My mom’s computer crashed the other day, and the tech could not fix it. Her only option was to purchase a new a computer. It is always gut wrenching to get a new computer; I never know what I’m getting into, and I always have to ask for help. Since I was obviously not the person to explain what to look for to my mom, we had to ask for help. After a few minutes in the store, the sales person asked if we had any questions and my mom said I would like more information about three computers. The sales guy automatically goes into, “Well, this one has a 2.6GHz processor, and this one is a…” He kept rattling on the specifications of each computer. I couldn’t help myself, I jumped into the conversation stopping him and said, “We have no idea what you are saying because it’s all gibberish
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Many presenters, especially those who are unprepared, have a tendency to read through the presentation or read their slides. This tendency to read happens because the presenter likely waited until the last minute and crammed everything into a small time period. Although ill-advised for presenters to read presentations, there are two important reasons to put down those notes (and stop reading your visual aid’s slides). 1) Lack Engagement – While a presenter’s eyes look at that piece of paper, the audience, who sacrificed a lot to attend, grows frustrated from being ignored. When a presenter utilizes eye contact, the audience feels like they’re in a conversation with the speaker, even in a large auditorium. Good eye contact establishes a relationship with the audience and makes the presenter’s message more compelling. (If you’re new at presenting, it may surprise you that eye contact with your audience will actually help you calm your fears.)
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I’ve collected the following list of disasters and near misses from my experiences, my clients’ presentations, and horror stories I’ve heard via my social media channels and at networking events. Take it from me, now is the time to learn from others and not make the mistake yourself. Here are 21 webinar tips to prevent any wreckage! Webinar Tips for Success: Plug in Power Cord – A client turned off the presenter view after his webinar to find his battery only had 1% of power left. Disaster barely adverted. Forgot to Record – I participated in a webinar for an association, and they forgot to record it. They planned on selling the recording, so I had to represent the webinar as if it were live, including the Q&A session. Proper Start Time – Meetings should start after a 5-minute grace period. Online, when potentially hundreds of people are waiting, you want to
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The business world is becoming increasingly more casual; it’s obvious by the way professionals dress for work. Shorts in the workplace and jeans every day are slowly becoming acceptable, but casual is not a good thing when it comes to other aspects of your business, including casual presentations. Why is the “casual” mentality so appealing? It’s easy. It’s the most simple thing your overworked mind can do is not think. The casual, laid-back approach to attire is one aspect you won’t need to stress over because you believe it doesn’t matter. It’s comfortable. Wearing “normal” clothes like jeans is more comfortable over the stuffy feeling of traditional business attire. It’s relaxed. Much like when you are comfy at home or cozy on vacation, everything slows down. The same holds true for casual at the office, all of a sudden the office is not fast paced and timely. The casual office atmosphere
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When I work with my clients, there is a list of priorities to manage. As we’re wrapping things up, nearly every client, regardless of gender, solo presenter, or team presentation, asks the same questions, “What do I wear to my presentation?” I’m not a fashion expert, so usually I’m just the voice of reason or a sounding board. However, over the years, I’ve been asked this numerous times, and it always makes me laugh a bit. A few rules about what to wear for my presentation: 1. Always dress as well as or slightly better than the audience. I recommend presenters be one subtle step above the audience. If the audience is in casual attire, then I recommend business casual. If the audience is in business casual, then I recommend semi-formal (also known as business formal). If your audience is in business formal, then you also need to be in business
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With a constant cycle of proposals comes a constant stream of scheduled presentations. With that constant stream of presentations comes traps that are very easy to fall into because everyone is busy running around. That leads most presentation teams into dreadful traps, but you can avoid presentation disasters. Haven given and coached well over 1,000 presentations and witnessed countless more, take my word for it, you don’t want to fall into these traps. 4 Traps to Avoid Presentation Disasters The entire time is spent babbling about information that is written in the physical bid. This is one of the worst traps because the selection committee was so looking forward to meeting and getting to know the team and the company only for it to be a huge letdown. And not just one letdown, but one that repeats over and over again as the four or more teams come in and
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Hopefully, you have taken advice from my previous blog posts about bid presentations (What Selection Committees Really Want and Engagement Requires Being Audience-Centric) that you must reserve time to think about, prepare, and practice your upcoming client interview presentation. Without the proper steps being taken, success is less likely. But once you get past the presentation part, there is still the Questions & Answers session, or Q&A for short, to get through. Q&A sessions always tend to be the less feared portion for some. In fact, some presenters look forward to. It all depends on the types of questions that are asked and how well prepared you are for them. If you have been getting questions to clarify what you said during your bid presentations, then you aren’t explaining the information simply enough. If you have been getting zero questions, then that’s not necessarily good either because the audience might
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I throw around the term “audience-centric” often, but let me explain it a bit more. Being audience-centric is a brief description of how presentations are supposed to be geared. A presentation where the content is prepared with only the audience’s needs in mind, and crafted to ensure that the audience is satisfied with the content they received. As part of the preparation process, the presenter needs to think about what the audience currently knows or doesn’t know and begin the information from the simplest point building to the most complex. So many presenters don’t consider what the audience doesn’t know and they begin at a point that is already over the audience’s head. That is like starting a toddler in high school. I mentioned in my previous blog (What Selection Committees Really Want) that you likely speak very differently to colleagues at work than you do your family at home. The
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Business presentations, as well as client and project interviews, are conducted every day and many of them have the same things in common. Routinely, a presentation team has thrown something together and thinks that they can pull it off smoothly, but they just end up repeating everything that was submitted in the paper proposal. These presentation teams might as well be talking to a brick wall because this kills their chances of being selected by the selection committee. Losing makes you wonder what selection committees really want. If you put yourself in their shoes, you’ll understand why repeating the proposal is useless. The selection committee already read more proposals than they care to and they’ve determined that your company is qualified. The purpose of the project interview is to get to know you, not to determine if you’re qualified because that is done. Every presentation that repeats the corresponding proposal sounds like
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When two people are engaged in conversation, you can certainly tell. In conversations, both parties appear to be engaged, attentive, and reciprocating even when only one person is talking. It isn’t long before the silent party agrees with a head nod, smiles in agreement, or fires back angry verbiage in the case of an argument. I’ve mentioned for years that presentations are like conversations. In both cases you must: Word for maximum impact Tailor your message to whom you are talking to Engage the listener Adapt to listener feedback I got to thinking about that last point, the listener feedback. While researching communication responses, I realized that when in friendly conversation with a single person, or even multiple people, only one person is talking, but the other individual(s) are silently responding nonverbally. When it comes to presentations, most people believe the opposite. It is easy to look at the situation and
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