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September 2002

In this month’s free e-news from Wilder Presentations, I’d like to discuss two ideas for presenters and one for designers. Use the monthly challenges at the end to test your skills.

FOR PRESENTERS:

STEP 8: MANAGE QUESTIONS

HOW TO HANDLE DIFFICULT QUESTIONS

You are nervous as you expect there will be some difficult questions during and after your presentation. What do you do about that? Just worry? A better suggestion is to brainstorm with colleagues a list of possible thorny questions and the answers to them. Then, practice your answers out loud. Do this before those challenging presentations.

Here are some tips to help you with those difficult questions:

Get some extra time: Rephrase the question, add a phrase, or ask a question back if you need a moment to think before answering. Many times as you’re saying a sentence before really answering the question, a response comes to mind. Here are some useful sentences that will give you a chance to get your thoughts in order:

“The last group asked me this question because they were concerned about…”

“What in particular would you like to know about this product’s performance?”

Put off answering: Only answer questions related to your presentation and suggest that unrelated questions be discussed after the presentation. You can say, “I’d enjoy being distracted by your question, but I better stay on the subject. Let’s you and I talk after.” If you believe you’ll have many unrelated questions, write them on a flip chart and say, “If we have time, I will come back and answer these.” Or ask your audience, “If you have time to prolong this meeting, we can spend some time answering these after we wrap up our main topic.”

Show a visual: Be prepared with a backup visual of detailed facts that you might need during the question period. Show it only if you need it.

Answer briefly: Answer the question as briefly as possible. Don’t go into unnecessary detail and talk until your audience’s eyes are glazing over. If, after briefly responding, you aren’t sure you’ve given enough information, ask, “Shall I say some more about this?” Don’t ask, “Do you understand?” Most people will answer yes even if they don’t understand. No one wants to admit in front of an audience that they don’t understand something.

FOR PRESENTERS:

HOW TO HANDLE HANDOUTS

This section is for Steven Koch, who asks what to do about handouts. I’d love to hear from my readers how you handle the handout issue.

Do you hand out every slide you show? Do you hand out copies of all the slides before the talk? Should you just sit down and let people read through your handouts and not even talk? (That last one was a joke, but some presenters have told me that with rude audiences who flip through the handout pages as the presenter is talking, they feel like sitting down.) But this brings us to the other problem. If, as a presenter, all you do is read every slide without adding anything, then you deserve to have your audience read ahead. After all, they can read faster than you can talk.

If you have to show many technical slides, you could give your audience ten minutes to look over several slide handouts, then ask them questions. Rather than read the information, engage in a conversation about the data. Another idea, suitable for a class, is to show a slide with a quiz on it and have the audience answer the questions by looking through the next ten slides. This is the idea of changing the pace of a class by not always just explaining every slide’s information out loud to the whole group.

Here are some guidelines to consider:

What to hand out? You have to know your audience. Some audiences just want the overview slides. They know they are never going to look at the visuals again. Some audiences, especially technical ones, want every slide. They are convinced that they will want to see the technical data again. If you choose not to give everyone every slide, then explain that you are saving them time and energy. You know the key information they will need and you don’t want to bury them in paper. You can say, “Of course, if some of you prefer to have every slide, please see me after.” Be ready with some handouts of every slide if you have discovered that only a few people request copies of everything. These are the visually oriented folks  who need to see it to understand it. Or they can be kinesthetically oriented and want to write all over the paper as you talk about certain points. Auditory people aren’t usually as interested in having all the slides.

How to hand it out? You must give your audience a table of contents of each handout over three pages. Why? Unless they are desperate, very few people will page through 30 to 40 pages to find the information they need. With a table of contents, slide titles, and page numbers, you’ll make it easy for your audience to want to look through your information again.

When to hand it out? If you hand out your visuals at the beginning of your talk, some kinesthetic people who love to do many things at once will flip through the pages. That’s just how they are, unless they have trained themselves to be polite. To forestall them, begin by saying, “I know it is a temptation for you to look ahead. I’d prefer we all stay on the same page.” Now it is your responsibility to keep them interested enough so they don’t feel like looking ahead.

DESIGNERS

FILE FORMATS FOR IMPORTED GRAPHICS

Jennifer Rotondo of Creative Minds Inc. has a helpful service called The Quick Coach. It’s an annual subscription that lets you “Ask the Expert” any questions you have so you can get help very quickly. You can also access a database of PowerPoint information as well as PowerPoint templates. Finally, send in your presentation for a free critique and advice. For more information visit www.creativemindsinc.com.

I asked Jennifer to speak to us again about clip art and images. Here’s what she has to say:

Many software packages allow you to choose clip art that is provided in the program. We have all seen this clip art and realize that sometimes it just doesn’t work in certain professional settings. With resources such as the Web, scanners, and digital cameras readily available, it is increasingly popular to import images or photographs into your presentations. Although this does liven up the presentation and make the creation process more enticing for the user, questions of file size and usability arise. The viewer would like to see these images quickly without waiting for the presentation to open or move from page to page. The question is: how do I keep these “hang-ups” from happening?

PowerPoint 97, 2000, and 2002 allow you to use more than 17 different file formats. You can import either pictures or illustrations. Some of these file formats are too large in file size and others just aren’t good quality.

My three favorite formats for pictures are Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), Tagged-Image File Format (TIFF) and CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format (GIF). For illustrations I use Windows Metafiles (WMF). You also only need to use images that are low in resolution, such as 72 dpi. This will give you the quality you need for an electronic presentation while keeping the file size down.

MONTHLY CHALLENGES:

PRESENTERS

Write down two to three phrases you can use as fillers before you begin to answer a question. These are the comments you’ll use while waiting for that wonderful response to spring to mind.

DESIGNERS

Scan a photo and try it in all the different file formats. See which is larger in file size, which is smaller, and which looks best with your particular software.

FASCINATING COMMENTS FROM OUR READERS

Patricia Leon is an International Consultant in Organizational Development and Sustainable Economic Development. She is currently launching the Micronesia Leaders in Island Conservation Network for The Nature Conservancy. She has agreed to give us occasional reports about the situations that she encounters during her presentations. Here’s what she has to say this month:

In all developing countries there are technology issues as well as sudden blackouts. I never count on getting through a full PowerPoint presentation. I mix it with handouts so I’m always prepared if and when the blackout occurs. I face this at least 3 out of 10 times.

In some places the rain is too loud for a speaker with a low voice. Even if you have a loud voice that carries, like mine, you’ll end up with no voice at all. Loud rain calls for more exercises and questions so you are not the only one talking. If you do need to talk, do so from the middle of the room. Make fun of the situation so your audience won’t be annoyed and will help you by not having too many side conversations. Also, never forget cough drops (lemon and honey keep my voice going longer), drink lots of fluids, don’t smoke, and avoid rowdy parties the night before a talk (tee hee).

Acknowledge local customs. Be informed. In some cultures decisions are made by a participatory process. If you use a democratic vote, you will loose 50% of your audience. Some cultures are nonparticipatory, so don’t create exercises in which people are supposed to participate.

I always include some local examples, otherwise the audience just doesn’t relate. Comparing developing countries from another region will turn your audience off. For example, I don’t give my Latin American examples in Indonesia.

TEN STEPS SCREEN SAVER

Some of you wanted my Ten Steps to Your Success Screen Saver. Brian Hutchinson of ScreenTime has put it up on the Internet for you to download.

ftp://ftp.screentime.com/pub/win/ST_PowerPoint/TenStepsToSuccess.exe

Here’s what you do. Download it. Then double click on the file. This loads it as one of your screen savers. To see the file go to control panel>display>screen saver. You will see 10 Steps to Your Success as one of your screen savers.

Enjoy! To see this product that takes a PowerPoint presentation and turns it into a screen saver go to www.screentime.com.  It is called ScreenTime for PowerPoint. They have many screensavers to download.

LICENSE TO TEACH THE WINNING PRESENTATIONS SEMINAR

If any of you are looking for materials to teach a presentation seminar, see what I offer at:

http://www.wilderpresentations.com/products/license.html.

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