I sat through a webinar on www.authorstream.com last week given by an
acclaimed Powerpoint and presentation expert.
The webinar was a huge dissappointment, with the presentation committing
many of those common presentation blunders that anyone who has received the
most basic presentation advice has been warned against. Among the presenters biggest mistakes:
·
Make the
Point and Move On: The biggest focus
in the first part of the presentation was on bad slides. And bad slides were indeed presented. There was the bullet slide, the slide with
the complicated flowchart, the slide full of text. Then there was the slide with the distracting
background, the slide with many different fonts and sizes and the slide with
the complex graph. Then there was the
slide with the distracting animations, the slide cluttered with needless
graphics and ... well, you probably get the point. There were probably 15 to 18 consecutive
slides and significant discussion with each about bad slides. After the first four or five bad slides the
point was well made and it was time to move on to what a good slide looked
like.
·
Read Your
Audience: There were about 65 – 70
people online for the webinar and there was a chat forum off to the side of the
webinar screen where people were bantering back and forth. By about the eighth bad slide in a row
coupled with a full verbal description of what sins it committed, comments
started trickling through about it being time to move on. By the tenth slide, it had turned into a
steady stream of comments. By the
twelfth bad slide the steady stream had turned into a torrent. You should have a plan of how your
presentation will flow when you’re putting it together – that’s one of the most
important things you have to do before you even open up Powerpoint or whatever
tool you use. However, you have to be
able to go with the flow during the actual presentation and if your audience is
clearly disinterested or getting antsy, it’s time to think on your feet and
modify your plan. The webinar presenter
should have quickly cycled through the last half dozen slides, stopping only
momentarily to sum up in one short sentence what offended about the slide.
·
Tackle Adversity
Head On: We’ve all been there and
it’s not fun: You’re in the middle of a
presentation and technical difficulties arise.
Your laptop goes to sleep or runs out of battery, the projector stops
working properly, that embedded movie file just won’t start properly. Here again you have to be quick on your
feet. In my experience it is best to
confront the problem head on – don’t pretend it isn’t happening, the room full
of people that you’re presenting to sees that it is. Embrace what has happened, see if you can’t
make a quick joke while you’re calmly (on the outside, frantically on the
inside) resolving the issue. Most people
have been in a similar situation at some point in their lives and they’ll be
more that a little sympathetic. In the
webinar, the presenters slides weren’t advancing properly. He clicked to advance and nothing happened,
so he clicked again and again and again, then his PC caught up and shot five or
six slides ahead. Then he started
scrambling to get back to the slide he wanted to be on and the same thing
happened and when his computer started responding it slingshot him back through
slides that he had already presented.
I’ve experienced this exact issue – I’ve boiled the issue down to
something between a Powerpoint presentation and the online meeting tool I use
(GoToMeeting). It still flusters me when
it happens, but I know through experience that I just have to stall for a few moments
and then everything will sort itself out.
The presenter either hadn’t encountered his particular issue before or
failed to recognize what was happening.
Either way, he handled it poorly.
At this point in the presentation I stepped away to take a call from a
client and when I returned just a few minutes later the webinar had been ended prematurely
because of “technical difficulties”.
Presentations are usually very important times for you to
shine when you’re trying to win a new account or order or climbing the
corporate ladder. Make sure that your
presentations are focused, concise and precise and present them with confidence
and grace.
Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications, Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com
