The Presenter’s Background

I first met Edward (a pseudonym) in the summer of 1996, when he held several talks upon the opening of his company’s subsidiary in Macedonia. At the time, he was in his late twenties and already a senior manager at the company in charge of network development. The company is one of Europe’s largest multi-level or network marketing corporations dealing with food supplements, predominantly vitamins and minerals.

According to a business encyclopaedia, network marketing is “the selling of goods or services through a network of self-employed agents or representatives. Network marketing usually involves several levels of agents, each level on a different commission rate. Each agent is encouraged to recruit other agents” (Business: The ultimate resource, 2002, p.

1294). The agents of such companies rely heavily on presentations to get their message across to a wider audience and recruit as many new members as possible. Famous examples of these business include Amway, Avon, Herbalife, Oriflame, Tupperware and Zepter. This particular multi-level marketing company that Edward worked for was founded in 1992 and currently operates in 15 countries all over Europe. It has a network of about 200,000 members and this distribution system was to a large extent set up and run by Edward, who personally had a network of about 14,000 distributors.

At the time, I was contracted by the company to interpret for Edward during his presentations and meetings. From the very first time I observed Edward present, it was quite obvious that he was a very talented speaker who easily managed to enthuse the audience. His talks always resulted in standing ovations and huge numbers of people crowding around him after the presentation waiting to meet him and talk to him. The speeches left everyone with an elated feeling that was later transformed into a close

working relationship with the presenter and the company. Over the years, I have met many other prominent speakers and leaders both in the business community and in politics, but when time came to choose a participant for this study, Edward was the first person that crossed my mind as the ideal representative of a professional speaker.

Edward was born in Hungary, but moved to Vancouver in his teens, where he finished high school and joined the family business, learning his trade on the job. He does not hold a university degree, but has completed numerous trainings during the course of his career. On being asked whether he considers himself to be a native speaker of English and how comfortable he feels using the language, he replies: “I’m 100% comfortable, so it’s no problem understanding or reading or writing or speaking… I can think, I can dream [in English]… By the end of my stay in Canada, I was dreaming in English.” When asked whether using Hungarian or English influences his presentation style, he answers that although it was easier at times to think of the right words in Hungarian:

I felt for some reason I was more professional in English, and I was using in Hungarian more everyday words, more laidback style … yes, this is how I think I would describe it, I felt more professional in English, I have no idea why.

Edward started his training in presentation skills on joining the company because – as he put it – “it just had to be done… it’s impossible to do sales if you don’t talk about it, yourself, the company.” He started off with small presentations where the audience consisted of only a few people and was coached and trained by colleagues. Later on, after gaining the basic experience and knowledge, he took part in two formal presentation skills trainings conducted by two different consulting agencies. Both trainings had similar approaches, using the same materials, having groups of 12 trainees and being carried out intensively over the course of several days. Apart from that, over the years, Edward read

many books on the topic, but also on business in general, popular psychology, spirituality and self-motivation. He particularly enjoys reading works by the father of motivation and self-help advocate, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer and Dale Carnegie, probably one of the most famous developers of courses salesmanship, public speaking, self-improvement and corporate training. In his talks, Edward frequently draws on stories, narratives and examples provided by authors like these to uplift his audience and give them hope and a desire to improve themselves which he then associates with joining the company’s ranks of distribution agents.

When asked about his presentation skills, Edward unabashedly admits to considering himself to be “knowledgeable and an expert definitely”. Over the course of more than 10 years that he spent in network development for the company, he not only had consultations and advice from colleagues, completed formal trainings and did extensive reading, but also learnt by sheer experience and practice. He has given over 1000 presentations to audiences small and large (the largest tallying about 2000 people) in seven European countries, including Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. In this process, he recruited over 14 000 distributors into his network expanding his area of operation to most of Eastern and Central Europe. As part of his job, he also regularly attended presentations by his colleagues and competitors and also trained other speakers in basic presentation skills. He left the company a few years ago to start his own business, also dealing with food supplements, but as a wholesale supplier to retailers. In his new capacity, he rarely needs to give presentations as he no longer deals with agents or direct consumers, but he fondly remembers the old company and the building of his network. It was also evident during the whole interview that Edward immensely enjoys presenting, and when asked how he feels during his talks, he smiles widely, throws his

arms up in the air and says: “Great! Especially where the magic comes.” He also says he is not at all nervous when presenting and that this was probably due to experience.