Imagine for a moment that you were sitting down over coffee with a potential partner, and after some get-to-know-you chit chat you say, "so, tell me about your firm?"
On that prompt, your coffee partner pulls out a data sheet and starts reading it to you.
"What?!!?," you start thinking. But it continues.
A half-hour later, when your heart is about as cold as your coffee, he looks up and says, "So, any questions?"
While a bit dramatic, this is essentially what happens every day in online presentations. Web seminars. Webinars.
In a recent study I conducted about online presentation best practices, in one section of the survey I presented respondents with a question asking them what annoys them most about online presentations with seven potential responses.
Their top two responses made it look like the other five weren't even on the list:
"Presenter reads what is on the slides" and "Presenter reads a script."
So why is this the number two mistake in online presentations?
I've incorporated this research into my public and private webinar skills training. In one session to a European audience, Alice (her real name) submitted a comment noting, "But I present to audiences for whom English is a second language and they like it when I read the slides to them. It helps their comprehension."
My response: "Good job, Alice! You're obviously not making mistake number one - know thy audience."
An old adage on the sales floor is "people by from people." But that isn't just a sales tactic...it's the foundation of trusted communication. People aren't going to pay attention and engage, let alone trust your ideas, if you speak at them.
And their message for webinar presenters is clear:
TALK with me. Talk WITH me. Talk with ME.
About the Author
Roger Courville is the author of The Virtual Presenter's Handbook, blogger at TheVirtualPresenter.com, and principal of 1080 Group, an independent training firm that helps companies learn and optimize online presentations and webinars. Roger's a ten-year veteran of live remote training and presentations, and he and his team have careers that include working with hundreds of clients on thousands of webinars involving more than a million participants.
