431-SYB-Tech-Presentations.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Carol Cox:
Make sure your tech presentations keep your audience engaged and not glazed over with my do’s and don’ts on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses, running for office, and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur, and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies, and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is speaking your brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I’m your host, Carol Cox. If you have a tech centric presentation coming up, this episode is for you. I’m going to share with you what to do and what not to do, to make sure that your audience feels engaged, that they don’t feel overwhelmed and that they know what to do next with the information that you’ve shared with them. Now, earlier in my career, I was a software developer and a technology strategist. I found it in ran two tech companies, so I have presented at a lot of technology conferences and events. And now with AI, I’m building some AI apps for speaking your brand. Stay tuned for that. But I’m also starting to go to more technology conferences to talk about that. So I wanted to share with you the best practices of what I’ve learned over the years and what I’m doing right now, so that your tech presentations are successful.
Carol Cox:
And this applies if you’re in technology software. I also science, healthcare, academia, anything where you’re presenting kind of data rich information because your audience doesn’t just want more information, they want to understand why this matters to them and what to do with it next. This is how you’re going to attract clients. So if you’re doing presentations for lead generation and brand awareness, this is how you’re actually going to get leads and clients from your presentations as well as getting referrals for more speaking opportunities. And I’ll tell you at the end of this episode, the one thing I never, ever do in my technical presentations and how I learned this lesson the hard way years ago. Now, if you would like to work with us to make over an existing presentation that you have that you know is good, but you need to take it over the line, you need to get it so that it’s actually generating leads and clients for you or those other speaking opportunities. Or maybe you want to create a presentation from scratch from beginning to end using our proven framework. Click on the links in the show notes or go to speaking your Brand.com under the work with us. Navigation menu. Reach out. Schedule a call with us. We always enjoy talking to podcast listeners. Let us know what goals you have, what speaking engagements you have coming up, and then we can chat about how we can work together.
Carol Cox:
Now let’s get on with the show. I’ve sat in the audience for a lot of tech presentations over the years, and here’s what I see is fundamentally missing. That will take your presentation from something where people are kind of interested in to something that they are raving about, and that is what’s in it for them. What’s in it for the audience? So often, especially for those of you who are founding tech companies, who are creating software or creating AI apps, you love your product, you love the app, the software that you’ve created, and you can see how beneficial it will be for your customers and your clients. But you’re a little bit too attached to the features and the functionality of your software or your app. Instead of taking a step back and really focusing the A presentation on the audience. What are their goals related to what your software can help them to do? What current challenges do they have to reach those goals? So do they not have time? Do they not have the right skill set and not have the right team members? Whatever your software is going to help them fix? And then what is the vision that you’re going to paint for them of the better world that you imagine, not only the better world for them, for their own selves and their team and their company, but the better world overall.
Carol Cox:
Now, I know this sounds very pie in the sky. You may be thinking, well, I just want to share my software, my app. I just want to give them a demo. But that’s not enough. You really need to pull them in to your journey, but then also recognize and validate to them that you understand where they’re at in their journey. So I’m going to share with you three quick things you can do right now. Just open your slide deck and do them. And then after that I’m going to share with you three other things to do that are going to require a bit more thinking, but that are going to transform your presentations when you deliver them. So first, the three quick things to do. So you can go open your slide deck. And the first thing to do is right after you’re welcome. Title slide. So you’re welcome. Title slide should have the title of the presentation, your name, your contact information, a QR code to your website or LinkedIn or wherever you want to send people. So you have that on the title slide right after your welcome title slide. Put a second slide. That’s an audience question. You want to get the audience engaged right away. People are looking at their phones or they’re chatting with the person next to them, or they’re kind of milling about. So when you start your presentation after you’ve been introduced, you want the audience to focus on you kind of eyes to the front of the room.
Carol Cox:
You’re getting started. So ask the audience a question right away. I like to ask a question that gives me a sense of who is in the room. So that way I can kind of tailor on the fly what I’m sharing with them and what I’m explaining to them. Let me give you a couple of examples. A few weeks ago, I delivered two presentations related to AI, but to two very different audiences. The first presentation was for an higher education conference about how I’m integrating AI into the business and marketing classes that I teach. So the very first question I asked the audience was, show of hands. How many of you teach only online? Okay, so those people raise their hands. How many of you teach only on campus, so only in your physical classroom classes. And then how many of you are hybrid? You teach both. Okay, so that just kind of gave me a little bit of a sense of who was in the room and where they’re teaching, because that’s going to impact them. The examples that I share related to how to integrate AI. If everyone in the room raised their hand that they all teach only on campus, that is going to be very different than people who also teach online. So that gave me a sense of who’s in the room, but kind of also let everyone know that the presentation was starting.
Carol Cox:
Now, another presentation that I gave recently was at an AI meetup. So this was for people who are entrepreneurs, software developers, people who are curious about AI. So a broad range of people in the audience. So the first question I asked them was show of hands, how do you feel about ChatGPT? So the first one was, okay, so I love ChatGPT. Please do not take it away from me. I’ve come to rely on it. I use it every day like I do not want to give it up. So how many people in the audience feel that way? And then the second one was how many of you are like, well, I use it, but I can kind of take it or leave it. Okay, show of hands. And then how many people were like, I don’t really care about AI. If it went away tomorrow, I could care less. Okay, show of hands. So I had actually a mix of all three of those groups when people raised their hands. So that kind of gave me a sense, again, of the broad range of people who were in the audience. And then I also then I asked a follow up question a few minutes later, which was, if you could automate one thing in your life or your work, what would it be? And this was something that people could answer out loud. So I would call on people. If you could automate one thing in your life or business, what would it be? So people kind of answer different, different ways.
Carol Cox:
And that also gave me a sense of who was in the room. So that’s the very first thing quickly to do. Put a second slide right after your title slide to ask the audience a question. The second quick thing to do is move your about me or about your company. Slide to slide number three, 4 or 5. It should not be the second slide, because that’s not where the audience question is. So often when I go to any type of presentation, whether it’s tech focused or not, the second slide is usually all about the speaker. There are all their logos or their credentials, and that is fine. You want to have those credibility markers, but you want to move it down a few slides from the beginning, because you first need to show to your audience that you understand where they’re at, what they want, and what’s getting in their way. You need to validate and empathize with them. You need to build that sense of trust and connection first, and then they’re going to be more interested in who you are and how you can help them. So how I tend to do this again around those slides, three and four is then I’ll either share with them kind of what I think their goals are, or even I could ask them questions about their goals like that. If you could automate one thing question, it’s similar to that.
Carol Cox:
Or I could ask them what challenges they’re facing related to whatever their goals happen to be. So again, I’m kind of getting a sense of where the audience is at, and I’m validating that I understand where they’re at. Sometimes I’ll also include a story of my own to to share that. So then after I do that, then I’ll have my credibility slide with logos clients I’ve worked with like fortune 500 companies, credentials, whatever happens to be appropriate for that presentation. So that’s quick thing number two move your about me slide to slide number three 4 or 5. Five. The third quick thing to do in your slide deck is at the end of your presentation, a slide or two before your thank you slide. So your thank you slide should pretty much be a duplicate of your title slide. So you have again your contact information that QR code, etc.. But then before that you want to add a slide with next steps. So something the audience can do. That’s a quick win to help them to build momentum based on what they just learned from your presentation. A lot of times when we’re presenting, we give the audience a whole bunch of information, but then we leave them to kind of make sense of what to do next. Instead, give them 1 or 2 next steps that they can take, things that maybe only take 15 minutes.
Carol Cox:
Again, you want it to be something they can do relatively quickly, because you also want them to keep what you just shared with them front of mind and keep working on it. So give them something that’s a quick win. For an example for me towards the end of my presentation, I invited the audience to pick something to automate based on what they just learned from all these different automation scenarios that I had shared with them. I said, pick something to automate and then go write down the steps like the 5 or 10 steps that would take to automate that thing that you do all of the time, and then go start building that in one of those automation workflow softwares that I shared with them. So that’s an example of a quick win. Give your audience the next thing to do. Now let’s get into three other things to do that require a bit more thinking. But again, are going to take your presentation from oh okay. Well that was an interesting piece of software to wow, I can really see the vision of this presenter and their company and where they want to go. And I’m excited to be a part of it because that’s what you want. You want that energy and excitement because that’s not only going to get you the leads and the clients, it’s also going to get people talking about your presentation on social media and getting you referrals for other speaking engagements.
Carol Cox:
So the first thing to do here is to make sure that you’re sharing in your presentation your unique perspective on the topic. What do you see as possible? So yes, your audience wants to learn. So they want to learn about your software or whatever technology, or if it’s in science and healthcare, they want to learn what you’re sharing. But even more so, they want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger. Not just hearing facts and information, but being invited into a bigger vision. So invite the audience in. Show them how smart they are, not just how smart you are. And you do that by asking a lot of show of hands questions along the way, or by asking short questions that they can participate in. You also want to share with them at the beginning of your presentation, and then mention it throughout, and then wrap it up at the end. Is that vision of what you see as possible. So in that presentation that I delivered at an AI meetup, I talked about how AI agents in particular are going to fundamentally change the nature of work, the nature of the kind of work that most of us do. So I kind of shared this picture of what is possible, of letting the robots I call AI the robots, letting the robots do the computer work so we can do the human work so we can get back to the human work and let the robots take care of, like, all the software and all the data entry and all that kind of stuff.
Carol Cox:
Yes, it is going to be a big transition, but again, that vision of what is possible. So even though I showed specific AI agent workflows that I’m creating and using and speaking your brand, but it was still tied to this bigger perspective, this angle I have about the fundamental change that we’re seeing in the nature of work and what that’s going to mean. So that’s number one. What is your unique perspective on the topic? What do you see as possible? What’s that bigger vision? The second thing is storytelling. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you’re not surprised that, of course, that I would mention storytelling. Even if you’re doing a tech demo, when you’re showing software screenings or you’re showing your app, or if you’re in science and healthcare and you’re showing graphs and data and statistics, put a human face on it, your audience is not going to remember all of those bullet points and those data points, but they will remember a story that made them feel something and made them relate it to something in their own lives. Stories work so well because they create an emotional connection. They make abstract concepts concrete, and they help people retain and retell your message. Now, when you’re sharing your stories, you want to be specific. So use names, places, let people know where were you? What was going on? Were you talking to someone else in particular? Who was that person? What was at stake? So what was the what were the emotions going on? And then what was the lesson or the transformation from that particular story? Let me give you an example.
Carol Cox:
In the healthcare space, one of our recent Thought Leader Academy graduates works for a healthcare hospital system, and when we worked with her on her signature talk, she wanted to talk about how the hospital is expanding to to provide more labor and delivery rooms and NICU beds in particular. So she shared this really powerful personal story about her niece, her niece having been born premature and needing to be in NICU. But the only hospital that had NICU available was like an hour away from from where the family lived. She shared that story of what it was like for her family to have to travel so far when the little baby was in the NICU, but now her niece is a teenager in high school and thriving. So now I remember that story. Do I remember any specific graph that she showed? No. But now I recognize how important the work that her hospital was doing, especially around labor and delivery and NICU. And so now I can relate that story to you all, which I wouldn’t have been able to to if it hadn’t been for her story. So that’s number two is make sure that you’re sharing a story in your presentation.
Carol Cox:
If you’re doing something related to a tech demo for your software or your app, talk about what sparked the idea in the first place to create this, or did you have a moment in the process of creating it, where you and your team were kind of like struggling with something in particular, and there was that one day, or that one moment that a lightbulb went off, or you, you realize a solution for it. So tell that very specific story of what happened one moment, one day. The third thing to do is to Identify your through line for your presentation and maintain it the entire way through. Because I know the temptation is I want to show this other thing. I got this other chart to show, and I want to show this part of the app, and I want to include this little bit of information. But more isn’t always better. Your job is to guide your audience, to curate what’s the most important things for them to know, not to kind of like give them an information dump of everything that’s in your head and try to share it with them in 30 or 45 minutes. So think about it this way. Your through line of your presentation is like a palm tree. So if you think about a palm tree, it has one trunk. So one stable trunk. And then kind of like leaves at the top.
Carol Cox:
Your through line is that trunk. And then and then the branches at the top are the different things that you’re going to include in your presentation. If whatever you’re including in your presentation does not directly relate to that through line, then it needs to go. Just put it into a parking lot. Save it for another presentation. The contrast is an oak tree. If you think about an oak tree, an oak tree has several. An oak tree oftentimes has several trunks. So sometimes it will have one main trunk that’s growing, but also several other ones that are rather large. It has branches upon branches upon branches and leaves upon leaves. There’s a lot going on with the oak tree, and that’s what you don’t want your presentation to be because it’s not focused. It’s not curated. You want that trunk of a palm tree. Stay focused on your through line. So when I was at that I meet up presentation, my through line was sharing with the audience how I am creating automation workflows using AI and AI agents to power my business, and how I want them to think about how they can do that for themselves. So that was my through line. Now I could have pulled in a bunch of other stuff, maybe related to AI or related to productivity improvements in your business, but that would have just made it way too confusing. I had to stay focused on here’s how to think about how to use AI, automation and agents in your business.
Carol Cox:
Now, maintaining your through line is probably the hardest thing to do because you are so close to your own content and you naturally think all of it is important. And yes, it is. But you have to remember, if you only have 20 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes, what is what is the most useful information that you can share with your audience and with a clear beginning, middle and end? This is why our presentation makeover package is so popular, because then we get our eyes on your slide deck or your outline, and we can see things that you can’t see because we sit in the seat of the audience. So we’re thinking, okay, do I understand where this is going? Does this feel like a tangent can. Can this be left out because it’s kind of muddying the waters. And now I’m getting confused about what I just learned. Or maybe there’s something that needs to be added that’s not there right now to make things clear. So that’s why it’s really helpful to have someone else’s eyes on your presentation before you deliver it. Now here’s the bonus. As promised in the intro, I said that I was going to share the one thing I never, ever do in my technical presentations, and I learned this lesson the hard way years ago. And for those of you listening who do tech demos, you’re probably going to relate to this.
Carol Cox:
I never, ever do now. Live demos ever. So live demos, meaning where you’re going to your software app or someone else’s software app, so you’re opening the app on your computer, or you’re going to the website on your browser, and then you want to show in real time how it works. So you click here and then you fill this in and then this goes here, and then this works. And what inevitably happens almost every time, if you’ve been sitting in the audience at tech presentations, you’ve probably seen this. The demo does not work. Something happens either the Wi-Fi connection is not strong enough. So like the page just spins and spins and it’s not working. Or that software, if it’s not your software, you definitely can’t control it. It’s down. It’s not working for some reason, or you can’t log in. Or if it’s your own software app, just something always tends to happen. It’s like the tech gremlins decide that they’re going to have fun, and they’re going to make it so that the live demo does not work. This happened to me years ago, early in my career at a Microsoft conference. We were sharing an app that we had created, and I was doing a live demo and it just didn’t wasn’t working. I think it was probably the internet connection at the time, just wasn’t strong enough in the conference room and it just wasn’t connecting then. Of course, I was kind of stuck having just to explain it instead of showing it.
Carol Cox:
So here’s what I do now is I record the demo on my computer first. So using a screen capturing software, I record the demo. So I’ll go through the different parts, you know, kind of and oftentimes I’ll also speed it up because you don’t want to just like watch something and sit there and watch it go for 30s while it’s crunching away. So then I’ll speed it up, and then I’ll add the video to the slide, and I’ll play the demo at the presentation, and I narrate over it while I’m presenting. So I don’t, don’t record any narration. What I initially record the demo, I’ll just it’s just silent and then I’ll narrate over it live at the presentation to explain what’s going on. This relieves so much anxiety and nerves about whether or not something’s going to work. Because I know I have the video, it is fine. It’s also better for the audience. They’re not kind of waiting around for you to log into something or something’s not connecting. So record the demos, add those videos to your slide. Now, if you’re doing a workshop or a training where you are walking the audience through how to do things in a software, whether it’s your software or someone else’s software, then of course you’re going to want to do it live. But I would still have a recording of a demo showing it successfully done so that you can show what it looks like and then walk through the steps with the audience.
Carol Cox:
So here’s a quick recap. Add those slides I recommended to the beginning and end of your deck. Make sure that you’re integrating thought leadership so your perspective and vision into your presentation. Include stories and identify and maintain your through line. Think of that palm tree, not an oak tree. Think of that palm tree and make sure everything that you talk about is related to that. As I mentioned, it can be hard to do this for yourself. You’re too close to your own material or everything seems important to you, or it all seems too basic. Like, doesn’t everyone already know this? So again, we sit in the seat of the audience and we have worked with hundreds of clients over the years on every single topic you can imagine, from nuclear engineering and nuclear physics to healthcare and science to leadership, coaching, technology, finance, pretty much every topic you can think of. We like to say that we know enough about pretty much every topic to ask you intelligent questions, but we’re not so close to your topic or industry that we can’t see the forest for the trees. If you would like to learn more about how we can work together, click on the links in the show notes or go to Speaking Your Brand.com. Reach out. Schedule a call with us so we can chat. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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