Expos and Industry Shows are expensive to arrange, and often costly to exhibit at.
We visited one yesterday which had over 100 speakers talking throughout the day – and came to 3 realisations:
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As most of you will know, “we all do the best we can with the resources we have available”. And the speakers were doing their best.
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From those we were able to hear and see, they varied from interesting but ‘could do better’ – to pretty awful. Which is such a shame – given their chance to create interest in themselves, their companies, and their services and products.
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But there is good news. With just a few changes of thinking any one of them could have stood apart from their competition – and made a more useful and powerful impact.
Here is what would have made the biggest difference:
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Have a good introduction – with an expressed purpose, so that the audience know what to expect. And avoid starting with your name and what you do.
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Keep industry jargon, shorthand and three letter abbreviations to a minimum – or preferably replace them all.
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Know what’s on your slides – so you can spend 95% of your time looking at and engaging with your audience and not the screen.
Very small changes we think you’ll agree. But what a difference they would have made.
For an aide-memoire of some other small changes you can make to your own talks – that make a BIG difference – download our 13 Secrets of Powerful Presenting.
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