Presentation Advisors Blog

Bouncing Back from a Presentation Mishap - Part 2

Last week I posted part 1 of bouncing back from a presentation mishap, where I threw up what I thought was a softball question and heard only crickets.  Well, as I mentioned in that post, there was more...

The organizer wanted me to fill a time block about a half hour longer than this particular presentation normally takes, so I added in some new content and was confident I'd hit my timing no problem. I was even pretty excited about the new content because it revolved around a personal story about a friend of mine, and stories are powerful presentation tools.

However, the story didn't work.  At least, it was falling on mostly deaf ears to this audience.  It was a story that had a web 2.0 theme to it and the audience just wasn't technically savvy enough to really follow the point I was trying to make.  Many audience members couldn't see the forest for the trees and missed the point.  My fault, completely.

I could have used a simpler method to tell my story and make my point, but unfortunately I didn't, and the audience let me know...immediately.  I always tell my audience that I accept questions at ANY time during my presentation.  There's no such thing as interrupting me with a question (unless you actually interrupt me).  I love opend and honest conversation during a presentation, since presentations themselves are conversations.  So as soon as a few of the audience members got lost, they started raising their hands.  I was able to reel the discussion back on track, however once we were all on the same page I was already at least 10 minutes behind where I wanted to be. 

I still finished in time without skipping through slides or not giving them their due diligence, but I had much less time for open Q&A than I would have liked.  I felt as though I had let them down, but while it technically was in my hands, it really wasn't.  Just like I couldn't beat myself up for my mishap from part 1, I couldn't beat myself up for this mishap either.  I took all the feedback to heart and altered my presentation accordingly.  All I can do is try my best to make sure it never happens again.

Honesty is crucial.  Not just in presenting, or business.  It's crucial in life, period.  You probably won't see a lot of presentation designers and trainers talk so openly about their mishaps, but that's only because they're hiding them.  It happens to all of us.  I write posts like these because I know they can help you, and that's all that matters to me.

I fell into presentation design because I love marketing.  Scott Stratten is one of my favorite marketers, or should I say "UnMarketers", and he devotes a good portion of his recent book outlining all the mistakes he made in social media.  I was so thankful he did because I made some of those mistakes too.  It made me feel better that I not only wasn't the only one, but someone who I highly respect in the social media space made the same mistakes. 

I used to have a poster in my room of Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player to ever live.  It read as follows:

As long as you learn from your mistakes, making that mistake is never a bad thing.

Image courtesy of parhessiastes on Flickr

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Bouncing Back from a Presentation Mishap - Part 1

Two months ago I delivered a presentation to a room full of entrepreneurs, small business owners, retirees and the like about preparing for, designing, and delivering an effective presentation.  This was the first time I had presented for this particular group, and there's always opportunity to stumble when you're personally unfamiliar with an audience (though there is never a situation where there's zero chance of stumbling).

The setup and technology tests went great and I had ample time to meet the attendees as they entered the room.  I already found a few allies and was confident that it was going to go well. 

I introduced myself and began to address the problem we're all facing with presentations today.  I had decided to ask the audience a question right off the bat. I usually don't, but I had a good feeling about this audience after meeting them as they arrived. With an easel to my back and marker in my hand ready to field the flood of answers I asked, "What do you hate most about PowerPoint presentations?"

I got crickets...

Zip. Zero. Nada. Nobody had anything to say.  Gulp...

Whenever I mention to anyone, young or old, that I design PowerPoint presentations, without missing a beat they will go into a diatribe of everything they hate about PowerPoint and presentations. From boredom to presenters who read to slides with massive amouts of text - I usually have to stop them so the conversation can move on. Not this group...not this time.

Like a good teacher coaxes answers out of shy or slightly confused students, I could have and maybe should have tried to coax some responses out of them. I knew that they knew what bothered them about presentations. If they thought nothing was wrong, then they wouldn't be there.

Instead, I chose to move on.  I had called an audible and put them on the spot within minutes of their arrival and it wasn't the right move. However, I wasn't going to beat myself up about it. I had plenty more to talk to them about and this presentation train wasn't getting derailed under my watch.

I deal with presentations on a daily basis, but I'm also a human. Things don't always work for me. I make mistakes too. No presenter is perfect. What I hope you learn from this is that it's not how few mistakes you make, it's how you bounce back from them.  Use that negative experience and turn it into a positive, learning from it and gaining new insight into how audiences work.  I now know better than to put my audience on the spot so quickly in a room full of unfamiliar people.

Also know that even if you think you're doing the right thing, it may be wrong. In ten other situations with ten other audiences maybe I would have gotten the reaction I desired, but this situation wasn't the right one. That doesn't mean you are a bad presenter or that you didn't prepare properly. Human nature is hard to predict. Learn from the experience.

Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing. - H. Stanley Judd

This wasn't my only mishap in this presentation. I'll be back with Part 2 to cover some content and timing issues I had and what you need to take into consideration.

Image provided by Alex E. Proimos on Flickr via Compfight

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The Real Question: What's In It For Your Audience?

WIIFM?

What's In It For Me?

That's what you're audience is asking.  That's (for the most part) all they care about.  It doesn't matter what you're presenting.  Could be a presentation about your company.  Could be a new product release to your sales team.  Could be a new initiative you're starting.  It doesn't matter.  Your audience only cares about one thing - what's in it for them?

Does that sound selfish?  Yes.  Is it true?  Yes.  Is it selfish?  No.

Quite often when we sit down and start sketching out our presentation, we rarely think of it in terms of what we're offering the audience.  We think about what product features to mention, or which client logos to show, or how worthwhile our cause is.  But you're presenting to reach a certain goal, and if you want to reach that goal, your audience is going to have to take you there.

I just finished a presentation for a great client who is launching a revolutionary type of software.  It has awesome features.  It blows away the competition.  It looks slick.  Really, it's the cat's meow.

My client is presenting this to his national sales team - that's his audience.  So when we started the design process, one of my first questions was, "What's in it for them?"  How is this product going to change their lives?  The goal of his presentation wasn't to unveil this new software, though at first glance you may think it was.  There's nothing in that for them.

What we needed to do was craft the message in a way that gets the sales team excited about selling the software.  How will this software ignite their sales figures? How will this software help them solve the problems of their customers and make them look good?  How is this going to change their lives?  We had to connect the software with the things that matter to the sales team in order to empower them.

Think about your presentation and your audience.  Is your presentaiton about you or is it about them?  Is it about features or is it about how those features will help a business make more money?  Is it about your charity or how helping your charity will enrich your audience's lives?

I'd love to hear your approach to WIIFM in the comments.  How do you make sure it's all about your audience?

Image courtesy of Thomas Hawk

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Stand Out in the Job Market with a Visual Resume

With the emergence of online presentation creation and delivery technologies like Brainshark, Kineticast, Prezi, SlideRocket, (yes, I know I'm missing a ton) and of course SlideShare, PowerPoint and Keynote presentations have expanded beyond just boardrooms and classrooms.  People have found many interesting and intriguing ways to utilize slide software and online presentation technologies to tell their stories. 

One interesting trend has been the combination of slide software and SlideShare to create a visual resume.  With the economy the way it is in the U.S. and the jobless rate at nearly 10%, job seekers need to do EVERYTHING they can to separate themselves from the other candidates.  While a paper resume sits in a stack of others with similar paper type, color, and font, how can a potential employer really get to know you?

I came across a great visual resume by Saad Ahmed Shaikh, who submitted his presentation for World's Best Presentation Contest 2010.  Check it out below - more after the jump.

My Visual Resume - Saad Ahmed Shaikh (PLEASE VOTE if you like)

While there are a few things he could have done to make his presentation a little better, overall he does a great job. Saad uses a great blend of original fonts, imagery, interesting graphs, originality, and even a little humor.  I don't think there's any argument that a visual resume like this is far more engaging and memorable than a standard resume. 

Have you created or seen a visual resume?  If so, let me know in the comments. 

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Be Like Walt Disney - Turn Your Presentation Into An Experience

Photo courtesy of Joe Penniston

My apologies for the blog silence this past week. You can usually count on two posts per week from me, but last week I was in the Happiest Place on Earth – Disney World.

It was an experience like no other. While my wife and I have yet to enter the joyous stage of parenthood, my two brother-in-laws both have young children ranging from 8 years to 6 months old. My goal for this post isn’t to document our trip (probably not what you’re looking for) but it’s important to note that we went with children, since it completely changed the way we experienced Disney, particularly the way they present themselves as both a magical place and a well oiled machine of a business.

We Were All Better Presenters in Kindergarten

Kids say the darnedest things, right?  I'm sure if you sit an think for just a minute, you can remember something quite funny or interesting a child has said to you recently.  Kids are quite unique, especially around the 5-7 year old range where they start to get really curious and outspoken.  Not to say that 15 year olds aren't outspoken - I pretty much knew everything there was to know at age 15 - but 6 year olds have a cute way of saying it.

But as we grow old, we lose some of that childishness.  We also lose our fearlessness, and our creativity (to a point).  Sir Ken Robinson has a wonderful presentation on the TED site where he talks about how schools kill creativity.  It's one of my all-time favorite presentations, and he brings up some valid points. 

3 Sure Fire Ways to Win Over Your Audience

When you step onto that stage, or into that boardroom, or in front of those students, or behind the mic for a webinar,  or the many other circumstances that precede a presentation, you're never presenting alone.  Now, that may be true simply because you're part of a group of people presenting, but even if you're solo, you're never really alone.  That's because you're just one part of the presentation equation.  The audience is the other HUGE part of that equation. 

It's no secret that having an audience on your side will make a presentation seem easier, less stressful, and even fun!  But with so much effort put into learning the content, designing the presentation, and practicing the delivery, the audience is often overlooked.  The presenter is seemingly "head down" as they start their presentation, focusing only on the one-way communication coming from them.  However, great presentations are conversations, and the audience is 50% of that.

What's important to note is that the "conversation" doesn't have to be verbal.  While presenting, especially virtually, the interaction with the audience is done through other means, even if it's a supporting nod, a raised hand, a submitted question, or an interested stare.

The audience is so important, and making sure your audience is on your side is key to ensuring a smooth and interactive presentation.  While the key to my heart is through my stomach (feed me!), offering coffee and donuts isn't enough to ensure that your audience will remain engaged and interested throughout.  So here are three sure fire ways to win over your audience.

1. Greet your audience as they arrive
   This is one of those "sneaky yet effective" tips because I really don't see a lot of presenters doing this.  Obviously it lends better to live, in-person presentations, but even on a webinar you can make some announcements and interact with the audience (to an extent) prior to the webinar.  In order to do this effectively, you have to arrive early enough to set up ALL of your presentation needs so you can give ample time to meet and greet your audience as they arrive (instead of using that time to test your remote or run through your slides one more time).  Greeting your audience before you present, as opposed to simply "appearing from behind the curtain." will familiarize your audience with you (and you with them) and even allow you to find allies and dissenters you can call on later to encourage discussion.  Try to remember names for more wow-factor.


2. Offer a high-quality takeaway after the presentation
   Without exception, after every presentation at least one audience member asks for a copy of the slides.  A great way to exceed their expectations is to offer them something better than the slides.  With my standard presentation about effective presenting, I give away printed copies of my ebook.  It's a far better recall device than trying to gaze at my slides which use far more images than works. You don't have to write an ebook, but give them more than just black and white printouts of your slides.  This can be as simple as a well-written word document.  At Seth Godin's Linchpin presentation, nearly every ticket-holder received a free book as well as a free poster (seen below, hanging on my office wall).  He even autographed the books as well as long as you were willing to wait in line. 
   
   
   


3. Be on time, every time
   There's nothing that can turn a good crowd bad than to disrespect their time.  If your presentation is only supposed to last an hour, you better believe they are leaving satisfied with the content and their questions answered in under an hour.  Your audience is sacrificing something (time, money, productivity, etc) to listen to you speak, so you owe them at least enough respect to get them out the door when you promised to.  That doesn't give you the right to speed through your last few slides either, which happens way too often for my liking.  They deserve all the content as well.

Image courtesy of Tattooed JJ via CompFight

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4 Important Takeaways from Dan Zarrella's "Science of Presentations" White Paper

Full Disclosure: I have no affiliation with Hubspot and wrote this post on my own accord.

Over at Hubspot, a company that is undoubtedly going to take over the world soon, Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella is hosting a free webinar on the Science of Presentations: How to Give Contagious Talks. Being a presentation junkie, when I saw the email invitation I immediately registered. Luckily, Dan has written an accompanying white paper of the same name outlining his research and findings.  To get the white paper, you'll have to register for the free webinar.

At first I thought, “Who does Dan think he is? I realize he knows a ton about the science of social media, but what does he know about presentations (other than his own personal experience as a speaker/presenter)?” Of course, my narrow-mindedness failed me. Dan has done some interesting research on the best ways to get people to Tweet or blog about your live presentations.

It’s so interesting to see how this topic has emerged in the last few years. I’ve been studying presenting and marketing communications for years, and real-time information sharing has become a powerful tool for presenters and audience members alike. Dan has shared the best ways to get your audience to share the information you, the presenter, are providing in order to give contagious presentations.

It is not my intent to give away all of his research. Instead, I wanted to provide my reaction and thoughts to his white paper. I suggest you read the white paper first before reading my reactions, but I’ll try to keep them high level if you’d rather forego reading it. Of course, sign up for his free webinar on Thursday, August 19th at 1pm EST.

Without further ado, here are 4 important takeaways from Dan’s Science of Presentations white paper:

1. 75% of those surveyed live-Tweet during a presentation
   Twitter has become a backchannel for audiences to share information and reactions with each other and their respective networks. I’ve attended many conferences and webinars and I’ve come to LOVE live-Tweeting for two reasons: 1) I feel that I’m sharing valuable nuggets of information with my followers and 2) I can connect with other audience members who share the same interests. Presenters generally love active backchannels (especially positive ones!) and I’ve been thanked personally by a few presenters who appreciated my live-Tweeting of their talk.
   
   My only hesitation with this stat is that he surveyed people who were marketers or at least interested in social media. I’ve hosted and attended a variety of presentations and webinars where the topics were far removed from marketing/media and the backchannels were completely silent. The audience members simply weren’t active on these channels (yet), so don’t get discouraged if your backchannel isn’t what you’d hoped it would be.


2. 52% of those surveyed had joined because they saw a live tweet about a presentation
   I would have also responded yes, and this is another powerful aspect of a real-time backchannel. There are so many conferences and webinars going on every day that we can’t possibly keep up with all those that interest us. If you encourage your audience to live-tweet or to be active in wherever the backchannel lives, you can grow your audience. If you run a conference, it’s definitely feasible to think that promoting the sharing of information via the backchannel will expose the valuable information found at the conference to people who were unaware of its existence, resulting in those attendees joining next time. The 140 Conference sells tickets to attend, but streams every talk for free on UStream and the backchannel is incredibly active. Trust me, you’re not giving away the farm for free if you do this…it will only make people watching want to attend in person next time.


3. Sharing, novelty, and relevance were the top 3 reasons those surveyed Tweet or blog about a presentation
   According to those surveyed, audience members live-Tweet or blog during presentations because they want to share new, relevant information. This ultimately helps the exposure of you and your content (as the presenter), so encourage viewers to “Be kind and share”, make sure your presentation contains new, relevant, and laser-focused information they haven’t heard yet.


4. Focus on ReTweets by scheduling Tweets of takeaways by the presenter during the presentation, or by post-presentation Tweeting
   I love this idea and I have to admit, I’d never really thought of it. While sometimes the backchannel is wonderfully active in grabbing all of your sound bytes (which should purposefully be presented in sub-140 characters), sometimes it is not. Regardless, if you provide Tweets of your presentation content on your own account (either during or after) you can plant the seed to be spread by your audience members. If you can effectively time your presentation, you can schedule tweets to go out a few minutes after you intend to actually present a specific sound byte. Instead of feverishly typing in a quote of yours, an audience member may be able to focus a little better because they know they’ll be able to ReTweet all the important information via your account. Regardless, it helps focus your content, reiterate your core points, and offer them in an easily spreadable fashion. 

Of course, to get the full understanding of Dan's research you should register for and attend the webinar. I’ll certainly be active on the back channel. Oh, and yes, I’m thoroughly offended that I wasn’t asked to give my perspective as one of the “expert presenters.” :op

The Optimal Number of Slides and Seth Godin's Solution

Seth Godin is fantastic not only for his marketing expertise, but for his incredible understanding of the importance of effective presentation design.  He even wrote one of the earliest e-books on presentation design called "Really Bad PowerPoint (and how to avoid it)".  He has written a number of posts about the topic as well (just search "PowerPoint" on his blog).  Of all the live presentations I've ever seen, Seth's Linchpin presentation was the best - which is saying a lot considering I've seen both Garr Reynolds AND Nancy Duarte live.  

Seth recently wrote a post entitled "The 200 Slide Solution" that addressed the need to separate your ideas onto multiple slides, possibly even 200 for a 40-minute presentation (one every 12 seconds). Seth writes:

You're used to putting three or four bullet points on a slide. That's at least four distinct ideas, but more often, each of those ideas has three or four sub ideas to it. In other words, you're cramming 32 ideas on a slide, and you're sitting on that slide as you drone on and on.

How would your pace change if you had 200 slides? How much better would the integration of slides and talk be?

I don't honestly expect you to do your presentation with 200 slides. I'm hoping this exercise will help you realize that you might not need any slides. Or that 50 or 100 slides will pick up your energy and make your argument more coherent.

Seth is right on point.  Not only are bullet-points awful when it comes to engagement and information recall, but their use often leads to slides filled with text and numerous different ideas.  Don't be afraid to give your slides some breathing room!! 

There's no "optimal" number of slides in your presentation.  It's not about numbers.  It's about crafting an effective story and utilizing your visuals to enhance and amplify that story.  However, don't use that as a crutch for using too few slides and cramming information into every crevice.  Find a way to give each important idea its own slide.  I separate each idea onto one (or many) slides and love the faster pace, continual re-engagement, and visual rewards that it provides. 

What's your feeling about the optimal number of slides?  What pace do you like to present at?

Confidence in Presenting and Public Speaking

Aside from presenting and presentation design, one of my passions is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.  I've written about it before in a post relating the fear of fighting to the fear of presenting, which in fact are both solved (or at least managed) by practice, practice, practice!

Well I'm at it again, relating BJJ to presenting and public speaking. 

I was recently reading about how important confidence is in jiu-jitsu.  The author, Jason Scully from The Grapplers Guide, wrote:

When
 you're 
in 
practice 
you 
should 
never 
have 
to 
worry
 about if something is going to work, or if your opponent is going to counter your attack.  You should just go for it with 100% confidence that you are going to make something happen.  That no matter what, even if your opponent counters your movements you should have 100% confidence in yourself that you can counter right back. 

It made me think about presenting and how important confidence is in order to effectively present.  There's no question that presenting is extremely difficult, particularly because of the inherent fear that comes with it.  When you present you're (for lack of a better term) "putting yourself out there" in front of audiences, peers, and others.  It's a place where we feel vulnerable, scared, fallible, and judged.  There are plenty of resources, including this blog, to help you become a better presenter and presentation designer, but it's not like riding a bike.  Every presentation is different and poses certain challenges and possible disasters. 

Don't get me wrong, you can DEFINITELY succeed as a presenter.  But in order to do that, you must have confidence in yourself and what you're presenting.  I add the latter part because I truly feel that you have to believe in your presentation topic to present effectively.  If you're selling a product or service, you have to believe in what you're selling.  True, you can fake it till you make it, but if you don't believe then you're performance will suffer.  This is the real world though, and I realize we don't always have a choice, so I digress.  With confidence, you will be able to manage your fears better and maintain your focus.  Without confidence in yourself as a presenter, you will be opening the door for doubt and nerves - often allowing them to get the best of you. 

Mistakes can (and will) happen, but as Jason said, even if your attack is countered (or you run into a presentation speed bump), you have to be confident that you can counter right back - you have to be confidence that you will move on from the mistake and crush the rest of your presentation. 

Image courtesy of parhessiastes on Flickr