35- The secret to an effective presentation introduction- Part 2

At this point in your presentation preparation, you’ve successfully established the connection between you and the audience, and explained why you are there. Now you need to lay-out the logistics of the presentation.

Let the audience know what to expect

People are busy and most presentations are scheduled, and advertised to attendees, to take place over a specific amount of time. Begin your presentation positively by letting people know how long the presentation is going to take. If you are scheduled to speak for an hour, let the audience know you respect their time and that you prepared your presentation accordingly. I often present topics to engineers at lunch events. Many of the people attending track their time by billable hours. In order to recognize this, I typically say “Thank you for spending your lunch with me. I appreciate your time and have prepared an hour-long presentation for you.”

Next, let people know what to do if they have a question. This can vary depending on the nature and size of the event, as well as the composition of your audience. In general, more audience interaction is better. Luckily, for most business presentations, the audience will be small and you can encourage interaction by letting them know that asking a question during the presentation is okay. However, if your audience is large, or there is a moderator for your presentation that has set a “ground rule” that questions be asked at the end of the presentation, you may need to ask the audience to hold questions. Whichever the case, telling your audience what to do if they have a question will make them feel more comfortable when they have a question.

To close your introduction, present your proposed agenda to the audience and get their “buy-in” on it.

Gain agreement on the agenda

Your proposed agenda should contain the topics you outlined during the research phase, and allow the audience to follow your presentation from topic to topic. You have an opportunity at the beginning of your presentation to show the audience what information you are going to cover. Notice I called it a proposed agenda. Even with all of the preparation you’ve done, you could still be missing the most important part your audience wants to learn about. It is critical to confirm that you are presenting meaningful information prior to starting your presentation. This can easily be done by confirming the agenda.

There are three steps to confirming the agenda. First, present the agenda as you outlined it. Second, ask the audience if they have any specific topics they want to cover. For example, you may say, “Your time is valuable so I want to be sure to use it well. Is there anything specific that anyone wants to learn today?” In my experience, often, a few people will raise their hands and provide questions they want answers to. Write these questions down and review them at the end of the presentation to confirm that you’ve addressed them appropriately. Once you’ve completed this step, ask the audience if they agree with your proposed agenda. This is as simple as saying, “Does that sound good?” once you’ve listed your agenda topics. Once you have approval from the audience to present according to the agenda you’ve laid out, continue into the body of your presentation.

There are two rules to gaining approval on the agenda. First, don’t ask for approval if you are not going to modify your content based on the feedback. I often have extra slides prepared in anticipation of the audience asking for more, or different, information. This shows them that I am truly interested in them and their needs. Second, be genuine about wanting audience approval. Asking for approval as a cursory item will appear fake and turn audience members off, completely backfiring from your intended purpose. If you see that one or more of the people in the group don’t nod or give another sign of approval, try again. Ask if anyone thought of an additional topic they want to cover. Usually, you can uncover the audience member’s reservation and address it by asking the question the second time.

Now that you’ve generated an introduction that engages the audience, it’s time to start working on the main body of your presentation. I’ll discuss how to set this up in the next blog.