In business, we are asked to present as a team. We may be pitching for new business and the presentation requires different specialist areas of expertise. This is quite different to doing something on your own, where you are the star and have full control over what is going on. One of the big mistakes with amateur presenters is they don’t rehearse. They just turn up and fluff it. They blow up their personal and organisational brands. When in a team environment, you absolutely cannot neglect the rehearsal component. There will be many sessions needed before you are ready to face an audience, so you have to plan for this. Do not leave this until the last moment after you have all been diligently assembling your slide decks.
The batting order is important. Don’t put the brainy nerd up front. They may be the legitimate expert, but unless they are the best presenter keep them in reserve. We want the best person to lead off, because this is how we create that all important first impression. They may come back for the close out or have another equally skillful person secure the positive final impression. The technical geeky people can be safely placed in the middle of proceedings.
As mentioned, don’t allow all the available team time to be sucked up by creating slides for the presentation. This is the mechanical part and we need the soft skills part to be really firing. That takes time and repetition. Set deadlines for deck completion, well in advance of the event, so that the chances to get everyone together are created.
Having worked out the order, do dry runs to see how the whole things flows. Practice little things like each presenter shaking the hand of the next presenter as a type of baton pass between the team. It shows you are a tight, united unit and connects the whole enterprise together.
Also, make sure each presentation can be given by everyone in the team. People get sick, planes get cancelled or delayed, all manner of circumstances can arise. At the appointed time, you are down some key members of the team. In this case the audience expects the show to go on and for you to cover the missing person’s part.
This cannot be the first time this idea has occurred to you,. You need to plan for this at the very start. As you all rehearse together you hear their section over and over, so jumping in and working through their part of the deck shouldn’t be an impossibility. The questioning part might be different, but the presenting part should not create too many difficulties, if you are organised.
Have a navigator for the questions determined at the start. When questions land you want that process to be handled seamlessly. I remember being on a panel for a dummy press conference, during media training. One ex-journo in the audience asked us a very curly question and being amateurs, we all just looked at each other, having no clue as to who would take that infrared missile. Our work colleagues in the audience just burst out laughing, because we looked such a shambles. Pretty embarrassing stuff, I can tell you.
Anticipate what likely questions will rise, nominate who will take care of which sections and if anything indeterminate hits the team, understand that the navigator will take care of it. The navigator, will also control the questions. If it is straightforward, then after thanking the questioner, they will just say, “Suzuki san will take care of this topic” and hand it over.
If it is a bit tricky, tough or complicated and is going to be hard to answer, the navigator must control things. They need to build in a bit of thinking time for the person who is going to have to take this one. They need to “cushion” the answer. By this I mean they will say something rather harmless, but which buys valuable thinking time for the person. This allows them to brace themselves for their reply.
It would sound like this, “Thank you for your question. Yes, it is important that the budget allocated helps to drive the business forward. I am going to ask Tanaka san to give us some insight into how to address this budget issue - Tanaka san”. That sentence takes around 12-15 seconds to say. Tanaka san already knows she will get this one, because it is within in her designated area of expertise to answer during the pitch. The navigator provides her with some extra time to compose her strategy for her answer.
Another technique, which you can only use sparingly, is to simply ask them to repeat the question. You actually got it the first time, but you may want to build in some extra thinking time to come up with the best answer. Do this too often and the games up!
Teamwork requires coordination and rehearsal if you want to appear professional and well organised. When you competitors turn up like a train wreck, you will be happy you put in the work. Just make sure you don’t turn up like a train wreck and make your rivals look good.
