What do you expect?

I recently attended a talk by a speaker who was speaking about a potentially very interesting topic. Unfortunately, the one thing that I remember most about her presentation is the way she started it (not an unusual thing for audiences to remember the most, by the way). The first thing she said after she was introduced was 'I know that there are a lot of expectations about this talk and I hope I don't disappoint you.'

Do you know what this first statement caused me to do? I was EXPECTING to be disappointed! I was also wondering why she had thought that there were so many high expectations. Had there been some kind of audience questionnaire that I didn't get? Was I somehow different from the rest of the audience because I didn't have really high expectations of this speech?

The point is that apologizing or admitting that you might not live up to expectations at the very beginning is NOT the way to start your presentation. Even if English isn't your first language and you don't have much confidence in your English speaking skills, don't apologize at the beginning for mistakes that you might make later. If you do, your audience will be expecting you to make mistakes and they might not truly be concentrating on your topic.

Start your presentation strong and confident and your audience will expect great things from you. And why shouldn't they?!

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved

What about the audience?

Who are these people anyway?

During my consultations, one of the first questions I ask is, ‘Who will be in the audience?’ I am constantly amazed at how many times I get the answer, ‘I’m not really sure who will be there. Does it really matter that much?’

Let’s make something really clear. One of the only things that really matters when you are creating a presentation is who the audience is! These people who will be sitting in front of you should shape the entire focus and structure of your presentation so you really should find out who they are.

The first question you should ask yourself is, ‘Who are the decision makers?’ These are the people that you should focus your presentation on. You hope that the other people in the audience are interested in what you’re saying, but they are peripheral. The decision makers are the focus here.

Some questions you should ask about your decision makers:

- Why are they attending the meeting/conference?
- What do they want to learn from you?
- What are they worried about?
- What kind of information will excite them?
- What decision are they expecting to make?
- What do they need to know in order to make that decision?

This should get you started in the right direction. Don’t be afraid to do some investigation before you start creating your presentation. If you’re speaking at a conference, call the organizers and get the information you need about the audience. If you’re speaking to the Board, talk with the people who know them best.

And, depending on the situation, it might be possible to ask your audience directly some questions before you prepare your presentation. Speakers are not expected to be mind readers! Ask them what they want to hear from you – they will be refreshingly surprised to know that you are creating your presentation based on their needs and not yours. And, isn’t that how it should be anyway?

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved

Information overload

How does this happen?

The best way to illustrate how speakers end up with presentations that are too long and too full of information is to give you a real example.

Not long ago, one of my clients asked me to help him with his presentation. He was scheduled to speak at a conference in order to share his experience with a new technology. The main objective of his talk was to show the audience how this technology had helped his organization reach more clients and make their experience with his organization more user-friendly and efficient.

In our first meeting, my client showed me the slides that he had created and he wanted my feedback.

His first eight slides included detailed information about his organization: history, structure, its latest marketing campaign, recent changes in strategy etc. In other words, the first part of his presentation had absolutely NOTHING to do with his presentation objective and there was no reason for the audience to listen to any of this information.

If we had kept the presentation as he had created it, he would have lost his audience's attention before he had even gotten to the point of his talk.

This is a very common mistake. We think that the audience MUST be interested in us as speakers or in our organizations so this is what we initially talk about. In reality, the audience is not interested in us or our organizations (unless we are celebrities, of course).

They have come to hear what you have to say about the topic and nothing more.

In this example, we ended up deleting all of the first eight slides and starting the presentation with what the audience came to learn about - this great technology and how it could be applied to help them gain the same benefit that the speaker did. In the end, the presentation was a success and the speaker gained credibility in his field.

So, the next time you‘re planning your presentation, ask yourself if the information you've included is absolutely necessary for the audience to hear. If it isn’t, take it out!

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved

What are we doing wrong?

Top three mistakes

I think it’s important to first recognize that there is a problem with the way presentations are being made and then we need to try and define what we are doing wrong. Only then can we attempt to solve the problem and start making outstanding presentations.

You may have a different list, but I’ll give you the top three mistakes that I think people make when they create and deliver presentations.

Firstly, presentations are too long! Have you ever left a presentation and said to yourself, 'That was a great presentation, but it was just too short.' I didn't think so.

Is there a time limit for presentations? Of course not. But, we have a tendency to put way too much information into our presentations and make them much longer than necessary. We want to make sure we’re not leaving anything out and, in doing so, we bombard our audiences with loads of unnecessary information. And, the result is that we lose our audience’s attention.

Secondly, presentations are usually not audience-focused. If the audience is even considered in the preparation stage, it’s usually just an afterthought.

One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is what the audience expects from you. Why are they coming to see you speak? What do they expect to get out of this presentation? What do they want from you? Presentations are NOT about the speaker. They are all about the audience!

And, lastly, there’s a real problem with the way we think about slides. Please remember that your slides are NOT your presentation. Their only function is to support your presentation i.e. you and your message. Use them to get your audience‘s attention and make them curious about what you’re going to say. They should function as a way to get your audience to listen to you.

So, this is a start. If we can take these three issues and start to make changes, it’s a good step on the way to making our presentations more focused, engaging and effective.

Next time we’ll look deeper into the problem of information overload and how to avoid it.

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved