Presentation preferences

Today was the BIG DAY of the CRN Awards presentation. Preparing for the presentation was quite a challenge due to the extreme diary congestion of the two presenters. Basically, we made the CRN shortlist because of our great sales figures and status as a growing company with 100% channel model, but the side-effect of all this success is that the team is operating right at the edge of its resources. Getting Charlotte and Nigel in the same room for more than ten minutes proved tricky.

In order to make things as simple as possible given the limited time we had, I decided to draft a script for the presentation, covering the key areas. This gels very much with my preferred presenting approach. I like to know exactly what I'm going to say right down to the word, and then I tend to embellish and ad lib on the actual day, which I'm comfortable doing as I'm so familiar with the content. This is not the right approach for everyone.

Nigel, our director of channel marketing and product management, is an experienced and accomplished presenter, but he HATES to rehearse. Most of his presentations are drafted immediately before they are delivered, and are all the better for it. In this situation, however, he was doing a "double-act" with Charlotte, so rehearsal was necessary.

The first run-thorugh did not go smoothly. Charlotte had done quite a lot of preparation over the weekend and adapted the content into her own style. However, it was clear that Nigel was derailed by attempting to adapt my phraseology into his own presenting style. I was kicking myself, as it was clear that Nigel needed to do it his own way.

We decided to tear up the script, and Nigel came back an hour later with his notes in order, and suddenly the whole show began to come together. By the final run through, both Nigel and Charlotte were comfortably working their content and ready to perform.

It was a useful lesson for me. I'd have been better simply giving Nigel and Charlotte headlines that they needed to cover, and letting them get on with it. I'd thought it was helpful to have a scripted basis for the presentation, but it didn't work for them.

The actual presentation at the Mad Stad went well. The judges were sitting in a hospitality box that conveniently overlooked our stadium branding, and they commented on it before the presentation, so at least we know they noticed! The other shortlised companies' representatives were almost uniformly male, reflecting the bias of the industry, so at least we had sexual equality on our side! No one was giving anything away in the "green room" where I sat and guarded Charlotte's handbag while she and Nigel did their stuff behind closed doors.

All we can do now is wait until the awards ceremony on the 18th November to see whether we've managed to rise above some extremely stiff competition.