Presentations can be tricky things to pull off, particularly conference call presentations where you can’t see your audience and adjust your delivery speed and pitch to match their reactions.
Not only that, there’s also no guarantee they’ll be looking at the slides you’ve sent across – you’d be surprised the things people get up to while on a teleconference.
So it’s important you make any presentations as engaging as possible, here’s how…
Prepare throroughly
As with any presentation, the most important thing is to fully prepare and make sure you’ve a clear idea of how you want the conference call to go and how long it’ll take to get through the full agenda.
And make sure everyone has a copy of the agenda so they know exactly what to expect.
Get a bright start
The opening few minutes of any presentation are arguably the most important as this sets the tone and people will make up their minds whether both you and the subject matter are engaging enough to hold their attention.
So make sure you get off to an enthusiastic start – even if the subject matter is a little mind-numbing, a bright opening could be enough to hold everyone attention.
Keep on track
Once you’re up and running, it can be easy to get sidetracked by other issues that rear their head, but it’s vital you stick to your agenda as the time, and people’s attention, can run away from you.
In order to do this, you need to make sure your presentation is broken down into manageable chunks that are easy for the audience to follow.
And to make life easier, there’s no reason why you can’t read from a script – no-one can see you after all – just make sure you keep it engaging, it’s easy to slip into monotonous tones if you’re reading from a sheet.
Keep an eye on the time
As part of the preparation for your call, you’ll have set a time limit for each item on the agenda – so be mindful of time and make sure you stick to it.
And make sure you factor in time at the end for questions, this means that if you’ve an hour set aside for the call, your presentation shouldn’t last longer than 45 mins.
It’s also worth periodically asking the other participants for their input during the presentation to keep everyone’s interest up, and it may even be worth picking out individuals to comment on certain items, rather than just inviting comments from the group.
And as your presentation is ending, be sure to wrap things up and recap any points that need looking over again and make sure all actions have been allocated before you formally end it.
Review the meeting
Once the meeting is done and dusted and everyone has had time to process the information, ask for feedback on how it went and how you could improve things for next time.
You can also recap the conference call yourself – with ConferenceCall.co.uk you can record your call for free and have it emailed back to you as an MP3 so you can review it and send it out to anyone that missed the meeting.
For more information on this service, click here.
How to look good on a video conference
First impressions go a long way, so if you struggle to look good in front of a webcam, this infographic from Hubspot has some handy hints and techniques to help make sure you look your best.
