The Seven Strategies of Master Presenters - Lifecycle Performance ...

2. The Experience Level of the Audience
Know Thy Audience / 39
Two unforgivable presentation sins are talking down to your audience
and talking over their heads. Therefore, you must do everything
in your power to find out the experience level of your potential audience.
At times you will be given an audience that has inherently mixed
levels of experience and you must develop materials that can be helpful
to and enjoyed by participants at various levels. This means that
the materials are so well prepared that participants at very junior levels
and at very senior levels can benefit at the same time. Another strategy
is to divide the group into subgroups and have them work on a project
with people at the same level of experience. One of our favorite techniques
is to have people at the same level in an organization work on a
shared problem. For example, participants from engineering would work
on the problem from an engineering perspective, while sales would work
on it from a sales perspective, and manufacturing would work on it
from a manufacturing perspective. They can then look at the problem
and possible solutions based on each group’s perspective.
3. The Heterogeneous/Homogeneous
Nature of the Audience
The following example illustrates the importance of how heterogeneous
or homogeneous your audience is.
Brad was once asked to give a presentation on time management
at an exclusive resort. The group was the Young Presidents Organization
and from the presentation description, Brad knew that this would
be a difficult presentation to deliver. First, the audience consisted of
children ages 9 and older plus their parents. He sensed that if he spoke
to the parents, he would lose the children, or if he spoke to the children
he would lose their parents.
The second factor that made the presentation difficult was that it
was a murder mystery weekend. Now, if you were going to give a
“serious” (or even “not so serious”) presentation on time management,
when would you least want the “murder” to occur: during the
presentation or just before you present? As luck would have it, the
“murder” took place just before Brad’s presentation. It was very realistic.
An ambulance came to take the body away and the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP) came to investigate the crime. Unfortunately,
there were several 5-year-olds who thought it was a bit too realistic