Teach field engineers to present, work on your presentation

Yesterday I attended another presentation by a distributor turned security ISV. The application market is hot with new products and what is reportedly new needs. I will go into the market situation in another article, this is an interesting situation which will remind us of the hype waves we are all so familiar with.

The interesting thing about company's product presentation is how the audience can tell you a great deal. How how your message came across, how clear is the presentation, how believable and credible the presenter, and finally what the overall impression. There are many aspects of a presentation which will get a certain message across and you can control. Some are easily developed or learned, some are more personality or environment related and we simply can't control. Either way, it will be helpful to any marketer to be aware of these and work on them. If you leave these to chance the result is certain to not be good. Maybe like the presentation I seen yesterday it could turn out to hurt your image.

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Good technical presentation ability is crucial for marketing success

Let's start by 'mapping' qualitative audience parameters (message, clarity, believability, etc.) to marketer's activities. I will start with a short list of audience measures. You can have your own, which probably fit your situation better.

• Message: audience should be able to understand one or two main issues.
• Clarity: the presentation should be clear to anyone, explain if you are not sure.
• Authority: are you (presenter, company, product) have authority to say and convince listeners?
• Bottom line: what should the audience do with the presentation? (usually call you)
• Information: new or useful information that the audience can use.
• Personal & Individual: how is this presentation relevant to me (examples).

This is a short list but even in instances where the presentation is very specific or technical you can easily expand or modify any of these categories. Let's first look at the actual marketing activities and see if we need a different list. If you are going to create a presentation and present it break down the task into smaller activities.

• Define all the parameters: message, audience, forum, desired outcome, outside needs, and other specific issues.
• Gather all the information and research specific items.
• Speak with everyone who will be involved in the presentation (or has interest in the outcome)
• Outline and sketch the presentation
• Create the presentation - Rev 1
• Test present to everyone who is interested, get feedback.
• Revise or create a new presentation
• Present again to everyone who is interested, loop through the revision cycle if needed
• Present to a trial crowd, should be 2 to 3 small groups
• You are done: get the presentation out and make the main presentation

This process may seem a little tedious, in some cases you may do most of the steps together showing the work to people while you are developing material. Sometimes you may present to 'outside' groups even before the presentation is complete. But overall flow here is what I see with most presenters. I would say that most technology marketers make the mistake of not testing with 'everybody' enough. For the most part I also see that most presenters do not cover enough basic issues, which is the next list. An issue or 'keep in mind' list is helpful while you are doing your work, similar to what the first list - what the audience sees it will have the qualities you need in your activities. But for that, you will have to wait for the next article.