytellers! The book contains the techniques that have helped many of our Sequoia portfolio companies; it is destined to become a classic.”

Don Valentine

Founder, Sequoia Capital

“Jerry’s book Presenting to Win is, like his consulting practice, totally on-point and practical. Jerry has worked with many of the companies I took public as an investment banker or invested in as a venture capitalist. ...Even the most polished CEOs in the valley made dramatically more effective presentations with his expert guidance.”

J. SANFORD MILLER

General Partner, Institutional Venture Partners

“The perfect presentation has the potential to impact the most important events in your company’s life: financing, mergers, partnerships. Despite this, most executives and entrepreneurs continually fall short when it comes to delivering a crisp, clear message in a compelling and concrete fashion. Luckily for them, the master, Jerry Weissman, has decided to share his secrets in Presenting to Win.”

BILL GURLEY

General Partner, Benchmark Capital

“Everything must communicate Aha!s’ has been my cry in marketing for 30 years. What you say and don’t say, what you do and don’t do, it all says something. Now Jerry finally gives all of us the answer on the how to communicate effectively. Thanks, Jerry, the business world really needs this book.”

SERGIO ZYMAN

Founder & Chairman, Zyman Group, LLC | Former CFO, The Coca-Cola Company
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The Power Presenter

Presentation coach Jerry Weissman has spent over thirty years teaching CEOs and other executives how to deliver successful, profitable IPO roadshows. His clients credit Jerry’s public speaking coaching with helping their companies earn higher stock prices and higher IPO valuations. Weissman’s strategies have worked for dozens of big-name business leaders, including founding Yahoo! CEO Tim Koogle, Intuit founder Scott Cook, and Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings.

Now, The Power Presenter gives you the same effective public speaking technique, style, and strategy that executive teams from more than 1,000 companies have used to raise financing, sell products, propose partnerships, or seek approval for projects. Packed with case studies of famous power presenters—from Martin Luther King, Jr. to John F. Kennedy, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama—this book shows you how to deliver a winning speech or presentation that will engage your audience from beginning to end.

You’ll follow a seven-step plan for crafting your content into a compelling story. You’ll learn how to conquer your fear of public speaking and present with persuasion and conviction, naturally. You’ll also learn how to speak with your body language, create empathy with your audience, and integrate your graphics design and animation with your delivery.

For anyone who has to stand up and deliver, The Power Presenter is a master resource filled with proven public speaking techniques, practical tools, insightful wisdom, and illustrative, inspiring examples.

“This book, The Power Presenter, is an excellent exposition into what makes a great communicator, and how to become one, starting from the inside. Using the very persuasion techniques it teaches, this book applies plain language, fun examples, and convincing demonstrations to lead the reader to absorb and internalize the concepts, and gain the skills and confidence to truly become a power presenter.”

KAI-FU LEE

CEO, Sinovation Ventures | Former President of Google China

The Power Presenter captures the essence of Jerry’s in-person training, including his approach, real world examples and story-telling strategies. It’s a must read for anyone who needs to close a deal, market a product or drive consensus.”

MIKE NASH

VP of Customer Experience and Portfolio Strategy and Chief Technologist, Personal Systems, HP Inc.

“Jerry has the uncanny ability to take the art of communicating and make it feel like science—The Power Presenter is a prescriptive roadmap to communications confidence and excellence.”

RON RICCI

Founder and CEO, The Transparency Imperative | Former Vice President, Corporate Positioning, Cisco Systems

“Jerry’s insightful coaching helped us to launch a major new chip design successfully. His new book, The Power Presenter, makes the invaluable techniques he showed us at Intel available to everyone.”

DAVID PERLMUTTER

Social and Technology entrepreneur | Former Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Intel Corporation

“Jerry Weissman’s genius is getting successful leaders like me to realize we are imbeciles when it comes to effective communication that is not email. Not only should IPO-bound CEOs read this book, but everyone who does presentations should absorb its messages.”

REED HASTINGS

Founder, Chairman & CEO, Netflix, Inc.
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In the Line of Fire

Imagine: You’re standing in front of an audience and you’ve just been asked the question you’d been dreading. Or, worse, you’ve been blindsided with a brutal question you never expected.

What do you do?

Jerry Weissman has spent decades preparing leaders for that moment. Weissman’s In the Line of Fire has established itself as the definitive guide to answering brutally tough questions in public. He completely updated this classic with new examples and case studies, and even more great advice.

Using examples from business, politics, media, and beyond, Weissman teaches you how to control your entire exchange with a hostile questioner and respond with perfect assurance. You’ll discover how to avoid the defensive, evasive, or contentious answers that ruin credibility—and destroy careers.

Whether you’re an executive, entrepreneur, politician, fundraiser, interviewee, teacher—or even a student—you’re judged on how you handle these moments. Get this book and handle them brilliantly.

“In my role at Cisco Systems, I am confronted with challenging questions from customers, government leaders, press, and analysts on a daily basis. The techniques used in this book, In the Line of Fire, are spot on; providing straightforward ways to be on the offense in all communications situations.”

SUE BOSTROM

Board of Directors at ServiceNow, Anaplan, Nutanix, Cadence | Former Executive VP, CMO, Worldwide Government Affairs, Cisco Systems, Inc.

“During one of the most important periods of my career, Jerry used the concepts in In the Line of Fire to prepare me and my team for the EarthLink IPO road show. He helped us field tough questions from the toughest possible audience: potential investors, but the same skills are necessary for every audience.”

SKY DAYTON

Founder and Chairman, Boingo Wireless, Inc. | Founder & Former Chairman, EarthLink, Inc.

“Jerry Weissman helped prepare my management team for our IPO. I sat in on some of the sessions and was most impressed with Jerry’s innovative ways of teaching and optimizing effective executive communication methods. This training, encapsulated well in his new book, In the Line of Fire, paid off handsomely during our numerous road show presentations.”

RAY DOLBY

Founder, Dolby Laboratories, Inc.

“Whether you’re a classroom teacher or the President, this book will help you be an effective communicator. This book is so insightful, reading it feels like cheating. Tough questions no longer test my limits.”

REED HASTINGS

Founder, Chairman & CEO, Netflix, Inc.

“I’ve been asking tough questions for half a century and listening to variously brilliant, boring, evasive or illuminating answers. Jerry Weissman’s book will help anyone…anyone…answer even the toughest questions.”

MIKE WALLACE

Former Senior Correspondent, 60 Minutes & CBS News
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Presentations in Action

Presentation coach Jerry Weissman has spent decades showing top executives how to make winning, mission-critical presentations. He’s discovered that the best way to teach effective presentation techniques is to show them in action. That’s what he does in this insightful book.

Presentations in Action serves up 80 relevant examples from current events, politics, science, art, music, literature, cinema, media, sports, the military—even ancient history—that offer valuable lessons for today’s presenters. From Aristotle to Oprah, Reagan to Obama, Mark Twain to Jerry Rice, Weissman reveals the universal techniques of human communications… and demonstrates how to turn them into powerful solutions for your most important presentation challenges.

One simple, bite-size story at a time, you’ll learn how to supercharge every single element of your message. Then, Weissman shows how to bring them all together and deliver them in an inspiring, unforgettable presentation that’s sure to captivate and win over any audience.

“Jerry has hit a home run again with this new book. It was great to gain insight from those who have ‘mastered’ the art of presenting. I will refer back to the ideas in this book constantly in the years ahead. Thank you, Jerry, for another outstanding learning experience.”

BETHANY MAYER

Board member for multiple public companies | Former Senior VP & General Manager, HP Networking & Hewlett-Packard Company

“There isn’t an executive, salesman, banker, politician, or religious leader on the planet who can’t improve their presentation skills. Jerry Weissman is the guru to whom they turn to learn to deliver their message better.”

ADAM LASHINSKY

Author, Inside Apple

“Jerry gives you 80 secrets from the world’s best persuaders, compacted into bite-sized chapters that make them easy to read and easy to apply. Taken together they define the dynamics of communication that can and have changed the world.”

PETER GUBER

Chairman & CEO, Mandalay Entertainment Group

“Jerry Weissman is the Jedi Master of presentations and effective communication. Presentations in Action is a wonderful compilation of 80 interesting examples and stories that will make you think and help you improve your presentations and public speaking.”

GARR REYNOLDS

Speaker & Bestselling Author, Presentation Zen & The Naked Presenter
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Winning Strategies for Power Presentations

In the past 20+ years, speaking coach Jerry Weissman has developed a set of powerful, proven techniques for presenting and speaking in public; techniques he’s used to help thousands of pioneering technology companies raise hundreds of billions of dollars in the stock market. Now, in Winning Strategies for Power Presentations, Weissman has distilled 75 best practices from the world’s best persuaders into bite-sized techniques you’ll find easy to apply!

Following his bestselling Presentations in Action, Weissman delivers priceless practical insights in the four essential areas of an effective presentation: content, graphics, delivery, and Q&A. His compelling examples range from Jon Stewart to venture capitalist John Doerr, Stephen R. Covey to Mark Twain, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Woody Allen.

For the first time, Weissman also offers indispensable advice on a wide spectrum of “special” presentation factors, from developing a richer speaking voice to delivering scripted speeches, and from leading stimulating panel discussions to launching new products successfully.

“Jerry can change a monotone, mind-numbing presenter into a fascinating, attention-getting, and enthralling speaker. His teachings are like a dose of Red Bull for the listener. His latest book is filled with short, captivating snippets which are extremely helpful to anyone giving a speech or a presentation.”

DOUG LEONE

Global Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital

“Across all fields there is one common trait of leaders: the ability to persuade groups to follow. This is the field guide to persuasion, thus the field guide to successful leadership.”

SCOTT COOK

Founder & Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit, Inc.
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