“Coach’s Forum” is a place in which you can ask your questions, tell your stories or give your opinions on any aspect of practice management. For each column, George selects the most interesting and relevant comments from readers and offers his advice. Our objective is to build a community of people with a common interest in making their financial advisory practices as effective as possible.

> Successful Seminars

Advisor: I am putting together my marketing plan for 2011 and I’d like to include seminars as one of my promotional activities. The problem, however, is that I tried hosting a seminar for the first time a few months ago, and it was a disaster.

Although I think I did everything right in organizing it — and was delighted that more than 30 people attended — all that great organization seemed to go out the window as soon as I started speaking. It was as if the audience came, but had no interest. I feel quite comfortable speaking in front of groups and I put a lot of work into my PowerPoint presentation because the topic was quite technical, but couldn’t seem to generate interest. In my follow-up calls, I wasn’t able to obtain even one appointment. What do you think went wrong?



Coach says: Having conducted hundreds of seminars myself, I can tell you there is no worse feeling than the one you get when you think you have “bombed” with an audience. Sometimes, the reasons are obvious; at other times, you just can’t figure it out.

I recall one particular event in a small Prairie city; the advisor had done a great job of filling the local community centre with about 300 people. I spoke for 45 minutes with 600 eyes just staring at me — no response, no emotion. Sometimes, you just don’t connect with an audience; but I had never before felt that I had failed so miserably.

As soon as I stepped off the stage, I tried to apologize to the advisor who was hosting the event, but he said: “Oh, don’t worry for a moment. I should have warned you. It’s the way the people are in this town. They don’t want their neighbours to know they have money or that they might be at all interested in what you have to say. If they weren’t paying attention, they would have been talking to each other instead of listening.”

Sure enough, quite a few people came up to me during the refreshment period afterward to say how much they enjoyed the presentation and to ask additional questions. It must have been a successful event, because I was invited back the next year — and had the same experience. Sometimes, it isn’t just about you.

Having said that, I am wondering if there is a clue to what happened at your event in your comments about it being a technical topic and the amount of work you put into your presentation.

I am zeroing in on this because I just recently sat through a seminar in which the advisor — much like you — had been very effective at filling the seats but lost his audience pretty much from the moment he started to speak.

There was one simple reason: he was a good presenter, but his PowerPoint presentation was awful. PowerPoint is a fantastic communication tool if used properly; but it can be an incredible “downer” if used inappropriately.

Let me describe what this advisor — I’ll call him John — did in his presentation so that you can determine if there are any similarities between his and yours. Although some of his actions were more egregious than others, any one of these could sink an otherwise good presentation:

> Too Much Data. I think John wanted to illustrate the complexity of his topic — and how much he knew about it — by showing scads of facts, figures and charts. He forgot that the ultimate objective of most seminars is to obtain one-on-one meetings with the attendees, not to lecture them on the intricacies of the Income Tax Act, portfolio optimization or whatever.

Instead, John would have had a much better reaction if he had put what he was saying into context for the audience by making them the central characters in a story built around selected data, then illustrating how they could be affected if they ignored his counsel.

> Too Much Content Per Slide. Some of John’s slides had eight to 10 bullet points on them, which is a lot for an audience to keep track of and to be able to relate the points to each other.

Four or five bullets per slide is adequate; if there are more related points, carry them over to a second slide. Better yet, separate the points into two categories — for example, Year 1 and Year 2; or, use a two-column layout, with “Before” and “After,” so viewers can make side-by-side comparisons. Use the “build” animation capability in the PowerPoint software to reveal and focus on one point at a time.@page_break@> The Visual And Audio Effects Overtook The Content. Perhaps John knew the audience would find his presentation boring — and that’s why he built so many whirling graphics and sound effects into it. In fact, he even had bombs going off and applause happening at various times to emphasize key points.

To confuse the audience further, he used a variety of entrances, exits and slide transitions, so we never knew whether things were going to come at us from the top, bottom, sides or middle of the prcscreen — and whether they would wipe, fade, bounce or boomerang in or out. Unfortunately, the audience was often so distracted by these special effects that they missed the importance of the content.

Keep the special effects to a minimum.

> The Fonts Were Wrong. What looks good when you are sitting 10 inches from your computer screen can look quite different on a large screen in a meeting room. John chose a fancy font, called Broadway, but it was hard to read. And he made it too small on many of his slides, which probably had something to do with the first point above about too much data — causing his audience to squint even more.

In most instances, you create better readability if you use large fonts in simple typefaces, such as Arial, and limit the use of boldface, italics and uppercase — except to emphasize individual words.

> The Graphs Were Too Complicated. Several of John’s slides were full-scale, multi-year graphs with monthly data points, which is far too much complex information that the audience didn’t need to try to figure out.

John would have gotten much better understanding by reducing the frequency of data points and highlighting only the important ones.

Take note: Showing trend lines rather than statistics often helps an audience comprehend the point you are trying to emphasize.

> Too Many Slides. Again, this is related to trying to convey too much information. John must have had almost 50 slides for a one-hour presentation. Leaving time for the introduction and even just five minutes at the end for questions, this worked out to a slide a minute, which didn’t allow him to spend very much time on any of them.

In fact, he always appeared to be rushing to get through his slides. It was difficult for the audience to assign importance to any particular points he made because he couldn’t afford much more time on one slide over another.

So, try to use as few slides as possible to deliver your message. Rehearse the timing and remember that although you may be familiar with the content and can, therefore, quickly run through the slides, your audience is most likely seeing this information for the first time. Allow them a few minutes or so per slide to digest the message.

> The Presentation Ran Too Long. Another common mistake of novice presenters is simply making the presentation too long. There is an old speakers’ truism: “The mind can only absorb what the bottom can endure.” Keeping people seated in typically uncomfortable meeting room chairs for much more than 45 minutes is certain to put a strain on their attention span.

Bearing in mind what I said earlier about having too much content and too many slides, if you feel your content requires you to spend (and your audience deserves) more than 45 minutes on it, consider breaking the presentation up with a very short break — perhaps just a stretching exercise while at their seats. Yes, you run the risk that some people will use the opportunity to duck out. But, if they do that, you lost them in the first half anyway.

> Reading From The Slides. This is the cardinal sin of PowerPoint presentations. John could have avoided all of the mistakes highlighted above and still sabotaged his event if he had stood there like a robot, reading aloud what everyone could read for themselves.

Fortunately, he did not do that because he recognized that would only make it look like he didn’t know the material — exactly the opposite of what he wanted, which was to impress the audience with his expertise.

Know your content cold, rehearse it and use the slides to reinforce your message rather than to deliver it.



There are so many things that need to come together for a successful seminar, some of which you can’t control, such as the weather and people’s individual schedules. One thing over which you do have total control, however, is the structure, look and feel of your presentation. Get that right and you vastly improve the chances of getting the outcome you want. IE



George Hartman is president and CEO of Market Logics Inc. and a senior coach and facilitator with the Covenant Group. His latest book, Blunder, Wonder, Thunder: Powering Your Practice to New Heights, was published in January. Send questions, comments and opinions on any aspect of practice management to
george@marketlogics.ca.