Presentation Skills Training Tips - The Venue

For most people who attend presentation skills training they have no choice in terms of the room they use, the layout of the room and all the other logistics that can impact on any presentation.

Whether you do have any control or no control you still must do your best to find out as much information as you can about the audience.

As they say in presentation skills courses the more you know about the audience the more you can tailor the presentation to the audience.
You must remember the audience are the most important people in the whole exercise.

The things you need to know about the audience are:

• How many of them are there?
• Who are they?
• What do they know about the subject?
• What is their attitude to the subject? To you and to your objective?
• Why are they there?
• Will they participate?
• What are their expectations and needs?

The most important question relating to the audience is ‘what am I expecting the audience to do after the presentation’?

If you do have control of the venue, you must check the venue out first for size, accessibility etc.

I often tell the story on presentation courses about a time when I was requested to be a panel speaker at a large conference.  I had no control over the venue and to be honest on first impressions the venue looked superb.

The size of the conference was about 800 delegates and the room seemed to be plenty big enough, it was set out in theatre style, acoustics and projection of the visuals were great. So what went wrong, I hear you asking?

I was called up to deliver my presentation and just as I said ‘Good Morning everyone and ………’ the next thing all everyone could hear was ‘the next train to arrive on platform 1 will be the………’

What had happened was the conference organisers had chosen the hotel venue as it was next to a large train station, which made it highly accessible for delegates, what they had not realised was that the conference room literally backed on to a very busy train station and all the announcements from the train station P.A. system were heard in the conference room.

As it happened I thought it was hilarious and just made a joke of it and carried on, but for someone who may have been nervous approaching the podium to speak, it would have been a pure disaster for them.

So since that day I always say, when you are booking a venue, you must try and check surrounding areas outside the room and see if there is anything that may have an impact.

I understand that you may have no control on the venue, but as they say on presentation skills training courses always be ready for the unexpected.

Frank O'Toole, Premier Training Courses