Selling Yourself in Meetings 167
and other visual aids, especially in large meeting rooms. The people
who sit in the back have a hard enough time seeing the speaker,
let alone a lot of mechanical devices. And when you light a room
for slides, the speaker is very often left in the dark. I believe a
speaker is his own best visual aid. A really dynamite presenter
doesn’t need so-called help.
My rule is this:
Unless the visual tells your story better than you can,
scrap it. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but
when it doesn’t do a thing for the audience’s understand-
ing, a visual aid becomes a cop-out and a distraction.Make introductions count
Watch out, too, for the “introduction trap.” We feel that ev-
ery speaker needs to have his whole life story told to the audience.
Wrong!The shorter the better, providing two qualifications are met:
- The audience should be eager to hear this person based
on your introduction. - The speaker should be made proud to have been invited.
I’ve had the misfortune of having the presiding officer read
my bio in detail. Yet, after the program, people still asked, “What
did you do before you became a speech consultant?” It was all
said, but nobody heard. Then there was the time when an intro-
ducer said, “Last March I saw our speaker do a training session
and said, ‘We’ve got to bring him to our meeting.’ I got the best
information I’ve ever received at a convention program, and I’m
certain you’ll say the same. So please welcome our speaker, Arch
Lustberg.” He made the audience want to hear me. He made me
feel proud to be there. It took about 10 seconds. It couldn’t have
been better.
Continuity
Even the most carefully planned meeting can still wander off
course without the proper leadership during the meeting. Here
are some tips to keep your meetings on course: