Now You See Me, Now you Don't

SALES TIP #11

Delivering a great virtual presentation is so much more than taking your audience through your deck. Ask yourself, do you want to lecture to your clients or have a conversation with them? Or, more importantly, does your client want you to lecture to them or to have a conversation that is all about them and their needs?

Engagement is always a challenge in any meeting, but even more difficult when you’re hosting a virtual meeting. Clients will check out quickly if they don’t feel compelled to pay attention. And ten minutes virtually feels like twenty minutes live.

The question is how to get comfortable with the unique ebb and flow of engaging with clients in this virtual world when we are all reduced to a computer screen.

It requires conscious adjustments on your part to create the conditions that make a virtual meeting feel like a live meeting:

  • Ensuring a natural conversation flow,
  • Optimizing your ability to read and respond to body language, and
  • Conveying your passion with credibility.

You’ve already taken steps in the right direction

Let’s assume you have already done the following:

  • Cleaned up your visuals so they are Zoom or Teams ready.
  • Refined your comments down to the most salient points to make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time.
  • Broken your content into sections so it’s easy for the client to follow along and process what you are saying.

The next step is to recreate the engagement level of a live meeting as much as possible.

How? By giving them more face time — literally!

Techniques to create more face time

1. Switch back and forth between sharing your slides and taking down your slides.

  • Bring up a slide containing a key message you want to get across or a proof point to your key message. Talk through the important content.
    Note: The visual helps your client fully appreciate what you are saying, particularly for the 65% of people who are visual learners.
  • Stop sharing your screen when it’s time to tell a story or give an example because you don’t want the slide to act as a barrier to conversation. When you take down your slide, that simple change in what the client is seeing engages their brain. And it subtly communicates, “okay, let’s talk”.

2. Tell them when you are about to share or stop sharing your slides.

  • Say simply, "I will start/stop sharing my screen now."
  • Rather than being surprised by the change, you want them to participate with you in the ebb and flow.

3. Develop a “communication shot clock”

  • Limit your talking to 60-90 seconds to keep the meeting moving. The shot clock will help you find a natural rhythm between sharing and not sharing your slides. Switching too often or being too predictable can be just as bad as not doing it at all.

Benefits to your client

The best presenters don’t lecture, they engage with their clients. They sprinkle in their content around planned moments of engagement when there are no visuals in the way. This is an entirely different mindset and delivery approach from the traditional presentation, but it will create a much more positive client experience and help ensure a successful outcome for you and them.

In summary

Those who infuse face-to-face moments of engagement into a virtual meeting will distinguish themselves and build a better connection with the client.

Keynote speaker Heather Monahan likens presenting virtually to her experience on her Peleton. “I ride my cycle virtually now instead of in an actual class; however, it really is no different. The connection doesn’t come from the proximity to the other person – the connection comes from the presenter’s ability to connect with the audience, regardless of the platform.”