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How Do Get Better Speaker Ratings

I'm at conferences a lot, and I listen to a fair number of webcasts and podcasts. My one piece of advice to presenters is get to the point. Today I listened to 25 minutes of a 1 hour talk on what should be an interesting topic. The first 9 minutes got me through the introduction and landed me at the "agenda" slide. Several minutes on agenda got to the actual topic intro, and a few minutes of this finally got to the presentation material I wanted to hear. 25 minutes of that and it was Q&A time. 14 minutes of wastage to 25 minutes of content is a very poor ratio.

This is why I never listen to webcasts live. I can skip all this crap in recorded webcasts and podcasts.

To speakers: I listen so I can learn. I do not listen so I can hear about your career history or how wonderful and super-special your company is. I don't listen to learn about travel, hotels, your mother's bursitis and particularly your pets and children.

I rate people very low when they waste my time (and I know others do the same to me). Here are some things to avoid that will help you to get better ratings:

• Minimize personal introduction - Who you are, where you're from, and a small amount of credentials for background is all anyone needs. If we want more we'll Google you, ok?
• Minimize agenda - We don't need a detailed breakdown of what will be on every slide in the talk. Show the agenda, hit a couple highlights, and get to the talk. Total time for these two things should be no more than 2-3 minutes, tops.
• Ignore the "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them" advice - It's bullshit. Agenda and a summary are fine for this. Don't tell me the same crap three times or we'll think you're suffering from a head injury.

Really, just getting to the point will put you well ahead of the other guys. You know who the worst offenders often are? The people who should know better: industry analysts like me. It's just that most of us are prima donnas who can't be bothered to read our speaker ratings.

Labels: presentations

Posted by Mark Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:37:00 PM | permalink |

Comments:

This is what happens when you HAVE to listen to lot of webinars. You get bored and become picky.

The marketers/webinar makers target those end users who dont have time to attend ALL the webinars. They look for webinars only when they have a need and looking for solutions.

In those circumstances, for those targets, knowing who is speaking and what their credentials are important. Just my two cents.

# posted by  Unknown : 6:50 PM

 

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