 Hello everyone and welcome to today's webcast, Get In To Go! How to get your audience to take action. My name is Sarah Gonzalez and I'm from Redback and I'm your facilitator for today's session. So whether you're conducting a face-to-face presentation or a webinar like we are in today's environment, your intention is always to motivate people to take some kind of action, whether it's for lead generation purposes or educational purposes. Today we're joined by Lee Featherby from Powerful Points and he's here to discuss presentations, motivation and how we can all get more from our presentations and our webinars and webcasts. How are you today, Lee? Never been better. Great. It's been so, we've been working with you guys for such a long time now and I think it's four years since you've had you in this arena with a webinar. I think I was number two or even number one of the people you had, yeah. So a lot has changed then, obviously, for both of us. And I think a lot has changed for everyone online. Now it's all about digital communication, whether we are presenting online or even face-to-face sometimes. There is sometimes a digital component to it. And I think sometimes we get so caught up in the presentation itself and, you know, battling our nerves and stuff like that. We forget about the main core and the main reason why we're doing any of this, don't we? Exactly. We get so caught up in our own information and making sure they get it. We seem to forget the most important part, which is actually about the audience. Yeah, definitely. So just on that, let's get straight into the presentation. What is driving the change in terms of the way we communicate, whether it is face-to-face in a physical environment or perhaps in the online world? So one of the fundamental changes and everyone I speak to these days is working harder than they ever have in the past, right? Yep. So they're spending longer hours. Whoever said the PC would reduce our working hours obviously got it very wrong. But what has done is reduced the amount of support staff and made, we have more reports and that sort of thing. So we have more people reporting to us. We have just so much more to do. We also have so much more information on everything that we do. And the real challenge that we have is how do we identify what's the important information and how do we get that quickly and clearly so we can make decisions that are appropriate. And this is really where webinars and presentations and traditional PowerPoint approaches haven't been that effective because people sort of doing information overload, death by PowerPoint. So this is really what's going to drive a fundamental change. So people need information in easily digestible format and that's really what we're here to talk about today, largely. I love how you say death by PowerPoint because I feel like I've been hearing that for so many years now and everyone talks about it and everyone wants to move away from it but no one's really doing any of it is, are they? It's just still happening. It's one of those things that everybody knows is there shouldn't have a lot of text on the slide but yet we see it so often and what we've realised is people don't know how to make a change. So in our training program it's one of the things we actually address. In two programs, anything we carry across two programs is actually how to cut back text and identify and we'll touch a little bit on that again today as well. Okay, great. So just moving forward now, in the past we've had a few conversations and there seems to be a lot of talk around credibility versus capability. Now we've briefly discussed that but I think it's such an interesting topic. Can we just enlighten the audience on what we mean by that because I think it's going to make a lot of sense to a lot of people. Sure, sure. So I just want to start a few key concepts around what makes an effective presentation and firstly, the presentation is not about you. It's actually about what you can offer the audience. Okay, so you need to take the focus off yourself and start thinking when you're creating your presentation, why should they do this? Right, for them. That's number one. Number two is that you need to have a strong narrative and one of the things we talk about is the why. So you need to make sure that you focus on the why in your presentation and not just dive straight into the what because if they don't understand the why, they're not going to do the what. The other thing is that, as I said earlier, you need to make it nice and easy for them to get the key messages and to understand what's happening so how you craft your content is essential to getting a good result in your presentation and one that most people, surprise as many people, it's actually not about what they know. It's about how they feel about what they know and you really need to craft your content on around that area rather than just telling them a whole heap of information in a data dump. Is that where the passion really comes into it for a lot of presenters? I hope so. Yeah. Passion makes such a difference if you want to move people to action. If they're not passionate about it, that comes through. So that's why the most inspiring presenters are the people that are most passionate about things. I've actually just got something from Barb here in the chat box saying death by power point also known as killing me micro softly so I think a lot of people do understand what we're talking about. Absolutely. So yeah, let's talk a little bit more about that and how we can get around it as individuals and organisations. Sure. So before we start, you need to work out in any presentation what's an appropriate context for an outcome. We talk with a lot of technical people in particular and we say what would you like people to think do or feel at the end of your presentation? They go, I want to buy a product. But that's not actually appropriate in certain circumstances. For example, if you're responding to an RFP or an RFQ and you're doing the first presentation in what might be a series of them to present to have them buy your product is not an appropriate presentation outcome because they're just not going to do that. You're going to need to do something different to that because it doesn't matter how well you present. They're not going to say yeah, we'll do that. So the objective is to get to the next stage perhaps of the whole process. So your presentation objective should be about achieving that outcome. So understanding your outcome in the context of what's achievable is really, really critical. That's one of the main things. And I think just on that as well, the think do feel is important because I think a lot of people think about the think and do but the feel seems a little bit airy-fairy to a lot of people and they don't really think about how that's going to impact their whole presentation. Do they? Absolutely. And generally we find when people start a presentation the first thing they do is pick up, open the computer, start PowerPoint, start bashing away at staff, start looking for slides they've done in the past and you really need to spend the time. In fact, when we work with clients, we spend probably 40% of the time making sure that the objective is right, the content and the structure are correct before we even hand the work to our designers. It's also important to understand why people don't take action. So the first thing is they don't believe you. In other words, the evidence you've given in your points has not been believable. So you must make sure you've got the right evidence in your work. Secondly, they don't understand you. In other words, the narrative or the logic that you've given in your presentation isn't easy to follow or you've got too technical, right? You haven't explained the key concepts. It's not in their self-interest. In other words, this is not going to do it because they're going to end up unemployed or spend lots of money and not getting ready for money. They don't know what to do. In other words, you haven't spilled out the steps of what needs to be done in order for them to take action. And then the last one, which is really tricky one, is like, I don't have the money and that can be just an excuse. That can be one of two things. The first one is they haven't actually bought your value proposition. So I don't have the money. It's a great way to say, actually, I don't believe you. Or the other one is they might not actually have the cash and that's where financing options and things come up that become important in the process. Or it might simply be that they can't afford it. I mean, everybody wants a Ferrari, but not everyone can afford it. So it's quite possible that's the case. Yeah, exactly. But sometimes it is just an excuse for a lot of people, isn't it? Exactly. They don't really want to be honest. They want to say, no, I don't believe it. I don't like it. Okay, so this is where we're going before the capability and credibility. The capability and credibility. So most people, most of the presentations that we see sent to us start with about us. In other words, the presenter stands up there and talks about themselves. And really, the audience doesn't care. What the audience cares about is what difference can you make to my troubles to the things that are keeping me awake at night. So you need to focus on credibility, not capability. Capability is where when you make your proposal and they say, are you capable of doing this? That's when you can say, yes, we've done projects like this in the past. These are our client lists and that sort of stuff. See, nobody cares what you can do. They only care about what you can do about them. But the question is how do you establish credibility? So first thing you don't do is start talking about yourself. So if you've got an about us at the start of your webinar presentation, get rid of it and start putting the... I can't agree with that more. And I think anyone who's been on Red Back events before, we do research and it's all about, you know, why people attend, why people leave. And in the past, it was always about, you know, people are actually leaving because they're not interested in content or it's about the PowerPoint presentation and stuff. And people never used to speak about the fact that the presenters spoke way too much about themselves. That's now in the top two reasons why people actually leave an event because you get online and they spend the first few minutes talking about, you know, what their degrees are, what sort of letters they've got after their name on their business card. And as someone who's listening on the other end, I'm gonna say, okay, see you later. Board, move on. If you ask the right questions, if you approach the start of the presentation showing insight about their issues and their concerns, the rest of it falls away. The rest of it doesn't matter. They get that you know what you're talking about. So you don't need to put all of the stuff up there. Can you still include that in terms, so a lot of people still want, in terms of a branding exercise, maybe they still want stuff about their company as well. Or do you recommend maybe including that at the end or just scrapping it all together? Well, it's okay to have some of it, right? But most sales presentations or most sales webinars we see start with, you know, the company history, where their offices are, their clients, that sort of stuff. You just don't need that at the start with. You might want to talk about the presenter. Okay, like the person doing the presentation. But by sharing that you understand their challenges, that you can tell a relevant story about perhaps another client, maybe not in the same industry, who has, in the discussions you've had with them, had similar problems, how you fixed that. But if you start the focus of the presentation where it's about the audience, not about you dumping a whole lot of data and talking about you, but it's talking about their issues and their challenges and what's keeping them awake at night, they're going to start listening to you as they can see what's in it for them. Yeah, excellent. Now, we have, as well, spoken in the past, we had lots of conversations and something that's really helped me with the presentations that we do here at Redback is understanding the why. And you talk about buying the why. How can we elaborate on that? Because obviously you've got the what, why, how and where. But what do you mean when you say buy the why? So as we say, if they don't buy the why, they're not going to buy the what. Let's talk into it. We were working with a client a couple of months ago who was recommending the merger. Their company had just merged into, merged with another one and there were two marketing departments and her proposal was to merge the marketing departments into one and obviously the background conversation was that she should run it. Yep. And she started talking about a presentation about what they should do. And I said, no, no, you've got to give the background as to why. I mean, Simon Sinek talks about people as customers by the why before they buy the what. It's exactly the same in a presentation. They need to know why you're talking, why they're here. So the why drives everything and you need to talk about the why and the context of why you're making this proposal, why you're presenting, and then as you're going through each what, why are you doing that? So that because the why gives the context for everything that you're saying. If there's no context, there's near me no agreement. So you really want to start getting people agreeing on the why as you move into it. Definitely. And just on what we were saying before about credibility and capability, Sharon saying, talking about yourself it's like being on a really bad date. So I think if we can sort of compare these two real life situations, it is that, isn't it? When you go on a first date with someone, it's not about... They spend the first 20 minutes talking about themselves. How awful is that? Exactly. I think it's really about understanding in context like you said as well and all these sea words are starting to come together and fall into place. But understanding the context, understanding that you're capable but explaining it in a way that's going to benefit the audience online. Exactly. Exactly. They want to know you're capable when they choose to use you. They don't need to know that up front. And it's also very, very important that you start getting them to say yes. Yes. Early on in the webinar of the presentation because once they're used to saying yes and agreeing with you, there's more chance when you get to that call to action that they're going to say yes. If they haven't agreed with you throughout the presentation, they're going to throw up these nos. Before we move on to the next bit, just on that as well, we're talking about real life situations and at the beginning, you touched on storytelling. Now, I know that's a whole different topic and you could spend a whole day on storytelling. Easily. But I think a lot of people still don't understand the concept behind storytelling and it's not about, you know, reading a book to someone while they're on a webinar or while they're in a presentation, but sort of how do we use storytelling and frame up presentations just in, you know, a quick definition just to enlighten everyone. Okay, so there's two answers to that question. First, you need to remember there needs to be a story around your presentation. Now, when we talk about that, I'm not talking about, I sailed out in the seven seas and went through, you know, the whole thing. No, there needs to be a structure to it that there is, that you are going somewhere with the presentation, that there is actually an outcome to the presentation itself and something that you're selling or talking about. When it comes to stories as in terms of descriptions of certain things or pastings that happened, it's the theater of the mind, which is really, really strong and we very often advocate you don't use slides when people are telling stories because we really want them to be with the speaker themselves rather than looking at the slides. A case study is different but a story is really powerful and that too must demonstrate something that you're trying to point, you're trying to make. That relates to what the audience, they need to hear themselves in the story. Okay, excellent, good to know. Now I'll bring you back. Sorry if we're going off topic a little bit there. But over the last week as we had registrations coming through there was some information, some materials sent out and in that you did speak about, you said it's not about the knowing. Okay, so what do you also mean by that? So a classic case is, oops, we've gone to black there. So it's not about what they know, it's about how they feel. A classic case of that is who doesn't know how to lose weight. Now knowing about it actually won't have you lose weight. Everyone that's listening today, if they're right down how you lose weight I'm sure they could give a detailed story and there'd be a percentage of those people that are struggling with their weight one way or the other. So it's not about the knowing. It's not about the knowing what is it about. Okay. So if you do a webinar or a presentation that just focuses on telling people stuff like doing a data dump then you're not going to change anything because you need to change their relationship to that information. I mean the classic case I often use is smoking. Smoking is that one everybody knows you shouldn't smoke. Yet some people do and some people don't. So what's the difference? It's obviously the relationship they have to that information. So you as a speaker or a presenter in webinars need to understand that it's not about just telling them stuff it's about the context in which you put that it's again getting back to the why. I took this photo when I was in Singapore a couple of years ago now and it's all about data. 550 new buses are here with 450 more arriving and you're left with so what? Because it's all about the data. How's that going to help me? I've cheated here because I've got a whole series of graphic artists that work for me so the organisation I've actually taken the key part out of it but this is what the full sign actually said. So you get home sooner for playtime. So this now gives the information a whole new context and a whole value about having 550 new buses and 450 more arriving. But most presentations or most webinars just deal with the top stuff. They don't actually deal with what does that mean to the person in context of what's important to them. Well I think it's about really understanding and if we go back and talk about death by PowerPoint a lot of us feel like we need to put all this content in there and sometimes it's sort of the why or the knowing or the putting it how we're going to help people gets lost because we've got so much content on our slides and we all know that we shouldn't really do it. What advice can you give us to help with this slide content to make sure that we punch you we're straight to the point we're talking about the so you get home sooner for playtime in our own context. Yeah and it's interesting because everybody again one of those things everybody knows as you see you shouldn't have a lot of content but everyone we see so much of people supplying that information with just data heavy stuff. So it's really really important to spend time crafting your content not only is that your narrative that you're going to create but it's also how people are going to eventually be able to understand the information. Alright so first we need to start with looking at memory there's two forms of memory there's verbatim memory or gist memory in presentations the most powerful one is actually gist memory in other words is the person going to get the gist of what I'm saying and they're going to understand So they don't need to remember every single thing you're saying? Absolutely not I mean this is not university even in the educational space when you're doing a training webinar there might be some requirement that they have a verbatim understanding of a process in really critical stuff but the presentation is not where they're going to learn that right you need to support that with material like a document of some kind that they can go away and learn they're not going to learn in the presentation it's not the space but like in the classroom in the university that sort of stuff you don't learn in the lecture itself you actually get the gist of something and then you go away and read your textbooks or the handout material and that sort of stuff and actually get a better understanding So if you start from the point of view that what I need the person to get is the gist of the information and I need them to believe it so your evidence is very, very important to get that So you then get this opportunity to cut down on a lot of all the detail of bullet points and identify just your key messages One of the key things that we say is why do you actually create a slide and we'll ask this in our training programs and most people can't answer it it's just like to remind me what to say which is what it's not about We create a slide for one reason only and that is to deliver all evidence a key message and the next question is if that's the case what do we put on that slide and we put on that slide a key takeaway You need to remember whether it be a webinar or a presentation that what people are seeing unlike a printed document you is to be delivered in conjunction with a speaker if you give them a printed document they go right and read it on their own they're not going to have you there or the presenter there to actually give context and meaning to it but with a presentation or a webinar both are working together so you need to understand to create your content consistent with that working together So we have a saying in the organisation that says there's things to be said versus things to be read we obviously have a lot of things that we say in our company to give us guidelines and also for training purposes So you'll see that icon there is a coffee cup and the story we say is create a slide for the things that you want them talking about and remembering when you've left the room and they're having a cup of coffee talking about your presentation The speaker's job if you just have key messages and key takeaways we know and all the research says if you deliver something audibly and visually at the same time you increase recall So if you have your key message up there and you say that at the same time you're going to increase recall what the speaker does is to give context and meaning for that So that's where they get the gist of it So they understand it and because of what you've said they actually give context and meaning for that They don't need all the bullet points to remember the exact why it's there So there's bullet points that's getting in the way of the communication So focus on your slides on just what the key takeaway is and then you as the speaker give context and meaning to that I think, yeah, before I watch anything or on a webinar or before I go into a presentation I always try and say if I can walk out of here with three key takeaways then I've done quite well and one of them already is said versus read so I'll be remembering that one Fantastic Now before we... My daddy's done Yeah, you can go now It's fine, I'll take over Before we get on to design which I think everyone's really interested in seeing just got a few questions coming through that are quite relevant to this part of the conversation So if anyone does have any questions please type them through and we will get to them in an hour's sleep So first of all from Simone So what are your thoughts on using video within PowerPoint presentations? So our philosophy about using anything is if it moves the audience towards the outcome that you want to have in other words it moves them towards thinking, doing or feeling what your objective is then definitely use it, right? Just make sure it's relevant make sure ask yourself if I don't have it will it slow down that process if I do include it will it make that faster or more effective So like one of the things I say never use is sound for example don't have sound effects because hopefully you left those behind in university but if anything that works moves the people towards it then you should use it Because I've seen a few people use videos to start with as an ice breaker or something beforehand just to sort of set the scene and make people laugh and relax them does that work? Obviously it works whether you can use it all the time whether it's relevant it's one thing I remember years ago having a client send me a presentation they want to do and every five or ten slides there was some sort of cartoon in there and I said to him like why is the cartoon there? and he said I want to keep them entertained and engaged and I sort of sat there silently for a couple of seconds and really wondered whether he got the point that we don't want people remembering the cartoons which is what they will do but your job as a speaker is to have it be engaging there's no such thing as poor content one of the best speakers I ever saw was a guy by the name of Steven Lafever and in a past life I used to run a franchising company before I started this one and it was in the automotive industry and these guys had left school basic at 15 or that sort of stuff and they'd become franchisees and we were producing a balance sheet for them every month but they weren't using it so Steven is an ex-banker who taught people how to read a profit and loss in a balance sheet and I told them that we were told our franchisees we were going to have a conference down in Margaret River at that stage and I was going to fly this guy over in the US and we were going to spend three days talking about profit and loss in balance sheets you could hear the groan there might be some people online who do that sort of but yeah I can imagine the yet he held them spellbound and engaged and entertained talking about such dry material for three days and they all were wrapped and walked away so it's never the material it's always the presenter and like we said earlier if you've got that passion about something then it's going to obviously resonate with everyone you can make anything enjoyable you can give your life to it okay another question so from Juan in regards to slide contents this might sort of segue into the next topic very often I have to build slides that will be used as visual support during a presentation the slides will be used at a later stage as a reference document for example in a corporate annual results presentation how do you deal with finding the right balance between what is said and what has to be written on the slides excellent question I always struggle with that one so there's two ways to go about that and one of the little red herrings being thrown in there is for a corporate AGM I think or anything so we need to be a little bit careful around that and I suppose AGMs is one of my bug bears because they're very old fashioned in their approach they put up lots of tables and lots of numbers and that sort of thing so here's what we recommend that you do there's a couple of ways you can go about this you can create a highly complex presentation it's got all the data and then you save that and you open it again and you take all the detail out of it so that they look similar and then for the take away you use the one with lighter weight slides as your presentation but you give them as a take away the heavy weight slides that's one option the other option is that you actually create the presentation as a presentation but you put all your narrative in the note section and you create the note section as a PDF and you give them rather than give them the slides you give them the notes you print the notes or you email them the notes with the narrative in the note section so they can see the slides as you saw them and there is basically your words as a narrative reinforcing what's said in there but as I said before a presentation is designed or a webinar is designed to be seen with a speaker if you try and do something that can be read without the speaker you're going to end up with something that doesn't work well in either case you're going to end up with something that doesn't work well as a document and doesn't work well as a webinar as a presentation and we've been doing this for a very long time and we've never been able to do it successfully so I think I speak with some confidence in saying that that's the challenge you're going to have and there isn't really any way around it apart from those ways or you produce a whole document separate to the presentation itself There's going to be more work and I think you're always going to have those more detail orientated people that want that extra bit, don't they? Yeah, particularly on technical issues and that sort of stuff they might need it but it's ultimately about the communication but if you give them something that's got the technical details in it but not up on the screen because not everyone in the presentation is also into the technical side of things so you're going to lose them and also technical needs more time to absorb so they need to do it when they can sit down and have a look at it on their own most of the time Okay, conscious of time so going to go quickly into the next section which is very important and that is why is design important now obviously your business a lot of what you do is about designing slides and making sure that they resonate with the audience but is it just about putting your logo on there and making them look pretty? How does design work? What should we do? What are the dos and don'ts? Okay, so design is critical and fundamentally for this because people don't make decisions on things they don't remember, right? A couple of years ago we were working with the Australian Stock Exchange a recliner but they had a whole series of CEOs doing six presentations or eight presentations in a row and I attended the first one of these and I walked away after the event with no idea who said what, right? Because you need to stand out you need to be remembered because if they don't remember you then they're not going to make a decision in your favor particularly if you're in a situation where you might be presenting in one of six or a whole series of presentations you need to stand out and you need to brand as opposed to have your logo on there we actually don't advocate having your logo on every slide the reason being firstly your logo is no more your brand than your face is you there's a lot more depth to you than that so you should definitely have it branded that's very, very important the reason you don't have a logo is what I refer to as domestic blindness you see the marks on the wall when you first move into a place but six weeks later what marks on the wall we're designed to notice change so if you have the logo on the same place so you need to make sure that your messages are crystal clear that it's easy to find those messages on your slides that you don't just look like everybody else that went before you or after you because people are not going to remember your message your company, your webinar anything like that so it does need to reflect your brand it does need to good design helps communicate more powerfully for you and helps you be more memorable great, is there somewhere where we can go to look at some good designed PowerPoint slides I'd like to say a gallery page besides the ones that are on here right now but you do have a gallery page we do have a gallery page there is a couple websites believe it or not really surprising that websites actually exist one's called SlideShare SlideShare.net which has a range of presentations on it and it's really interesting I've never heard anyone say I'm really looking forward to going into a presentation another presentation and yet websites exist where people can go and look at presentations SlideShare has some good ones problem with SlideShare and one of the things that we advocate is you need to animate because you need to manage what people are thinking about and the animations on SlideShare they just don't exist they really just transition from one slide to the other so hopefully that's an evolution that's coming but you'll see some good examples there great okay before we get to questions the big part that we all want to hear about is the call to action so how do we reinforce this how do we really get people to take action at the end of an event or whenever you want them to okay so there's two ways that I want to talk about people taking action and the first one is in a webinar I would suggest in my experience that we want people to take action at some later stage in other words again in my experience with webinars I'm not going to get them to make a buying decision or something in a webinar but I might be a training exercise something similar to this I want them to change their attitudes later whereas in a presentation it might be and now time to make a decision so let's start with the one around later so you need to make sure that you use memory triggers in context of where they are so guys the next time you start a presentation and you open your PowerPoint I want you to think about everything that we've covered today that sort of stuff needs to be brought into it we do know and the science does tell us that if people write down their actions there are three times more likely to implement it so at the end of your webinar or presentation you might get them to say I want you to write down the three things you're going to do differently as a result of today's actions then you might get them to send it to someone who's important like their boss so very often we're training and they want you to write down the three things you're going to do differently as of today and we want you to email it to your boss and CC me because again they're making a public declaration about the things you're going to do differently and finally it helps to give them some sort of visual checklist that they can take with them because again as we mentioned a presentation is about generally about getting the gist of it you might have some steps or some processes but they're not going to remember that in and of itself in a presentation you really need to give some support material which will aid recall after the event the other thing you might have is what if you need them to make a decision today, you're doing a presentation to your management committee you're doing a presentation to your board to a client that sort of stuff so hopefully throughout the presentation you've been getting them saying yes so that they're agreeing with the why they're agreeing with your justifications your rationales for the things that you're suggesting once the people are used to saying yes it's easier to get them to say yes if you've got a whole audience that's going no and you're going to get them to change it's impossible for you to do that so getting them to say yes throughout the presentation is very very important you need to think about in your call to action as I said what's an appropriate decision what can I expect them to say today on the basis of things I've presented they're not going to spend $5 million with you on the basis of one presentation it's obviously going to be a process so what's an appropriate decision in the process to move to the next step to agree on a course of action to go on a baffo your best and final offer discussion that sort of thing how can you minimize the risk everyone is risk averse so what can I do in this that's going to minimize the risk can I give them a trial sample can I give them a one-way test can I give them the puppy dog sale they never want to give it back so how can I minimize the risk for them and importantly you need to outline what needs to be done from here if you give that as a process you've got more control over what's going to be done from here rather than we'll get together next week to discuss how you say from here we need to do A, B and C excellent makes a lot of sense so we're going to go to some questions now but just on this I want to quickly take action and make sure everyone is across that we do actually have some resources for people now so in the resources tab in the bottom right corner of the screen right now and this is another way that you can get people to take action in your webinars and your webcast is to actually use the platform and the features there so you can download a copy of the checklist that you're actually providing people so there's a link to that there's also a link to a webinar organizer handbook so if you are looking to get people to take action during webinars then this will give you everything you need from setting up your campaigns to get people to register to use in tools within the platform as well so a few handy guides in there there's more we actually ask you what three things you're going to do differently from today and we will follow you up with it in a month or so just to see where you've implemented those changes and it's great to be held accountable for something I feel like if you're going to invest maybe half an hour or 45 minutes of your day for your own personal development which is what this is make yourself accountable for it learn something from it and invest in yourself well you're certainly more likely to make change if you've said to people this is what I'm going to do it's like I'm going to give up smoking I'm going to give up smoking tell everyone they're going to say I thought you were going to give it up or is it going to do differently and we'll follow them up before we get to your final thoughts we are going to go to some questions now so any questions about the way you're currently doing things what you're thinking that you might do in the future differently feel free to ask them and we'll ask Lee while he's here on the couch otherwise if you do need to go we understand can you please fill out the exit survey which is located in the tab next to the PowerPoint your feedback is obviously going to help us with our events moving forward and both of us really absolutely so while we go to some more questions and everyone else is typing theirs what is your take on polling and interactivity options with audiences and thank you Gloria because I was going to ask that one if you didn't I think that's a fantastic invention and I think that because more interactive you can be in a presentation more engaging it's going to be the last thing people want to do is just stand up and be spoken to so it used to be expensive it's come down a lot in price you now get things that work inside of phones and that sort of stuff but again it's about achieving the outcome if it supports you achieving the outcome do it if not if it's a gimmick if you're doing anything to take away from the outcome you will pay big price for it at the end of the day I think it's interesting you say that because obviously here we see a lot of people do really really great online events and then some not so great and I think a lot of people just to think that there's interactive tools there there's polling there's Q&A and they have to use it as much as possible because it's going to engage people but if it's not relevant and really like you said it does take away from that whole experience and the real engagement is that presenter engaging with that online audience isn't it absolutely absolutely so definitely have a think about that one Gloria and every audience and every presentation is going to be different so Sanjay so tips that we've spoken about today can they be used written communications or business cases absolutely yeah look we actually get that a lot when we're training people they say to us what we've covered today really can be used in our communications around emails or the way we run meetings and that sort of stuff I mean if you write an email or you write a letter or anything like that you should really be clear about what's the purpose of it yeah you need to make in your letter really clear what the communications are so you need to make your points easy to find and easy to understand and well justified so yes the short answer that is definitely okay great and also from Simon so he's asked in relation to getting slides created what if you don't know what if you've got people within your organization who create them for you and you don't necessarily have any design authority over them so I think I think a lot of organizations have templates that they're forced to use so if a template was a source of good design then we'd all have good design because most organizations yeah have a corporate template unfortunately they don't lead to that because again it's not about the templates about the structure and the strategy and understanding what you need to understand the communication process so I'm not quite sure what Sanjay's making the point Sanjay's making in that question but if you Simon yeah Simon I apologize Simon Simon's making that question if you've got no authority you've got no authority but you need to create change so maybe you need to give them presentation on changing the presentations yeah that would be great they'd all sign up for that one no doubt okay well that brings us to the end with all the questions that we have so far but people can contact you directly if they have any more questions about the current way they're doing things final thoughts before we leave Lee what are the what's the one thing that you want people to walk away here with today what do you want them to go and pass on to their colleagues just to think about what they're delivering and what they're including in their presentations just think about the outcome and what's the best way to do that how can I make it simple we find a lot of organizations we work with do things away because they've always done it so they have monthly meetings where they might be reporting on progress and that sort of stuff and it's a regurgitation the same month of new screenshots and that sort of stuff and we say to them do you really need to cover all this and they say no so what we've started advocating with them is that those 30 minutes they had to do everything they've got 10 minutes to identify what the audience needs to be updated on from the last meeting right they need more time than that they need to book that time in advance of the meeting so they still have all the information given the appendix and that sort of stuff but they just focus on what's the key bits we're all too busy to be told unnecessary information to make it hard to find to make it nice and sharp, concise, easy to get the messages across for people to understand and you will be considered an amazing presenter which is critical to career success excellent great it's been great having you on I think we've all learnt something and definitely two or three things that I can take away and put into practice right away just got a little note from Victoria can you please email the report checklist email which you will receive within 48 hours with a copy of the recording we will send a link to that checklist so you can then put down your items what you want to achieve and then also if you want any more information from Lee his details will be on there as well but otherwise thank you for joining Lee a pleasure once again I can't believe we left this long between conversations but we won't let it happen again and thank you everyone online for joining today's event keep a look out for the recording and we hope to see you at future business skills events bye for now