In the first half of 2009, the Brainshark Customer Community team visited customers in San Francisco, New York City, Toronto, Houston and Dallas. Our primary objective of these city tours is to provide customers the opportunity to meet one another and share your stories. Recently, we've switched the format of the meetings by sponsoring lunches and adding both Brainshark and product update details to the gatherings. We've also extended our visits an extra day to make ourselves available to you for onsite visits. The feedback has been very positive from those we had lunch with this September in Charlotte, Atlanta, Omaha and Lincoln. And it's been rewarding to see people exchange business cards and schedule follow up conversations. 

The last two lunches for this year will be in Hartford (CT) on Tuesday, November 10th and Denver (CO) on Wednesday, November 18th. Invitations will be coming out in mid-October. 

Click here to register  

At the October 7th Customer User Group meeting, we received nominations for next year in Phoenix, Houston/San Antonio and Chicago. I am thinking of Minneapolis and Toronto as well, but would love to hear your suggestions! Please feel free to comment or reach out to me.

Hello from PPT Live in Atlanta.  I have been having a great time meeting the fine people down here.  I have had a couple of chances to meet folks and get some pictures taken which you can check out by watching my presentation below.  Just in case you are wondering the music is called Jump the Shark and was created by my friend Mark.

Have a Sharktastic Day!

Tibby

In the 10 years that we have been helping clients communicate, we have found that there are clearly a set of keys to the best and most successful presentations.  When I boiled it down we had the Six Steps to Success.  Each step indicates a critical piece of the communication process and comes with a set of questions that need to be asked and answered.  I have written about this in earlier blog entries, but now there is a Brainshark that quickly presents the 6 steps and the key questions that need to be answered in order to build great content.  The presentation below is not about how to use Brainshark as much as it is about how to communicate successfully.  It is a strategy for approaching and executing a quality communication.  Whether you are training a channel, providing rapid elearning to the sales force, selling a new product, generating leads or orienting new hires, you will find the Six Steps to Success will guide you to create the right content for the right audience at the right time.

If you prefer and audio podcast of this content then click on the Brainsahrk logo!

Have a Sharktastic Day!

All too often we distribute content the easiest way, or the fastest way, or the way "we always have".  If your goal is to merely distribute the content then these methods are perfectly acceptable.  However, if you goal is to get the content in front of the audience, to educate and inform and share knowledge then the aforementioned methods/reasons are ineffective and in my opinion unacceptable. 

I have spoken earlier in this series (Step 2) about understanding your audience so that the content you build will have an impact on them.  What a tragedy it will be if you build great content but do not get it in front of anyone because you did not understand where they go for information or how they receive information.  It is not hard in today's world to do this well.  Between email, micro sites, CRM, intranet portals, extranet portals, blogs and forums, I am certain that you can find the right place and the right time to distribute the content. 

The key to successful distribution is the audience.  To be more specific, the key to successful distribution is in knowing your audience.  Here are some guidelines for you to think about when planning your distribution.

1. Push vs. Pull OR Both
2. When is the right time
3. Is it convenient

1. Push vs. Pull Or Both

     Should we send it via email (Push) or should we post it on a portal (for example) and bring the audience to the portal (Pull) Or should we do both in order to reach an audience that we know has diverse interests and behaviors.   It does not matter if you are selling, marketing or training these are the key decision paths for you to go down.  Again the key is in understanding the behavior of the audience.  Will they open an email? Will they read it?  Do they visit a common web site?  Are they spending all their time in the CRM?   When it comes to marketing and selling, we can ask another volume of questions related to segmentation - which is important but too much to cover in this entry.  I will be speaking about this more specifically in future blogs on email marketing.

1. When is the Right Time

     Who is your audience? What do they do? Where are they?  These questions don't seem to be connected to time and yet they are, because you need to understand when the best time to communicate to your audience is.  Don't market to Benefits administrators during enrollment season.  Don't send a critical product announcement to your partner channel before a three day weekend.  Don't send a newsletter to your customers on a Sunday night unless you know Sunday night is when they are most likely to see it.  The key to good timing is to understand the audience, who they are and what they do.  If you know they see clients all day and check email in the evening, then send the message at the end of the business day. 

1. Is it Convenient

     Convenience is not about you, the distributor, it is about the audience.  If you consider your audience's time, then you will be likely to get more of it.  Sending the message at the right time is a part of making it convenient, but the other element is content format and message timing.  The content format or medium that you use to communicate can be more or less convenient, and therefore increase or decrease the success of your communication.  Live online events can be very effective, but not for a sales person when held in the middle of the day.  If your channel partners move quickly and have a lot of end users who need to understand your product quickly, then perhaps a 10 page document is not convenient. 

Message timing is about the length of time required to understand the communication.  It may seem basic, but don't send a 15 minute learning module to an audience that does not have 15 extra minutes.  Send them 3 - 5 minute modules so they can digest at smaller intervals while also fulfilling their primary assignments.   If the Salesforce has been equipped with MP3 players, then send them podcasts and make it simple for them to download.  On-demand communications like Brainshark are convenient because they can be viewed at the time the audience is ready for the message, in a format that requires nothing special to download and then closed and opened as many times as necessary to get the entire message.

 Remember that distribution is about understanding your audience.  If you don't know who they are, then start to find out.  Make your communication considerate and convenient and you will have a Sharktastic Day!

There are many books about what makes a great presentation, but I have yet to find one specifically about multi-media content like Brainshark.  This is not to say that these books aren't helpful because they are.  There are many presenting fundamentals that apply to all good presentations such as good structure, preparation and research.  However, there are some key tenets that must be followed to produce quality multi-media content like Brainshark.

A great multi-media presentation has the following 4 characteristics in both the visual element and the spoken word:

1. It is Clear
2. It is Concise
3. It is Consistent
4. It is Compelling

1. It is Clear

Clarity starts with the overall structure or flow of the presentation and each slide.  If the presentation has an agenda slide (slide 2) where you tell the viewers what you will be discussing and then you slide titles, chapter titles and content matches what you outlined in your agenda slide (slide 2) then you have increased the clarity of your presentation.  If you cover a single main theme in the presentation and don't stray or end up on tangential material then you have added clarity.  If you keep each slide to a single concept or idea that is in support of the main theme, then you are more likely to have clear slides.  If you restrict the content on the slides to phrases only and use bulleted phrases to outline the talking points then you will be clearer.  Finally, make sure the script that will be spoken matches the flow of the slide so the viewer can easily follow where you are going.  From an auditory perspective, the foundation of clarity is the script and the window dressing is a conversational style with good pronunciation.  Don't forget that good stories are ones that the listener can follow and understand.

2. It is Concise

Less is more.  If the slide, phrase, sentence, graphic, animation, object, video, attachment, music or image does not add value to the presentation, then leave it out.  The best practice here is to review the presentation once it is complete.  Check the agenda slide and then verify that the content has delivered on the promised agenda.  If there is material in the presentation that is not covered in the agenda slide, then seriously ask yourself if it is necessary.  Your audience will appreciate that you delivered the material in the briefest manner possible and they are more likely to watch your next presentation.

3. It is Consistent

Don't make the audience work to find data or understand the flow.  Having a consistent visual presentation helps the audience understand where things are and what to expect.  Use one PPT template and stick with it.  Use one font type, color and size wherever possible and only vary to highlight a point.  From an audio perspective, having the speaker record in a single sitting will help increase the odds that they will maintain volume consistency.  The most important element when it comes to consistency is that the presentation stays on target with the objective.  All slides, all bullets, all images and all recordings are provided in support of the objective and main theme of the presentation.  Stay on track and your audience will as well.

4. It is Compelling

There are 3 keys to making the presentation compelling.

1. Always add value         

From the opening slide to the closing slide, make sure the audience understands what is in it for them.   Jerry Weissman calls this the "What's In It For Me or WIIFM factor.  You should know what the value is to the audience because you have already established and objective and analyzed what is important to you audience.  Everything you show and everything you say needs to deliver something that is useful to your viewer. 

On slide one you are setting the hook by saying hello and telling the audience why it is worth their time to watch the presentation, but the job does not end there.  Every slide, every word, is an opportunity to convince the viewer that the material is valuable or a waste of time.  If you keep proving the value - you keep the audience.

2. Stay focused

You know the objective because you agreed to it in step 1 of this process, so don't forget it!  Staying focused over the course of the presentation makes it possible for the viewer to connect the dots.  Stay away form sidebars and tangents - they cause your viewers to stop watching.

Visually - staying focused means - do not do anything that distracts the audience.  Control the number of words, the complexity of graphs and charts, the number and type of animations, the use and quality of images.  For example, don't show an image of the entire application screen when you are only focusing on the functionality of that which occurs in the upper third of the page.  Don't show a chart or graph or image or text string that cannot be read or deciphered in 3 seconds.  If you do then you have now introduced confusion.  Instead of the audience focusing on the spoken word, their brain is engaged with the visual element and no longer listening to why the visual is important.  So they miss the value and stop watching.

Orally - Say it as briefly and conversationally as possible.  Keep slides to 30 seconds or less.  Do not speak too slowly or over enunciate since this will become a distraction and they will stop watching.  Writing a good script will help with controlling the timing of the slides and practicing the script will help you to deliver the material conversationally, which is how people want to be spoken to.

3. Be engaging

Following the 2 items above will go a long way to make the presentation engaging, but there is one additional, critical, element - engaging the audience with your voice/intonation.  When it comes to multi-media content like Brainshark, you can not get away with mediocre audio.  If the speaker is average and the material is not required, they will stop watching.  Think about good radio advertising and you will be on the road to a good recording.  Your audience can interpret many things based on the tone of your voice.  They can sense interest and disinterest, they can sense excitement and disdain, and they can sense enthusiasm and ennui.  More importantly - they will be influenced by the emotion they sense through the tone in which the audio is delivered.  Enthusiasm is contagious so use it to your advantage. 

Put the 4 C's in your presentation and you will have a Sharktastic Day!

This entire 6 Step series is about having a sound process for developing a great multi-media communication. Step 3 is about mapping out who is going to do what, when are they going to do it and who needs to approve it, all before it is actually distributed.

There will be cases where this is an easy answer, you are the content creator and approver. But I have seen plenty of scenarios where the content experts are dispersed, the folks building the slides are in another city, the folks building the PDF are in another group and it all has to be sent to compliance before it can created and then back to compliance after it has been created for a review of the actual finished communication. So my recommendation here is simple. Make a plan to meet your deadline.

Here is a simple process you may find useful.

1. Start with the distribution date.

2. Make your finished content deadline 48 hours before your distribution time. Why 2 days before? Because you need to focus on the details of distribution and do not need to be concerned about content that close to shipping the message.

3. If the presentation needs to be approved: How long will this take? Make a conservative estimation because it is not uncommon that this takes longer than people would hope.

4. Who is recording the audio? How long will it take? You should plan a factor of 3X when it comes to recording. So if the presentation is 10 minutes of recorded audio, then plan for 30 minutes of recording time for your speakers. Build in to your plan a best practice review of the recording and a probable re-recording session. This means that the recording will take a business day in total. By the time it is recorded, reviewed, commented on and re-recorded a day will have passed.

5. Who is writing the script for the slides? This will likely be the longest part o the creation process. Writing a good script is not easy for many presenters. It is a new behavior that requires focusing on the audience and not on the presenter. This is a positive aspect of it for the audience but since it is a new behavior it takes longer than most presenters assume it will. It is an art and not a science but as an educated guess, it will take 3X the length of building a slide.

6. Who is building the slides? Is there other content in need of creation? Videos, question slides, attachments? The answers to these questions will vary greatly, and once you know the answer you will have an accurate timetable of how long the presentation/communication will take to build - review - approve -distribute.

7. Add 50% more time then you projected. If there is one constant, it is that very few people have a sense of how long it actually takes to build quality content. If you are already conservative in your projections, good for you - you are the minority. Most people are over-booked and over-reach and their projects get delayed for a whole host of reasons.

If you try to follow the steps above when creating your project schedule you will be very close to correctly predicting how long it will take to create a quality communication. If you at least consider everything I have mentioned when planning your communication - then you will be far better off than most.

The mantra to remember is this: Plan your work and work your plan.

Now that you have a clear objective for this communication it is time to turn our attention to the audience. I am certain that one of the first things you know about a communication is who your intended audience is. However, I would suspect that we do not always really KNOW the audience, nor do we take the time to think about them with respect to this communication.

There are a couple of key elements for you to consider about your audience as you begin to develop this communication and presentation. Generally speaking, you want to take a moment to ask yourself two questions about the audience: Who are they? AND; What are the likely to do? More specifically - the following questions need to be answered to help you develop a presentation that will have the most impact.

1. Does the audience know anything about the topic to be covered?
2. What is the audience's behavior history with respect to communications received from you or your group?
3. What is a reasonable amount of time that you can expect they will dedicate to reviewing this communication?
4. Are there significant subgroups in the audience who behave differently and therefore should receive an alternate version of the communication?

Let's look a little more closely.

1. If your audience had varying knowledge of the topic then you may consider separate communications. This means more work for you, but it also means better viewing numbers and the appreciation of an audience that feels like their time has not been wasted. This increases the participation level form the audience the next time you communicate to them.
2. Does the audience have time on weekends? Do they like podcasts? Or mobile devices? Do they usually come to the intranet for their content or do you have to push content to them via email. Understanding who they are and how they best receive content will help you get it to them.
3. Everyone is busy, but is the audience in a busy period or are they a mobile group. You may consider how much flexible time they have when creating your content. Don't send a 30 minute presentation to people who have only 10 minutes because you will not be happy with your results.
4. I shared one example above but there are others. Take the time to look at how many segments of your audience you may have.

The mantra to remember is this: Send the right communication to the right audience at the right time. If you do, then you will be pleased with the results.

I had the opportunity to speak to the eCommerce Council of the Mutual Fund Education Alliance in Chicago. I was invited to be on a panel moderated by Dale Line of Sentinel Investments. I was joined on the panel by Michael Stull of Nuveen Investments and Martin Gawne of William Blair & Company. The topic of our panel was Engaging Audiences in an On-Demand World. If you would like to watch a Brainshark version of this presentation click here.

Due to the events of the past weekend with Lehman, Merrill Lynch and AIG, the subplot of the event was how to communicate critical information to the channel and more importantly to shareholders quickly during difficult times. While this was an event for those in the mutual fund business, the concepts we discussed apply to anyone trying to communicate to an audience in today's business world.

The main theme of our panel was how to engage the audience with on-demand communications that satisfy both the salesforce and the compliance department while giving investors the information they need to make sound decisions. We discussed three main ideas which I will summarize here.

1. The Changing Preferences of the Audience

The general population has clearly shown its affinity for multi-media content. Newspaper subscriptions have trended down for 20+ years. According to ACNielsen, Most Americans own at least 3 televisions and watch an average of 28 hours/ per week or 2 months per year AND today's children see an average of 20,000, 30 second commercials each year. We not only like our television, but we like it on-demand and the major cable distributors have built products to satisfy out desires for having what we want when we want it. These trends carry over to business communications. More and more companies are modifying their communications mix with less focus on face to face meetings and becoming more virtual and more on-demand with positive results to productivity and the bottom line. A case in point is a major financial investment firm that we work with today. They evaluated that three months after purchasing the Brainshark platform their communication mix was 50% face to face meetings and sales calls, 40% virtual meetings on the web, and 10 % on-demand content. Eighteen months later they had adjusted their strategy based on the response of the audience. What happened was they listened to the audience (to their credit) and were open to change. The new communication mix was 65 % on-demand communications, 25 % virtual and 10% face to face. The bottom line was that in 15 months they were increasing sales, reaching 250% more people and saving money and time while doing it.

2. The Changing Role of Marketing

Historically, the sales team ventured into the marketplace positioned the product to customers or prospects and then came back to marketing with ideas for what they needed from marketing to sell a product or service. Marketing reacted to the input of sales by producing a glossy brochure or white paper to support product sales. The consumer relied on the sales person to tell them everything they needed to know about the product before the purchase. The internet has changed this environment dramatically. Consumers have multiple ways to find out about our products today. They can conduct their own research, investigate companies, compare products, read blogs, access hundreds of new organizations and research groups that provide volumes of data all while sitting at their desk or perhaps in their pajamas.
Marketing has more environments to monitor and design content for, with respect to messaging and product information, than ever before. Not only do they have to provide a useful, informative, persuasive web site, but they need to maintain intranets, extranets, master the science and art of search engines and evaluate the data to give the audience what it wants. So while the challenge is greater, so are the technology and the opportunity. Multimedia content (like Brainshark) gives today's marketer the ability to create a consistent, entertaining, concise message for the marketplace. This is critical because it is what consumers are expecting when they venture out onto the web. They are not looking for glossy brochures and lengthy papers. They are looking for informative, concise, bits and bytes of information that help them to make sound decisions. And they want it now, and they want it at their fingertips and they do not want to have to work to find it or play it.

3. The metrics of on-demand (Brainshark) communications and the impact of metrics on messaging

So the audience is changing and forcing a change in marketing and the executive level is concerned about the bottom line, ROI and being more efficient. Metrics is one of the key catch terms of the 21st century. And Brainshark has more than enough to fully assess the impact of any communication.

But first a word about a problem that I see as prevalent and relates to the busy worker I referred to in my last blog. What is lacking is not actual the data, but the analysis. More often than not, we work on a project (campaign, web site, training) and once it is completed we take a breath and then begin the next project. What we have not done is take the time to assess what happened in the previous project and learn from our successes and failures. Part of this problem is the ‘busyness' of business and part of the problem is realizing that we now do have the data necessary to analyze the success of the communication - and we have it in a short time frame. Historically, you send out a mailer and over the course of the next few months you can monitor phone traffic and sales to guesstimate the impact of the mailer campaign. In today's world, you can use and email distribution package that will tell you immediately what the open rate of the email is, which emails bounced, and which people clicked your link. Add Brainshark to the mix and you know now exactly how many slides they viewed, how long they viewed them and which ones they did not view. If you put all of this information together you can very accurately assess which part of your messaging is working. And more importantly, you have the opportunity to modify the pieces that are not working. And, as anyone who has run an email campaign knows, all of this can be started within 24 hours of releasing the communication. How long it takes to make the changes to the messaging is up to you. It could be minutes, hours or days.

So the key thing to remember is that with a multi-media communication platform (like Brainshark) you are giving the people what they want, in the way they want it, at the time they want it and you can track their behavior to modify your message, which gives you what you and your management wants - more effective, efficient, impactful, lower cost communications.

Every single day, millions of presentations are created to transfer knowledge from one person or group to another person or group. Many of the people creating these presentations are busy. They are so busy that they jump in to building the presentation without having a plan for building a good presentation. The result is often a disjointed, disarticulated, disastrous, disappointing, dismal collection of data that puts the presenter at a disadvantage and puts the audience into a state of displeasure. I am sure you have seen such a presentation.

The internet offers several great resources like Tom Peters who will give you tips on speaking and how to inspire and Jerry Weissman who has some great ideas on putting together a great story. But one thing that is not as easy to find and is critical in preventing poor presentations is to have a plan, a process, a system, a method to follow that will insure that the presentation created will be a success and not a sleeping pill. This post is the first of 6 that will describe a 6 Step plan to creating a successful presentation.

Step 1 - Set the Objective

The objective of the presentation is the action you want the audience to take after seeing and hearing your presentation. It is the point, the raison d'être. Your presentation is a roadmap that takes the audience from Point A to Point B. If there is no Point B then the presentation never arrives and the audience either falls asleep or asks, "Are we there yet?" neither of which is a good sign. You may want them to register for an event, call a broker for more information on an annuity, pass a quiz to earn a certification, or buy more widgets. The key is that you have one and you know what it is and everyone agrees that the objective is the objective. When everyone (that matters) agrees, you can officially say the objective is SET and you can begin to build the presentation. If everyone (that matters) does not agree, then don't build the presentation until they do. Part of this process has to be to agree upon how success will be measured. Is it in 10% more widgets sold? Is it that 75% of sales achieve passing test scores? Is it an 8% increase leads generated? Whatever it is, make sure you have answered 3 critical questions. 1. Is it specific enough to be of value? 1. Is it reasonable enough to achieve? 2. Do we have the tracking mechanism in place to measure this?

So why is it important to set the Objective in Step 1? The objective is the glue that connects every slide in the presentation. From the welcome slide through the body slides to the call to action slide, the objective is the guiding force. Every bullet, every phrase, every image and every utterance should be driving the audience toward the objective. At every step in the presentation creation process ask yourself one question; "Does this (image, phrase, recording, attachment, slide title, bullet, graphic) lead the audience toward taken the desired action (the objective of the presentation)? If the answer is a confident "Yes" then it becomes part of the presentation; if the answer is "No", or even "Maybe" then follow the old adage; When in Doubt, Leave it Out. It is a tragedy to build a presentation that distracts the viewer from its primary objective. So, Set the Objective and at the end you will be able to Measure Your Success.

Podcast - Six Steps to Success - Step 1 Set the Objective

My trusty Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines presentation as: "something set forth for the attention of the mind: a descriptive or persuasive account (as by a salesman of a product)". Of course it has other definitions, but these do not apply to our conversation and so I will ignore them completely. The key to understanding how to build a great presentation is in understanding the purpose of a presentation. A slight reorganization of the above definition reveals the purpose to us. A presentation is a persuasive account for the attention of the mind.

Let's break this down some more. The definition of persuasive is ‘tending to persuade', and not much help in our analysis, so we look at the word persuade. This is defined as: "to move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action". So now we have added action to our definition. The action needs an object which we know is the audience or in singular a viewer. When I put it all together I have a definition that reveals the true powerful nature and purpose of the presentation. A presentation is a persuasive account for the attention of the mind to move the viewer to action.

How many of us think of presentations in this way? My guess is not many. Most business people get assigned the task of creating a presentation to communicate some knowledge to some group of employees or partners or prospects and then dump a bunch of data onto a bunch of slides (usually too much of both). We meet the deadline, but have persuaded no one to do anything. If, instead, we set out to construct a communication that moves the viewer to action and we keep this in mind with every image, word, animation and font we add to the slides, and then we will be on the path to creating a great presentation. Of course this is no guarantee that the presentation will be persuasive or will hold anyone's attention, but those are topics for another day.