Ron Fredericks writes: How many speakers have you seen waste their time talking within an empty theater built into a trade booth at a conference? Or better yet, when have you walked around at a technical trade show looking for a presentation that actually helped you in your career or convinced you to buy a new product? Well, when I was invited to speak at an Embedded Systems Conference [general link: www.embedded.com] event I became worried about how to avoid these and other problems I have seen play out over and over again:
- How do I get a real audience to listen to me instead of just empty chairs?
- How can I ensure that the sponsor company gets good value from my prepared speech?
- How do I avoid getting nervous during my presentation?
- How much do I charge for this service?
I did come to terms with these issues and I think I delivered real value towards all bullet points listed above. In this blog post I present one way to address these issues in terms of how to best collaborate – rather than just how to deliver a public speech. Don’t take my word for it: here is a photo taken of me while giving this technical collaborative presentation:
Figure 1: Results of Collaborative Public Speaking That Delivers Real Value to Sponsor and Attendees
Briefly, I will address the keys to my success as shown above in figure 1…
How do I get a real audience to listen to me instead of just empty chairs?Use event planning to help a large base of target listeners to find, plan, and then attend your presentation. If you contact your in-house or your sponsor’s marketing team to help you pre-announce your show – than you will likely have only a small showing. To significantly improve your attendance and eventual sales leads prospecting, work with all partners associated with the products that will be discussed in your presentation. What no partners? Try looking harder. For example work with the vendors who add value to the product – even if they are not obvious from the product’s marketing literature. These partners have a vested interest in your success too. While your marketing team and the product’s partner’s marketing team work on building an audience for your presentation, work on your talking points. If you plan on just sticking with the product marketing talking points than just cancel the whole event. Listeners can get this from the data sheet, they don’t need you to read it to them! Yes, you need to address some of these points to set the stage for what you really need to talk about during your presentation. But you really do need to give your prospective audience more. If you are not an expert in using the product yourself, than talk to other developers who use this product. You might talk to application engineers at the sponsor company who support this product, AND users of competitor products. Talk about what bothers a customer/developer who uses the competitor products, talk to your sponsor’s application engineers about how to solve recurring pain points in your sponsor’s product. Don’t loose site of the “unsupported” angle. Most users of a product will never use it in the “supported” environment the the product’s engineers and product team envison. Power users will go way beyond the initial scope for a product – yet here is the value your listeners are waiting to learn more about. I’m talking about partner or potential partners here. They offer value to the end user of the product, but usually outside the scope of the product’s management team. Use “closing the sale” techniques to address some shocking points, make sure you leave the listener with a little hint about what would happen if they walk away from this lecture and they don’t start using this product when they get home. Describe who else is using the product that builds more attraction or interest from the listener, etc…But, avoid the cardinal sin in product presentations: Everyone likes to buy stuff, but nobody likes to be sold stuff. Don’t try and create a hard sell, instead use technical examples that make the product actually indispensible – no gimmicks here, just do some homework and give a few examples.How do I avoid getting nervous during my presentation?Maybe this is something only I worry about. But if you too get stage freight when a wireless microphone is attached to your clothes and you look out into a sea of potential listeners who are initially just as ready to run off as they are to sit down and pay attention to your next points. I have found a solution that many others have found before me. I am an active member of Toastmasters International, Inc. This non-profit world-wide organization is a great place to learn the skills necessary “to get the butterflies to fly out of your stomach and out into the audience in a pleasing formation” [so said my first Toastmaster club mentor]. Toastmasters can help you integrate key talking points with vocal variety, the value of the spoken word, hand and body movement, audience participation (and collaboration), useful ice breakers, powerful closing remarks, to name just a few techniques.How much do I charge for this service?I won’t answer this one in this open forum. You or your company may be spending 10’s or even 100’s of thousands of dollars for a booth at a conference. Most speaking events are managed by a product manager and delivered by some professional wordsmith, booth babe, or even clowns in silly costumes. If you want listeners to flock to your product manager after a presentation, then work with a community expert in your product’s field. In my case, I have held many roles before finding the value in being a community manager: engineer, application engineer, product manager, partner manager, sales manager/country manager, and entrepreneur, for a wide variety of software, hardware and end devices in the embedded market place. I also hold Toastmasters awards in leadership and public speaking – as well as Internet community value in lecture reuse, blogging, online community software development, and lead generation such as with my product called LectureMaker. Wow – a real horn tute. So contact me or my company representatives to learn more or to get a direct quote.How can I ensure that the sponsor company gets good value from my preso?Finally and short answer: Just follow the points above. Hire a good community manager who can integrate a speech with event marketing, talking point preparation, spoken words that that excites your target listeners, and finally lecture reuse and ongoing lead generation. The lecture shown in figure 1 is also available for replay and future collaboration with the product’s sponsors on the Embedded Components and Tools Marketplace under this title:
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