Presentation Coach gives his tips
A while back, a National Management Association asked if my friend and I could present at a breakout session. The correct answer was, of course, “Yes.” We’d worry about the
details later. We asked our initial contact person, “How many people in the audience?” The answer, “I don’t know.” “Oh … how long do we speak?” Again, “I don’t know.” How’s THAT for a start?
A month goes by. We see their promotional brochure. It looks great! Our pictures are in it! It will look great in our portfolio. We’re SO glad we said yes. The reason they didn’t know the number of attendees was because people were still registering and they were finalizing the program.
Then we found out we were the final act. We became the closing entertainment because our talk has humor in it. We didn’t realize what it meant to be LAST on the bill – Saturday night after three days of the convention. Yep, people want to go home or get away to relax or say their final good-byes. That is, do just about anything but hang around our product table.
What we did to make the best of it:
- We were visible earlier in the day,
- We volunteered to be on a panel,
- We had our products visible beforehand,
- We got an endorsement from our introducer and another influential member.
One point to remember: you will learn from EVERY presentation you give. The more you give, the more you learn. (Addendum: Take notes and journal every speech, make a lessons learned and best practices addition every time.)