Present Like A Rock Star

One of the most important responsibilities you have as a speaker – regardless of whether you are presenting at a company meeting or a keynote at a major industry conference – is to finish your session on time. Finishing 30 minutes early can give organizers a heart attack, especially if you get zero or just a few questions after you finish. The more common timing issue is a speaker running over their scheduled time slot.

Whether you go short or long, both are disrespectful to the organizer, audience and the speakers that follow you. It also negatively affects your presentation as well as your brand as a public speaker. When you are running long, for example, you are typically forced to race through your last set of slides, forcing you to eliminate key points or examples you had planned. It also means, that there will be no time for the Q&A session, something many in the audience may have counted on.

Reasons speakers run long or beyond their allotted time slot:

• The organizer is behind schedule, due to earlier speakers running long or an inability to get the audience to the rooms on time. So you might actually start 5-10 minutes late to begin with.
• Unbeknownst to you ahead of time, the person introducing you decides to take 5 or more minutes to tell your life story for you and/or a story or anecdote of their own. Or they decide to summarize the event’s sessions up to that point.
• Not rehearsing at all or enough.
• Losing control of the time by allowing too many questions from the audience or taking too long to answer them.
• Having technical difficulties such as not getting a video to play or a Web site to load because of slow Internet at the venue.
• Having a co-presenter get long-winded on something you didn’t witness in the walk-through and rehearsals.
• You simply have too many slides.
• You ad lib much more than you expected on various slides.
• Beyond all of the above, you just lose track of time or don’t even monitor your progress.

Reasons for running well shorter than planned include:
• Simple inexperience and not knowing what to expect.
• Not having enough slides – you simply didn’t prepare enough material.
• You were nervous and spoke about twice as fast as you had expected.
• You read somewhere that you should plan for 3 to 4 minutes per slide, but your pace was half that rate or less.
• You didn’t rehearse and get any sense of your actual timing.

Here are some tips for finishing your presentation on time:

1. Estimate realistically your actual time available: Is this a new presentation or one that you’ve given several times? Have you factored in late starts, introductions, event announcements, questions during and at the end of your session, adlibbing and talkative co-presenters? In a 60-minute session, you might actually only have 40 to 48 minutes for your actual presentation.

Consider, for example, a late start of 2-5 minutes to allow everyone to return from the break. A moderator then reads your bio, asks the audience to fill out a survey after your session, and tells everyone where and what time the buses will depart for the museum tour and reception – taking another 2-5 minutes. Add another 3-5 minutes for questions during your session and 5 minutes more at the end during the formal Q&A period. That’s a minimum of 12, and perhaps as much as 20 minutes that you need to subtract from the time you have from your presentation.

2. Cut the fat: When reviewing and finalizing your slides, look for ones that are not absolutely vital to your presentation. Does your presentation lose anything if the slide or what you will talk about on that slide gets cut? Is it a slide that you can touch on the key points elsewhere? Keep in mind, however, that simply cutting slides doesn’t guarantee a shorter presentation. As you build confidence as a speaker you will find it becomes easier to ad lib and tell stories, negating any time reduction from fewer slides.

3. Rehearse, really rehearse: Rehearsing your presentation at least a few times as if you were actually presenting it on stage should give you a pretty realistic estimate of how long you will talk when live. I recommend to add at least a few more minutes for a 30-minute presentation and 5-7 or more for a 45-60 minute talk.

Be careful, however, to not base your estimate on simple walk-throughs of your slides. I once practiced a presentation while on my flight to the event – speaking silently to myself using a print out of the slides – and I timed my talk after two different walk-throughs at about 17-18 minutes for a 30-minute keynote. However, the next day I rehearsed in my hotel room speaking out loud, adlibbing as I might live and my talk came in at around 28 minutes three consecutive times. This was about 10 minutes more than the initial walk-throughs on the plane – a significant and potentially disastrous difference. My actual presentation went about 29 minutes.

4. Keep track of the time: Many event organizers will have someone in the room with signs letting you know you have 20, 10, 5 and zero minutes left in your session. But you can’t count on this or that the person with the signs is accurate. Increasingly, most podiums or floor presenter monitors will have time-synced lights – for example, yellow letting you know that you have 15 minutes left, orange or red meaning 5 minutes and flashing red meaning you are out of time.

Personally, I like to use a kitchen timer app on my iPad. This way I can control my own timing and watch my progression toward a specific target I’ve set. If you have a 60-minute session with a target of 5-7 minutes for Q&A, you might set your timer for 45 minutes. As the timer starts approaching a few minutes left and you still have 15 slides left you know you have to pick up the pace – but still have a few minutes of leeway. Use whatever approach works for you. I have a tendency to ad lib or take questions during my session – so I like to cheat and try to trick my brain into thinking I have less time than I actually do.

5. Plan for questions during and after your session: Depending on the size of the room you are speaking in and mood of the audience, you could receive several questions during your session. Decide in advance if you will have time to field questions while you are presenting or if they will have to be held off until the end after your session.

If you have a 45-60 minute session, you might want to plan for a combination of say 10 minutes for questions during and/or after the completion of your presentation. In shorter 20-30 minute sessions you may not be able to take any questions or limit them to very quick questions that clarify points to the audience or exchanges that validate key points. If you want to make sure that you leave plenty of time for Q&A figure that you may actually take 5-10 minutes longer than your most realistic rehearsal time.

6. Have a plan: if you have to pick up the pace or skip over slides, have a solid idea of which slides you can click past or cover in a few seconds. If you have slides that you had planned to elaborate on for several minutes, then know how you can make your key points in seconds rather than minutes. Or, if you are looking like you will end your session extremely early, have a few stories at the ready you can use to stretch your talk. Or perhaps you have a few questions in mind to ask the audience to get them talking and asking their own questions.

7. Ensure any use of video, audio or the Internet works as planned: If you plan to play video or audio or visit a Web site live, make sure everything works well in advance. Wasting a few minutes having the A/V person work on a problem or waiting for Web pages to load is painful for the audience, unprofessional and will cost you valuable minutes. Have a back-up if something goes wrong. Have screenshots of the Web site or video that you can just talk to and convey the key points of the video or site. Finally, consider eliminating the risk of things going wrong. Is a video really key to your presentation – or is it just a nice to have?

8. Be honest with yourself: If you speak fairly often you should have a good sense of your tendency to either go long, short or just about right. Use that track record to assess your time estimate. If you almost always go longer than planned, don’t assume that just because you have greater resolve to finish on time, that you will. Instead know your past and cut some non-critical slides.

9. Work at it: The best way to ensure you finish on time is simply to make it a priority and work at it. For years I had a bad habit of using every second of my allotted time for my presentation, or even going long and not allowing time for Q&A. I finally admitted to myself it was a problem and made finishing on time a key priority and changed how I estimated my presentation time … resulting in a great improvement in “on-time performance.”

10. Keep track: Create a simple spreadsheet where you track how many slides are in your presentation, the duration of your talk, and notes such as whether you had questions during or after, did you ad lib a lot or a little, how did your pace feel? Then calculate your average minutes per slide for each presentation and find your range. My average tends to fall around .75 minutes (45 seconds) per slide, or if you prefer 1.3 slides per minute. For 60 minutes this equates to about 80 slides.

Finishing your session on time is an important part of your growth and success as a public speaker. Follow the ten tips above and improve your “on-time” performance.

How many times have you heard a speaker – either on stage, or privately before or after they spoke – complain about one of the following time slots?:

• First session of the morning
• Right before the keynote speaker
• Right after the keynote speaker
• Just before lunch
• Right after lunch
• A breakout session up against a “main stage” session
• The last session of the day
• The session just before the cocktail reception
• The last session of the conference/event.*

Seriously? If you do the math, this means that the only “good” time slot at a conference is the keynote session.

This attitude is hogwash. Unless you are a consistent keynote-level speaker, then be happy with the time slot you get – deal with the cards you were dealt.

It is your job as a speaker to create a compelling session title and description, potentially work with the organizer on time slots and to build your brand as a solid speaker. These things may improve your time slot, if you are lucky.

But ultimately, your time slot is your time slot. You need to turn it into the best session you can for the attendees.

It is in fact your responsibility as the speaker to get the audience engaged in your presentation. A good speaker will get an audience excited regardless of timing and environmental factors. Saying “It was a dead audience” usually says more about your performance than the audience.

So what can you do differently based on your time slot? Most of my time slot examples above fall into 4 general audience challenges: 1) Sleepy/not awake; 2) Restless, anxious; 3) Extra high expectations; and 4) Fewer attendees than expected. Here are a few suggestions for each scenario:

1. Sleepy/Not Awake: If you are the first speaker of the day or follow lunch and you think the audience is a bit sleepy, then it is your job to wake them up. Have some fun and don’t be afraid to be spontaneous. Just do a few things to wake the audience up out of the gate:

• Jump off the stage into the audience
• Sing a few lines of a song
• Run around the audience
• Make up a mini-dance on the fly
• Make a humorous (or serious) comment about a previous session, the location of the event, the day if it has some significance
• Tell a joke
• Get the A/V person to play some raucous music to get the audience fired up.

2. Restless/Anxious: If you are standing between the audience and the cocktail reception or lunch, then you probably need to pick up your pace, shorten your ad lib stories and take the audience on a journey into the cocktail or meal time. It is your job to transition them into a nice lunch or the relaxing and anticipated end of the day. Hold their attention through a rapid fire approach, a list of tactics they can’t ignore or stories that captivate their attention.

Find ways to get the audience involved, skip or go more quickly than planned through slides that are not critical to the message. Do what you can to try and finish early and get the audience out of your session and first in line at the lunch buffet or drink line.

3. Extra high expectations: If you are following a great keynote speaker then you should use their session and passion as a set-up to your presumably more tactical session. Reference things that the keynote speaker said or key message points. Act like you planned your session to elaborate on what the keynote speaker said. Ideally you may have had a chance as a fellow speaker to meet the keynote speaker – reference conversation you may have had.

Act like you belong on the same stage as the keynote speaker … but don’t lose your mojo and feel you are competing with him or her. Stay focused on getting your message across clearly and simply with strong examples and stories. The keynote speaker may have made people laugh hysterically, or get emotional or simply have been entertaining or inspiring. But your opportunity may in fact be to take the audience’s excitement and provide them with examples and tactics to bring the keynote speaker’s vision alive.

4. Fewer attendees than expected: If you have a small number of audience members because your session is up against a more popular session or one of the last ones of the conference you should plan a more intimate approach to your session. It likely isn’t your fault that your session has a small number of attendees, so don’t dwell on it to yourself or with the audience.

Try to get the audience members to move closer to the front and closer to each other, creating the appearance and feeling of a smaller room. (See Turn a Small Room Into an Intimate Conversation.)  Try to get the audience involved – asking questions, providing suggestions on where you should focus most, even contributing their own experiences and views. Be careful, however, that your session doesn’t get derailed by one or two people in the audience. The others in the room will still expect you to deliver on the promised topic (and rate you based on that).

Whatever the situation is for your session, don’t blame the audience or time of day. Kill the excuses. Understand the context of your time slot and run with it, even turn it into an advantage if you can.

* The one exception I might have to the “there is no bad time slot” rule is when you have the last session/time slot of a 2- or 3-day conference and most everybody has headed to the airport. This can be a bit disheartening when you think about all the time you put into your presentation. But it is what it is. Perhaps use the opportunity to experiment, take some risks. But be a professional, make the best of it and leave the few attendees in your session remarking that it was one of the best sessions of the conference and they are glad they stayed until the end.

Kicking off your presentation with something fun, different and even spontaneous can be a great way to break the ice with the audience, get their attention and give you confidence and energy from the outset.

I use this technique to open most, but not all presentations. I typically reserve this for larger and main stage presentations and less so for breakout room environments – drawing too much attention to your self in a small room usually doesn’t make as much sense.

Areas I look for inspiration include:

• Items located on stage or in the room
• TV shows from the previous night or current/breaking news
• Local or national sporting events
• Local culture, language or music
• Walk-up music

Sometimes inspiration or planning may come as you prepare your presentation, but often it may occur shortly before or even as you walk on stage. Examples of things I’ve done over the years include:

• At an event held in an Atlanta office building housing start ups I noticed several large Razor-type scooters sitting in a corner of the lobby. I was co-presenting with a client and asked her if she would be comfortable making our entrance on the scooters. She said yes and so we went with it, fortunately with neither of us falling or making fools of ourselves.

• Shortly before going on stage at an event in New York City, I noticed American flags on each side of the stage. The event was held on an anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and my co-worker and I who were delivering a joint keynote, decided to walk on stage waving the flags. It was spontaneous and serious, but it felt like the right thing to do at the moment.

• In San Francisco a few days after the San Francisco Giants baseball team won the 2010 World Series and day of the celebration parade, I ran on stage waving my orange World Series towel. That was an easy decision since I live in the Bay Area, went to one of the games and am a lifelong Giants fan.

• I’ve started presentations several times by singing a line or two from a song or dancing a few steps in response to the walk-up music. Once in London about 5 minutes before going on stage it came to me to sing a few lines of the Beatle’s “Hard Days Night.” I changed a few words to reflect my talk: “It’s been an email days night.”

This approach is not with out its risks. The audience may not get the joke, reference or be receptive at that moment to your stunt. Or you may simply not execute well or have equipment failures. A couple of examples of where my opening didn’t go as well as planned include:

• Singing “It’s been an email days night” in London went OK, but the audience seemed a bit unprepared for my singing and didn’t show much emotion – positive or negative. Anticipating the potential of little reaction, I asked a table of American co-workers to jump up and act like crazy teenage Beatle’s fans from the 60’s.

• In Amsterdam I was the keynote speaker for an event called the “Sexy Email” conference. I asked the A/V person to play Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” – which seemed a simple request since he actually had the song. But as I walked on stage to sing along, the A/V person botched playing the song … so he had to restart the song. That gaffe took all the surprise and fun out of my karaoke-like singing … and so instead of a laugh from the audience I had to apologize because of the A/V person’s mess up.

Don’t be afraid to go with your gut and instinct to try something fun as you open your talk. Even if your attempt doesn’t go exactly as planned, you should have the audience’s undivided attention.

In Surviving a Room the Size of a Large Airplane Hangar, I talked about the challenges of speaking in a very large room and how I approached the challenge at a specific conference. In this tip I look at the opportunities to turn a small room into the equivalent of a fireside chat.

The Small Room

When your session is in a small room, such as for breakout sessions or client, prospect or internal meetings, you have the opportunity to create a truly intimate experience for the attendees. Your approach should be very different from the example in my earlier tip of dealing with a gargantuan-sized room.

As with any presentation, check the room out in advance and attend at least one other session in your or an identical room if possible. But at minimum, get there early to set up.

Assess:

1. What are the room’s acoustics like?
2. Is there a small riser for the stage or none at all?
3. Where is the presentation screen located – to the side of the stage, in the middle?
4. How is the layout of the room? Wide and short? Long and narrow?
5. How much room do you have to move around?

Armed with a good feel for the room you can plan your approach. The benefit of a small room is that it opens up several options to you, because of the intimacy of the audience.

Possibilities include:

• If the room acoustics and your voice permit it, and your session isn’t being recorded, consider not using a microphone. This let’s the audience know that your session is going to be more intimate, almost a chat with friends.
• If there is a stage or small riser, consider moving to the floor to be among the audience. You can either start your presentation from the floor or I often will jump off the stage. It can help to get the audience’s attention and to stop checking email. For me it us often just part of my shtick – but it signals that I want the audience to join me “on stage,”
• Don’t just stand in the front of the room, consider walking around among the audience. Bring your “presence” up close and personal.
• Read the faces of audience members. If you see someone nodding their head a lot, walk toward them and ask them a question. Get the audience involved in your presentation. Have them confirm your message or start a conversation.
• Be flexible. In a small room, especially for private events, you have the opportunity and challenge of the audience asking many questions or having dialog in your session. These diversions can take lots of time away from your planned presentation duration. I once had a small group turn a single slide I had planned to spend 1-2 minutes on into a 15-minute discussion. It was the best part of the event and presentation, and fortunately we had built in 30 minutes for Q&A at the end so we were OK on time. But also make sure you have a plan in advance on which slides you can either skip or go over very quickly so that you can still end on time.
• Use the screen as a prop. In a small room you can typically walk right up in front of the presentation screen and “annotate” aspects of various slides. I like to point to things, cover numbers up and then reveal them for greater effect. Use your imagination and spice it up.
• Use physical humor/body language. Because you are so close physically to the audience you can use facial expressions, body language and voice inflections and pauses to greater effect than if you are 100 feet away on a large stage. When you are walking around the room, have some fun and use your body, audience members, props in the room – whatever you can find and makes sense – to add life and an additional dimension beyond your slides.
• Handouts and gifts. Always make sure your marketing and events teams are involved. With a group of 25 versus 250, you might be able to print up copies of ebooks, white papers, put materials on USB sticks, provide gifts or toys, place business cards on every chair or desk, and other items that convey the more personal nature of the room or event.

While very large rooms are very exciting because you on a “big stage” and your message is reaching hundreds or more, small rooms and audiences present the opportunity to turn a presentation into a meaningful conversation and greater value for the audience. Make sure you are prepared to take advantage of that opportunity.

Please share any experiences or tips you have on presenting in small rooms.