16 Tips to Help You Prepare for Any Client Meeting

By Andrew Sobel

A client meeting doesn't start when you walk in the door and say good morning to your client. Rather, it should begin a day or two earlier, as you mentally prepare and reflect on how to make that meeting a success for both of you.

Too often we are preoccupied with a key message we're trying to deliver, a point of view we want to convince our client of, or an agenda that we're determined to get through at any cost. Such rigidity and lack of forethought can be disastrous. One client I know got a meeting, after waiting for months, with the CEO of a large Fortune-500 company. The senior executives representing this client were so focused on their own agenda that they missed valuable cues in the first five minutes of the meeting. They had failed to thoroughly research the CEO's agenda and history of public statements about the company's strategy. As a result, twenty-five minutes into a one-hour meeting, the CEO got up, told my client that the meeting was over, wished them luck, and left the room!

Here are some suggestions for avoiding such an ignominious demise in any of your own client meetings:

1. Have you spent as much time thinking about what your client is going to say as you have thinking about what you are going to say? Have you considered the different ways your client may react to your message?
   
   
2. Have you put yourself in your client's shoes? What business or personal pressures is he/she feeling right now? How is his/her relationship with superiors, colleagues, and subordinates?
   
   
3. Have you made a list of what you don't know about this client but would like to know? If it's a first meeting, have you found out everything you can about the individuals you'll be meeting with? Can you use this meeting as an occasion to become more knowledgeable about your client?
   
   
4. Are you structuring the meeting to create a real dialogue with your client? This could mean having no written materials whatsoever – or if you do, making sure you engage your client as you walk through the presentation, testing for understanding, agreement/disagreement, and corollary issues.
   
5. For this client, what are the rational, political, and emotional implications of the issue at hand? Of your message?
   
   
6. Your meeting has two objectives: to make progress against your client's business issue or need, and to develop/improve the relationship. How will you further both agendas?
   
   
7. Are you focused on activities or inputs – on reports, hours billed, analytical formulas, deliverables, and so on – or are you constantly keeping the client's objectives and the value he/she seeks at the forefront of your discussions?
   
   
8. Do you fully understand the perspectives of the various constituencies that surround your client; e.g., senior management, subordinates, customers, capital markets, as well as different functions and organizational units?
   
   
9. Will you present yourself and your views in a way that reinforces your standing as a deep generalist – someone with outstanding expertise but also possessing a broad, top-management perspective and an understanding of the entire business "ecosystem" that surrounds your client?
   
   
10. In your meeting, will you exhibit a mindset of "independent wealth"; i.e., you are totally focused on your client's agenda, you demonstrate a love for your work, and you treat your client as an equal?
    
    
11. If you are going to meet your client with other team members, have you:
    
    a) Established clear roles for everyone during the meeting?
    
    b) Identified a colleague who will focus singularly on observing the meeting's interactions and taking detailed notes?
    
    c) Thought through whether the mix of individuals you are bringing to the meeting makes sense and will provide a diversity of styles and approaches?
    
    
12. Are you keeping in mind the behaviors that make us comfortable with any individual: praise, positive association, similarity, familiarity, openness, and rapport?
    
    
13. Are you prepared to exercise a "doubting mind" – are you ready to question both your client's assumptions and your own assumptions to reserve judgment about outcomes until you see the whole picture?
    
    
14. Do you have an agenda and game plan for the meeting, and have you discussed this with your client ahead of time? Are you prepared to calmly abandon this agenda if your client wants to take the meeting in a different direction?
    
    
15. Have you met or spoken with at least some of the clients who will be at the meeting, and socialized the information or conclusions that you'll be discussing in order to get their reactions and comments ahead of time?
    
    
16. Whether this is the tenth or hundredth meeting with this client, are you prepared to treat him/her like a brand new client? Are you bringing the same freshness, enthusiasm, and new ideas that you brought to the first or second meeting, when you were wooing this client?
    

Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on client relationships and the skills and strategies required to earn enduring client and customer loyalty. He is coauthor of Clients for Life: How Great Professionals Development Breakthrough Relationships (Simon & Schuster). He can be reached at (505) 982-0211 or by e-mail at andrew@andrewsobel.com www.andrewsobel.com

Published in Networking Today, April 2004.

Twenty-Four Ways to Connect With Your Audience

By Karen Susman

If you want to get your message across to your audience members, you have to connect with them. Making a connection with your audience doesn’t happen just during your actual presentation. Here are twenty-four ways to connect before, during, and after your presentation.

Connect Before:

1. Do your homework on your audience. Plan your presentation from their perspective. You can’t feel their pain if you don’t know their pain.
   
   
2. Get to your presentation early to check out the physical and emotional atmosphere.
   
   
3. Visit with audience members before your presentation. You’ll learn what’s going on and you’ll build friends in the crowd.
   
   
4. Listen to and observe events and speakers that come before you. If you’re scheduled to speak at 8:15 PM and the meeting starts at 7:00 PM, arrive at 6:30 PM. (Earlier if you have to test audio/visual equipment.) Be ready to adapt your remarks depending on what you hear, see, and feel.
   
   
5. Weave what goes on before your presentation into your presentation. Refer by name to the speaker before you. Ask permission of an audience member to use his name in reference to your topic. For instance, “As Jim in engineering said…”
   
   Connect During:
   
   
6. Use your body. Pause before you begin. Walk toward the audience. If you can’t walk toward the audience, lean in. Use eye contact. Move meaningfully with each point you make.
   
   
7. Observe your audience for their reactions. Respond. Repeat. Shift gears. Don’t be on automatic pilot.
   
   
8. Use appropriate energy. The larger the audience and the room, the more energetic you have to be. Animate your face, too.
   
   
9. Use your voice range, volume, and speed to emphasize and energize your remarks.
   
   
10. Gesture. The bigger the group and room, the bigger the gesture.
    
    
11. Be prepared to be spontaneous. This sounds like an oxymoron, but being able turn on a dime in response to your audience's needs is vital. Remember, your speaking is all about them.
    
    
12. Let your personality shine through.
    
    
13. Don’t read your remarks. Don’t read from slides.
    
    
14. Enliven your remarks with stories, quotations, examples, analogies, metaphors, and unusual visuals.
    
    
15. Don’t overuse PowerPoint. Less is more.
    
    
16. Use pictures in your visuals. Put people, faces, animals, your family, etc. in the pictures. This gives your audience an emotional zap that lodges your points in their brains.
    
    Connect After:
    
    
17. Stick around after your presentation. The good questions come up during breaks and after your bow.
    
    
18. Be available. If you’re rushing or packing up your equipment, anyone who wants to speak with you will feel disregarded. Really listen to people. If you have to vacate the stage quickly to make room for the next speaker, tell fans you’ll meet with them in the hall or at the reception.
    
    
19. Place yourself by the exit doors at the end of your presentation so you can visit, smile, shake hands, and make eye contact.
    
    
20. Offer to send bonus information via mail or email to audience members. Ask them to specify the requested information on the back of their business cards.
    
    
21. Follow through by promptly sending out requested material.
    
    
22. Request the mailing list or cards of attendees. Send them a reminder note within two weeks of your presentation.
    
    
23. Offer to sign them up for your e-newsletter or an email follow up.
    
    
24. Write an article for the audience’s newsletter.
    

Take advantage of the time before, during, and after your presentation to make a connection with audience members. You’ll boost your message’s effectiveness and longevity. You’ll be remembered. And, if you are interested in selling products, services, or yourself to your audience, you’ll maximize your success.


Karen Susman speaks internationally and coaches individuals and groups on power presentation skills. Her special report, 53 Ways To Involve Your Audience, is available at www.karensusman.com/products/htm for just $7. For a free tip sheet on Eleven Ways To Keep Your Audience Interested, e-mail Karen at karen@karensusman.com.

Published in Networking Today, February, 2004.

How to Stand Out When Sitting On a Panel: Twenty-five Tips for Power Panel Participation©

By Karen Susman

You've been invited to speak on a panel with other leaders in your field. You plan to just show up, sit behind a table and fill your allotted five minutes with off the cuff remarks. What a painless way to look like a big Kahuna.

Panel participation takes unique preparation. Otherwise, you won't shine. Either your light will be snuffed out by high wattage leaders, or you'll blaze so brightly, the audience will wonder why you think you're so hot.

First ask:

1. What's the theme and purpose of the meeting and the specific topic of the panel?
   
   
2. Who else will be on the panel? Contact the other panelists. Discuss their appearance goals and individual viewpoints.
   
   
3. Who's the audience? Why are they attending and what do they want to hear?
   

Define ground rules such as:

1. What are the format, time frame, seating, room arrangement, and order of panelists? Are you first to speak, last, or middle?
   
   
2. Will there be opening remarks? If so, how long will they last? Who will introduce you? Be sure to send your introducer a brief introduction. Bring a copy with you. Ask the introducer to read your introduction exactly as you wrote it.
   
   
3. How will the question and answer period proceed? Will questions come from the audience members or from written questions? What determines which panelist answers a question?
   

Prepare your message:

1. Since each panelist has a message, make yours powerful and to the point.
   
   
2. Discover in what order you speak. If you're first, you don't know what the others will say. You can't react to what they've said because they haven't said it yet. On the other hand, going first lets you set the tone. You make a strong first impression. If you go last, you can comment on the others' remarks and have the last word.
   
   
3. Direct your remarks to audience needs and wants. Work the room first to learn what attendees want from the panel.
   

Be memorable:

1. Listen intently to the other panelists. Refer to their remarks (As Bob said earlier...).
   
   
2. If another panelist states a good idea, expand on that idea.
   
   
3. When you speak, maintain eye contact with the audience instead of with the other panelists.
   
   
4. Look at the other panelists when they speak.
   
   
5. Don't speak every time an issue or question is raised. But, do speak up. Be aware of how much time you're speaking.
   
   
6. Don't get into a debate with other panelists. Keep audience needs in mind at all times.
   

Answer questions effectively:

1. Restate questions.
   
   
2. Break questions into parts. Answer the easiest part first.
   
   
3. Ask questioner to clarify questions.
   
   
4. If you don't know, say so. Be brief. Don't give another speech.
   
   
5. Expand on someone else's answer. For instance, "Before we move on, I'd like to add something to what Joe just said."
   

Leave a lasting impression.

1. Develop quotable sound bites.
   
   
2. Provide a simple handout on your letterhead.
   
3. Offer to hang around for questions.
   
4. Offer more information in trade for a business card.
   

Now, you're ready to take full advantage of this opportunity to showcase your expertise. Welcome to big Kahunaville.

Karen Susman coaches individuals and groups on presentation skills. She speaks on Humor, Life Balance, Networking and Building Community Involvement. Her guidebooks on these topics are $5 and can be ordered at www.karensusman.com. Her free e-zine offers monthly tips on presentation and other success skills. Sign up at www.karensusman.com or at karen@karensusman.com.

Published in Networking Today, August, 2003.

Help! My PowerPoint® Crashed and I Can’t Boot Up

By Karen Susman

Microsoft’s Bill Gates spoke at a large technology conference a few years back. Five minutes into his presentation, his expertly designed and choreographed PowerPoint® slide show coughed, sputtered, and stubbornly refused to respond. If it can happen to Bill, it can happen to you. In fact, it will happen to you.

Here are some ways to avoid having such a Bill Gates moment.

1. Assume that your computerized slide show will snafu in some way and have a Plan B.
   
   
2. Bring overhead transparencies of your computerized slide show as a back up. Request an overhead projector just in case.
   
   
3. Print a copy of your slide show for yourself in the three-on-a-page handout format to use as point reminders. (Don’t substitute copies of slides for handouts. If someone requests a copy, mail a duplicate.)
   
   
4. Create your program content before you create your visuals. Then look for places where slides or other visuals would add something to your content.
   
   
5. Reduce the number of slides in your show to the bare minimum. If you can do without a slide, hit the delete key.
   
   
6. Practice using a flip chart to clarify your presentation. Why? Three reasons: If your computer wing ding defaults and there is no overhead projector, you can still illuminate your remarks with a quick flip chart illustration. Secondly, since so many are using computer slide shows, you’ll be unique. Thirdly, a flip chart image, no matter how rudimentary, is spontaneous, energetic and gives the audience the feeling that you’ve customized the presentation just for them.
   
   
7. Be courageous and use an object, or demonstration to elucidate your point. Instead of projecting a slide that says, “Diversity is Important,” whip out a delicious box of 64 crayons. After the audience’s groans of envy die down, use the crayons as an analogy to show the value of all those gorgeous colours. Just imagine how unwelcome a box of 64 all forest green or all burnt orange Crayollas would be. Consider how dull an exclusively flesh toned flower garden would be. You get the picture? (That’s the idea. You get the picture much better with a tangible object than with a slide that has a headline and six shooting bullet points.)
   
   
8. Only six bullet points? If you’re creating a slide or transparency that is chock full of words, have no more than six lines with no more than six words per line.
   
   
9. Use a headline for every slide, transparency, or flip chart page.
   
   
10. Present only one point or idea per slide, transparency, or page.
    
    
11. Detailed charts, graphs, and lengthy text are best presented in handout form.
    
    
12. Whatever visual medium you use, keep the lights up as much as possible. You want the audience to see you, and stay alert.
    
    
13. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Did I mention “rehearse?” Set up and check out your visuals and equipment way before show time.
    

Remember, a visual aid is only an aid. It is not your presentation. It is certainly not your message. So many people I coach are madly in love with the whiz bang possibilities of computerized slide shows. They are addicted to slides and bullet points flying up, fading out, splitting, cascading, zooming, and twirling. If their software offers sound effects, birds chirp, cymbals crash, horns blow -- and that was just the first slide. Some speakers become so dependent on their slide show being more dynamic than they are, they are lost if the show crashes. (Please give Bill my number.)

Be prepared to present your program by candlelight with only a stubby piece of chalk to scratch on the walls. If the cave man could get his message across about the features of the new Protecto Hit-‘Em-Over-The-Head Club 2000 Upgrade with only a charred stick to mark the cave walls, you can deliver your message sans whiz bang. The only thing that needs to be animated is you.

Karen Susman is a Speaker, Trainer, Coach, and Author of 102 Top Dog Networking Secrets. Karen works with organizations that want to maximize performance. Programs include Humour at Work; Balance In Life; Networking Skills; Presentation Skills; and Building Community Involvement. Order new guidebooks on humour, networking, time management, and community involvement by calling 1-888-678-8818 or e-mail Karen@KarenSusman.com.. www.KarenSusman.com.

Published in Networking Today, September, 2002.

Speaking Without Notes

By Diane Moore

If you watch polished, professional speakers you may notice that most of them seem to make their presentations with few notes, and some may not use notes at all. Nervous speakers tend to write out a script, then stand at a podium and simply read their notes to the audience, but this approach can lead to boredom for both the speaker and the listeners.

To wean yourself from relying too heavily on notes during your presentations:

• Don’t try to memorize your presentation word-for-word. While memorizing your opening and closing might be helpful, break everything in between into chunks that each develop one point. If you can’t remember all of the points, write them down on one card or sheet of paper in large block letters so that all you have to do is glance down at this outline to remember what you need to talk about next.
  
  
• Use visual aids. Overhead transparencies, flip charts, or PowerPoint® presentations can contain the necessary “prompt points” to remind you of what you want to say next. Rather than using an exact script for each point, try to remember generally what you want to say about each thing.
  
  
• Poll the audience. Ask them a question such as, “How many of you have bosses who sometimes disappear without telling you where they are going or when they’ll be back?” The audience will enjoy participating and seeing how many others raise their hands, and you will get a break from having to fill up every moment of your presentation with your own words.
  
  
• Break up your talk with activities. Unless you’ve been asked to make a formal speech, look for natural spots to insert short activities that audience members can do in two or three minutes, such as talking to the person next to them about their views on a particular subject. While participants are performing the assigned activity, you will have a chance to glance at your outline to remind yourself of what you want to say next.
  

For more useful articles on career management and enhancing performance in the workplace, visit The Office Professional Web site.

Published in Networking Today, September, 2002.