Don MacLennan, SVP of Product Management at AVG, presented at July’s Prague Networking Group meeting at The Office. It was an informal setting and, due to a wine tasting event, the presentations started an hour and a half later than scheduled. I think this made it a much more challenging environment and I kept this in mind when reviewing.
Below are some details and advice for future presentations.
Rating system: 1 = outstanding 5 = sucks
You can see a detailed description of my review criteria here
Message – rating 3
I think that Don’s message was about AVG’s ability to protect its clients for free and manage to make a profitable business out of it. This could have been made clearer and been said much earlier in the presentation. You don’t want your audience to say ten minutes into your presentation, ‘Oh! That’s what this is about!’, and this was the case here.
Advice: Tell your audience directly why you are speaking to them at the beginning of your presentation. You can say something like, ‘This evening I will show you how AVG manages to do two things at once -protect its clients for free and make a profit.’ This will get the audience curious about HOW AVG can do this and so you can go into the details. But first you need to tell the audience what they can expect to learn.
Content - rating 3
Judging from the questions, people wanted to know much more about the threats they face and how AVG deals with them. This should have been part of your presentation. What’s your core business? How does it work (in a very easy-to-understand way)? What does your business mean to your clients? How are they protected? I was lost at the end when you were talking about being a partner of choice, a good employer and supporting the community. All of this didn’t seem to fit with the rest of your presentation and your main message. I would leave it out next time.
Advice: When you prepare your next presentation, be a ruthless eliminator of information that doesn’t fit with your core message. Throw everything out that has no connection. And, make sure you include the information that the audience is most likely to be interested in. Anticipate the questions you might get from a particular audience and incorporate that information into your presentation.
Attention – rating 4
Don fell into a common speaker’s trap by telling us too much about himself and his company at the beginning. There is really no reason to say anything beyond your name, position and company in most presentations. And, company histories/profits/stats are never a good way of grabbing the audience’s attention. The start of a presentation is a crucial time and you don’t have much of it to get your audience listening. Don’t waste that valuable time with long introductions and company histories.
Advice: I think your idea of a disruptive business model was interesting but it was buried in too much other information. You might start your presentation with a question to see who knows what it is and then give a couple interesting examples (with different slides – that’s later) and then you can say that AVG is a disruptive business model, too (and explain how it is). Also, it would be a good idea to encourage questions at the beginning. You can also use rhetorical questions to introduce topics so you can get the audience interested in what you have to say next.
Slides – rating 3
Your slides were pretty standard, but I saw a lot of lost opportunities. As I mentioned before, the disruptive business model slide could have been much more interesting. I also think that you could have used more eye-catching slides to spark our curiosity.
Advice: Instead of listing all of the disruptive business models, choose two of the most interesting examples and include slides with photos and an intriguing story of how they are disruptive business models. Also, try to cut down on the amount of text you use on your slides. Photos and key words are much more powerful and will get your audience listening to you.
Presence – rating 2
As I mentioned before, the presentations started much later than they had been scheduled and a lot of people in the audience had had more than a little wine... That can be hard on a speaker. Don handled it very well and kept his composure during the whole presentation. Don is a genuine speaker – he appears to be genuinely interested in his topic and in conveying his message to his audience. That’s always refreshing to see and I look forward to seeing Don present again!
Thanks for the feedback!
ReplyDelete