Talk about presentations these days and pretty fast the conversation is bound to get to the power point complaining phase. To me this shows a problem in the way people think about presentations and meetings in general, we focus on the means and not on the goals. Power Point is one of many means to get through another mean (the presentation) which eventually needs to achieve some desired goal.

I promise not to talk about power point or Steve Jobs,  personally i am not that great of a presenter which is really why i write these posts. To remind myself how to get the show going in face of mildly-whelming presentation and keep the big picture visible while driving.

I started this as a single post with a  few tips  and ended up deciding to break it to separate posts so it doesn’t run too long. The tips should help get through a presentation/ demo in the most effective way to your goal (that is, unless your goal is to zone out while sitting for an hour in a dark room).

1. Identify and share the goal of the presentation – There are two sides to the spectrum here. Some people see meetings as a necessary evil to get through the day, they get invited to a meeting and attend or they need to make sure a designated group of people can’t claim they haven’t heard about a project. On the other extreme are those that think that in one meeting they will be able to get everything they needed accomplished (like getting a prospect to sign on a deal by the end of the meeting). Realistically the presentation is one step of several in a process but can also be a single point of failure that brings the entire process down. questions to talk about before a meeting with the presenting group:

– What happened before this meeting?
– What needs to happen in the meeting for us to declare success?
– What are the potential next steps after this meeting?
– Who are the people attending and their roles?
– Who is on our side and who must we convince ?

Have a meeting/call before the meeting with the presenters and those that might have inside information on the attendees (that might include the person who is setting the presentation for you and is working for the attending company). Discuss the questions above and make sure everyone is on the same page, think through different scenarios and questions that might come up in the presentation.

This is also a good segway to the next post – the opening. one of the items to be prepared for is what to talk about before the slides start..