1. Establish Clear Objectives
When you establish a clear objective for your presentation training, your audience is able to focus its energy and attention. Once set, the activities you undertake in your web meeting presentation training should all support the achievement of your chosen goals.
When you set a presentation training objective, you send an image to the subconscious mind of your attendees. It remains there until the objective becomes reality. This is how all creative people work - they transform the images they seed in their subconscious minds into a concrete form.
Henceforth, only items in support of your presentation training objectives are brought up in the meeting. Examples of objectives that can be established are: "Discovery session of how our widget can solve the problem of...", or "Exploration of the various uses of the widget", etc.
2. Prepare
Today's modern web conferencing systems allow the presenter to easily invite and accept attendees for the presentation training. But that's just the beginning. Make sure you are familiar with the functions that you'll need to have a great web meeting.
The eight basic functions you'll need are: desktop sharing, participant list/control, drawing tools, remote keyboard and mouse control, text chat, session recording, VoIP (for sending sound from your PC to the attendees), and polling/surveys. (These are the absolute minimum requirements - if you don't have these functions you'll need to find another conferencing package vendor). Read on to discover how you'll use these tools in your presentation training.
3. Provide Visuals (a.k.a. "channeling your inner Steve Jobs")
Does this sound familiar? You're interested in a new widget and get invited to a web demo by the Widget Company. The presenter at WidgetCo opens up his stock PowerPoint presentation training, goes through it slide by boring slide, then asks you for your P.O. or credit card number.
P-L-E-A-S-E. Take advantage of this powerful technology. Make your presentation training incredibly compelling. There's nothing wrong with using PowerPoint - but don't kill them with it. Use a handful of visually appealing PowerPoint slides to establish and interactively highlight the key points of your presentation training. Then, bring out the widget. Pass the controls to the audience so they can "touch", "smell", and "taste" the widget. Start the fog machine. Mix in some audio and video. Go to your web site to show them where to learn more. Are you getting the idea?
4. Interact with your audience
Solicit questions from your presentation training attendees. Check in often to gauge the interest level. Unlike a physical meeting you can't read the body language of your participants. Pay attention to little things, like the breathing (or snoring) on the other end. Remember your established presentation training objective and stay focused. Fail to do so at your peril - you may have lost the sale before you even realize it.
5. Follow up
Offer attendees a meeting summary consisting of the presentation training slides, documents, session recording for later review, and chat logs. Afterward - conduct polls, evaluations, and even quizzes. Finally - send thank-you notes, solicit additional questions and establish the next steps.
In summary, your next online web meeting can be a success, as long as it's carefully planned, properly executed, compelling, and focused. Stay in contact with your participants even after your presentation training session has ended, and your web meeting will have proven to be a success.
You'll have no more worries about hosting bad web meetings.
