Greetings everyone. Hope you are safe and healthy.
In the last Talking Points newsletter we reviewed three issues that affect people in times of change: Uncertainty; Loss of Control; and Disrupted Relationships. For people listening to your presentations, these stresses impact their ability to pay attention, take in information and make decisions.
What this means is that you have to work even harder to capture the audience’s attention and make your information easy to understand. Otherwise, your message doesn’t get through.
I recently worked with a client on a successful one-hour webinar about retirement planning in the Covid era. Here’s what we did to get our message across.
Planning
We focused on the audience’s needs. We took a step back and discussed what the audience wanted to get out of the session. We talked about their state of mind and identified three questions about retirement they wanted answers to.
We set a clear purpose for the presentation. One that aligned with the audience’s needs. In this case it was: “Educate and empower clients to make the right decisions for their retirement.”
We embraced the Less is More approach. Even though the webinar was scheduled for an hour, we decided to present only 35 minutes of content. This was a challenge for such an emotional and complex topic, but it helped us focus on the most essential information to communicate.
Content
We made it real. Rather than just rolling through a series of charts, graphs and tables, each presenter shared stories, examples, and scenarios that the audience could relate to.
We gave people a break. We built brief ‘pauses’ into the presentation, where we took 1-2 questions and gave the audience time to absorb one chunk of information before moving on to the next. Brain research recommends using mini-breaks like this every 20 minutes.
We simplified. We used color, animation, and other emphasis to focus attention on points we wanted to make on our visual aids.
Delivery
We practiced our presence. For this virtual presentation, speakers worked on their on-camera presence: posture; energy; centering their image; lighting; and sound. By the time they delivered the webinar, they were confident with their setup and technology.
We paused. This is critical for online presentations. Pausing helps presenters be crisp with their points and gives the audience a chance to absorb what’s been said.
We planned for WHAT IF…? Since this was virtual, with presenters speaking from home offices, we agreed on specific steps to deal with problems, so the show could go on.
The presenters received very positive feedback on the webinar, along with requests for follow up conversations and “more webinars like this one”.
So, you may be thinking, ‘This sounds like a lot of work for a one hour presentation’. The reality is, in today’s environment, you have to add value every time you communicate. And focusing on Attention and Clarity helps you do that.
If you want to learn more about how our presentation training and coaching can help you grow your business, get in touch. I’d love to learn about your goals and talk about how we can help.
