One objective in the first few minutes of your presentation is to tackle enemy #1 in the room. Who is it? It’s the smartphone that everyone carries.

It happens so often: people come into the room, they sit down, and take out their phone. One last check before the meeting to see if something ‘important’ is happening. Often, the speaker starts while people still have the phone in their hand. Right from the beginning, you are competing with everyone’s phone for attention. You all know, it’s a tough competition. What’s your strategy? Ignore it? Hope every puts the phone away? Address it head on and risk annoying the audience – and implicitly admit that you won’t ‘win’ because you have a great program?

It’s a competition you should settle right away – and you need to keep winning it during the presentation. In a presentation skills program, we practice several graceful ways to get attention and keep it. Here are a couple of ideas that you can try out:

• You can ask people to put the phone away. Many speakers use this approach. The benefit it that it’s direct, upfront and usually effective at the beginning of the program. (I admit, it’s far from being my favorite. I don’t want to be that blunt and I prefer my audience to want to put the phone away, instead of to have to put it away.)

 

• For a longer presentation, such as a training program, you may cover ‘ground rules’. You can talk about it at that point. Instead of saying ‘let’s put our phones away’, I prefer an approach where you encourage the audience to be fully present to whatever is most important to them. If it means that the phone is more important, tell them they are more focused if they leave the room briefly and attend to whatever came up. Make it about presence and focus instead of the phone.

 

• A highly preferred option is when you get the audience to put the phone away without telling them. Here is how it works: right at the beginning, use a slide that people have to look at in order to understand what’s happening. This is not a slide that is redundant to what you’re saying. (No slide should be redundant to what you’re saying, and here in this case, it defeats the whole purpose). You say something that introduces the slide, and make it explicit that the audience has to read it. Something like “our objective is here on the slide, and it’s much clearer when you all read it” – then pause and let people read. Don’t read it out loud. It causes silence in the room, and the ones who are focused on their phone wonder what’s going on, pay more attention and put the phone away.

 

• A variation of the previous option is my absolute favorite: have a couple of funny slides upfront as part of a short introduction. When the entire room starts laughing, the people who look at the phone don’t get the joke. They don’t want this to happen again, so they put the phone away. It works like a charm – and you don’t have to say anything about phones. You just won against enemy #1 and you made yourself more likable to the audience. (Just in case you’re wondering: yes, this can also be done for a technical presentation and yes, it can be done for executive and senior audiences).

 

Ready to Deliver a Presentation that fully engages your audience and gets you the decisions you are aiming for? Do You Want to . . . 

Persuade, Motivate, Influence
Project Poise and Professionalism
Boost Your Credibility, Image, Personal Presence
Engage and Keep Everyone Awake
Speak in a Clear, Concise and Compelling MannerEliminate Speakers Anxiety

If You Want to Transform Your Presentation and Personal Presence Skills: My Critically Acclaimed Programs will Provide You with the Proven Tips, Tools and Solutions You Must Possess to Design, Develop and Deliver Presentations with Impact! Call (240) 938 1274 or email JM@JosefMartens.com.