Key questions I was asked during my recent Presentation Skills training programme

Having spent the best part of 3 weeks training different teams in APAC, Sydney, Singapore and India, I wanted to share my thoughts on one of the sessions, on presentation skills. This was all about helping delegates speak and present in front of clients or peers with confidence. I am in the business of enabling and teaching people and helping them learn and improve, so it would be very silly of me as a trainer if I did not taste my own medicine.

I’d like to share questions that came up in my training sessions and share the Sales Coach approach and responses to them.

In this blog I will be talking through a couple of key questions which frequently came up in my presentation skills training programme and I will be articulating my responses to them. So presentations firstly can take so many formats – speaking to a large audience on your own to pitching as a team to win a new piece of business. We often change and adapt depending on the situation and audience.

Question 1

So the first question I would firstly like to tackle is:

“Suk whilst presenting I often find that I am asked questions throughout my presentation and sometimes this leads on to a full-blown discussion within the room. What is the best way to answer questions and bring the room back to your presentation?”

Being asked questions is always a great sign that your audience are interested in you and what you are talking about, so you need to view this as a positive. I often get asked this question and there is a very similar 3 step process to answering a question during your presentation: Acknowledge, Engage and Confirm. I’ll go into a little more detail as to why we need to follow this process.

Acknowledge

Someone has been brave enough and interested to ask you a question, so firstly you need to acknowledge their question in the right way which will help you setup your response.

Engage

During this second stage it is your chance to check that you understand the question – there is nothing worse than answering the wrong question. So, go back and engage and question a little more if need be. Once you’re certain of the right question, you then need to engage the audience and respond as if the whole audience had asked the question. This is key - one challenge presenters often find is that other audience members can become disengaged when a question has been asked.

Confirm

Once you have engaged with the audience and answered the question, it is key that you address the person who asked the question and ensure they are happy with the answer.

Question 2

“Suk, when we go into pitch at a client office we always tend to sit around a desk rather than stand up and present”

Really interesting question – should we always stand or sit down when we present, are there certain rules such if there are more than 5 people we should stand? The simple answer here is do what you feel comfortable doing and where you can make the biggest impact. There are a couple of key tips to bear in mind when you are going to sit down whilst presenting:

Positioning

This is really important when standing and even more so when sitting down. It becomes that much harder to keep people engaged if you are simply sitting next to them. So before presenting make sure everyone is able to see you and more importantly you can see everyone else. What you don’t want to do is sit right next to someone because you end up looking at the slides for the entire presentation. So choose your seat wisely!

Preparation

Some of the best speakers/presenters often arrive to their venues early, so they are able to scope out the room – where they want to be standing/sitting and where they would like their audience to be sitting.

Posture

Whether you are standing or sitting the same rules still apply. Even when you are seated your body language and posture will support your message. Ensuring that you are sitting slightly away from the desk with an open stance will help the audience feel more relaxed and make you more approachable.

Question 3

“Suk when we go into a client pitch we normally have 3 different people presenting, do you any tips to make the transitions more natural”

This is becoming more and more common in business pitches, so it is a very relevant question. With the complexity of today’s business we are more likely to go pitch for a client with more than 1 person, as we now are finding more and more subject experts.

So there is a key rule when it comes to transitions – the most important rule is that your audience needs to know what the plan is throughout the journey. So here the agenda is really important, this is where you explain who is talking when and WHY, this ensures your audience are aware of what is happening during the pitch and the reasons for transitions.

The second tip is when you are presenting - you need to practice handovers between sections and ensure they flow naturally. The previous presenter needs to introduce the next section and talk a little about the next part of the presentation before handing over. This helps the audience stay focussed and engaged on the journey, but also allows the next speaker to relax into their part of the presentation.

Third and final tip - when presenting in a group is make sure the audience is ALWAYS aware of who is in control during sections of the presentation. In an open discussion the conversation can often go off topic and colleagues can give their views and also engage in conversation with the audience – this is great! But as the lead presenter you need to ensure you always taking control of conversations and situations – parking certain conversations and focussing on YOUR agenda.