Tricks of the Trade: Tips for Successful Presentations

You’ve been invited to make a presentation at a prestigious professional gathering such as the annual NIRI conference mentioned below.  So, you spend countless hours preparing —  shaping what you plan to say and developing visuals to illustrate your points. 

Assuming your presentation is easy to follow, and interesting enough to hold your audience’s attention, you’re on your way to success.  Or are you?  Some speakers find their efforts fall short because they overlook some of the basics of presentation.  And it all gets back to one important premise: communication is not what you know or what you say.  It’s what the audience takes away.

If your audience can’t easily hear you or read your slides, you’re losing impact and, very possibly, potential clients. 

What are some of the biggest mistakes presenters tend to make? 

The most common mistakes concern pictures and sound: the speaker or speakers can’t be heard in some parts of the room and the slides can’t be read from more than six feet away.  Here are some tips to help you and your presentation get rave reviews.

Check your sound and visuals before you start.  Insist on having access to the room at least 15 minutes before you present, preferably with a technician present.  Test the placement of the microphones and the volume to be sure you can be heard loud and clear in the back of the room.  Likewise, do a brief trial run of all visuals (slides and video) that you will show.  Failed visuals have doomed many a good presentation. 

Get your technical act together.  Practice pushing the buttons you’ll need to push when it’s show time.  Don’t let a technician do it for you in rehearsal and then leave you to do it for yourself when it counts.

Keep it simple.  Design your slides in such a way that they can easily be seen and understood in the back row.  The biggest mistake presenters make in creating presentations is crowding too much onto a slide. So don’t put any text on your slide that’s smaller than 20 or 24 point.

Think visual.  People remember pictures better than words.  Where possible, use visuals to make your points.  In addition to using pictures, charts, and graphs on your slides, be sure you paint pictures with your words.

Rehearse.  In real estate, the mantra is “location, location, location.”  In presentations, it’s “rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.”  Rehearse your presentation several times before the day you deliver, preferably using a camcorder so you can see what you need to improve.  It’s also not a bad idea to run through it before family members or colleagues to get their feedback.  Just knowing your subject is not enough; you need to deliver your points in a smooth, confident, and professional manner.

Start and end on time.  It shows that you have your act together – that you’re professional and dependable.

Don’t neglect Q & A.  Leave sufficient time for it and insist that questioners use the microphone so everyone can hear the question.  If they fail to do so, politely ask them to repeat the question on-mic, even if you yourself heard it clearly.  They’ll get the message. And if there isn’t a microphone for the audience, repeat their question before you answer so everyone in the room can hear.

Following these steps will help you assure that your presentation gets the attention and response that your efforts deserve.

Transparency is King

Thanks to the transgressions of Bernard Madoff and a bunch of financial institutions, public companies will face increasing scrutiny in the months ahead.

That’s a sentiment widely voiced by experts at the 2009 annual conference of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), which was held in Hollywood, Florida, June 7-10.

“Transparency is king,” declared one speaker.  “Any company that is not sufficiently transparent could pay a dear price on Wall Street, in the media, and in Washington.”  Others echoed the same message.

That means investor relations officers are going to be increasingly challenged to provide more information. Thus, it will be even more important that quarterly earnings calls are clear, concise, and credible.  It also means that many corporate leaders will need to temper their glowing portrayals of less-than-wonderful results and take a more conservative approach to forecasting future performance.

Another key topic of discussion was the difficulty in providing earnings guidance in a very uncertain economic period.  A recent NIRI survey showed a decline in companies providing guidance, from 64% to 60%, and a widening of the guidance range.  Analysts, too, are expanding the range in their forecasts.

As a result of the Madoff fallout, the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to increase its enforcement efforts in three major areas: adherence to Regulation FD (Full Disclosure) which requires that relevant information be released to everyone at the same time; investor protection with emphasis on who regulates proxies—the state or the federal government; and transparency, including some regulation of hedge funds.

The months ahead will be challenging for top management, investor relations officers, and public relations professionals at publicly-held companies.  They will all need to be at the top of their game.

NIRI Rings the Bell at NASDAQ

In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) was chosen to ring the opening bell at NASDAQ OMX in New York on June 15, 2009.

Virgil Scudder (fourth from left) was among some 50 corporate investor relations officers and consultants who lined up on Broadway for the photo shoot.

VS&A serves as consultant to a number of major companies with services including investor communication, media and presentation training, and crisis management.

How Not to Do PR

We have always said “no comment” is generally the worst answer a person can give to any media question. The public today demands that decision-makers speak out, especially when they are on the public payroll and involved in questionable behavior. Stonewalling an issue with “no comment” is a virtual admission of guilt.

A recent controversy in Atlanta provides a graphic illustration of this point.

Please follow this link to view WGCL-TV’s coverage of the story:

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/video/19711168

What should the school board have done? First, in addition to issuing a statement, they should have held a news conference to explain why those contracts were awarded to Office Max when it was not the low bidder. Second, individual members should have been willing to go on camera and say why they themselves voted in favor of the contract.

Is there wrongdoing here? We don’t know. But, that is certainly the impression left by those stonewalling board members.

For the raw footage of the story follow this link:

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/video/19693094

There She Goes Again

We have always preached the gospel that once you have satisfied a reporter’s question you have a right to steer the discussion to your agenda. If the point you lead to is interesting and relevant to the general topic of discussion, the reporter will even welcome it.

But, Sarah Palin is one of those politicians who never seems to get the message. When David Letterman apologized for his tacky joke about Palin’s older daughter, Palin saw an opportunity to wave the flag.

“Letterman certainly has the right to ‘joke’ about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction,” Palin said. “This is all thanks to our U.S. Military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America’s Right to Free Speech - in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect.”

Disingenuous, to say the least.

A Crisis In Credibility - What Can Be Done?

Continuing from our previous post - what can companies do to regain their reputations?

The problem involves both poor stewardship and poor communication.

Frankly, many corporate executives have done an inadequate job of running their businesses. Others have failed to tell their story effectively to the public and key stakeholders. Greed and arrogance on the part of business leaders is a common perception, often based in reality but sometimes based on a simple failure to communicate.

Negative images have hurt a lot, particularly pictures of highly paid automotive executives tooling into Washington in corporate jets to ask for a taxpayer handout. These negative perceptions have been deepened by big bonuses paid to executives by failing companies and by some companies holding lavish functions while cutting jobs and asking taxpayers to bail them out of self-inflicted messes.

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A Crisis in Credibility

Surveys show the public’s trust in business is plummeting, most notably in the United States. There are far-reaching implications to this development.

The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer, a survey of nearly 5,000 people in 20 countries, concluded that companies at the center of the global economy are in serious trouble because of this loss of trust. More than half of the respondents said they trusted corporations less than they did a year ago. And, confidence in CEO’s as a reliable source of information about their companies hit a new low globally.

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Flu Epidemic Tips for Businesses

In light of public concern about the flu epidemic , we asked our colleague John Brandstetter of the emergency recovery cost containment company HEC to give us his thoughts on what companies should be doing right now.

With all of the talk about the Pandemic Swine Flu (or shall we say the H1N1 2009), it is time for all of us to keep our common sense and not panic. Yesterday’s warning from the World Health Organization, however, does change the game a bit—so start preparing yourself and your company for something that could, repeat, could happen. Here are a few tips for what is important right now. Use common sense, and:

• Keep hand sanitizers at work. Have more than enough, then use them.
• If someone is sick, send him or her home.
• If you are around someone who appears sick and is coughing, move away from them.
• Tell everyone in your family to wash their hands more than ever.

Now, it’s also time to get out that business continuity plan and enact it.
• Start planning which people can work from home and which are needed in the office.
• Determine which of your employees will have kids at home if the schools close
• Define critical functions that will keep your business up and running
• Get your crisis team together and start discussions of how you are going to keep your business viable.

Just relax; this is a good time to see how the plan works. That is what it is for, after all.

If you have any questions for John either contact us or email him directly at jbrandstetter@hec-solutions.com.

Biden’s Unforced Error on Flu

Vice President Joe Biden did it again. He took a fairly innocuous interview question and turned it into an “event.” On Today this morning he said that he would advise his family not to ride subways or airplanes due to the flu epidemic. This was immediately after he tried to calm concerns about the flu spreading and defended the administration’s decision to not curtail travel to and from Mexico.

The worst part of this answer is that Biden totally stepped into this on his own. In tennis this is known as an “unforced error.” Matt Lauer did not ask about confined spaces or subways - he asked if Biden would recommend a family member go to Mexico now. He should have given a brief answer about that, and then steered to a key point (such as what the administration suggests to keep healthy, or what symptoms to look for).

The lesson here is once you’ve satisfied the question move to your agenda. Before you say something that you, and your boss, will regret.

Quick Lesson from Obama’s Economy Speech

Today’s speech by President Obama showcased the same strengths (vocal delivery, connecting with an audience through specific references to audience members, gesturing, memorable phrases), and weaknesses (bouncing eye contact, occasional halting, need for more specifics) that we’ve discussed before. But there was one aspect that I wanted to point out.

Early in the talk he gave an explanation of how we got into this economic crisis, and it was a great example of how to take a complicated idea and explain it so the “average person” could get it without oversimplifying. He explained how the housing bubble led to the recession, using non-technical language but not sounding like a Kindergarten teacher.

We’re often trying to get our clients (especially in the tech and medical fields) to get complicated ideas expressed so that the average 12-year-old can understand it (or, in the case of tech, the average 60-year-old). The President today gave a good example of how this can be done.