Presentation Preparation
Step1: Collect information

1st step is to collect information. This is a mandatory step to start with. Here are 3 key pieces of information we need for preparation.

• Agenda

• Attendee

• Previous meeting

Agenda

Needless to say, the agenda is the items we or customers would like to know or inform or discuss.

No Agenda, No Meeting

Before holding a meeting, I would like to emphasize that the agenda needs to be kept in mind. So we should start with the agenda first. If no specific agenda, we don’t need to set up a meeting with the customer and prepare a presentation!

If the customer picked up some items as an agenda, we will prepare slides to address those items. Also if we have some items that we would like to discuss, we propose the items as agenda and ask the customer to prepare for the topics such as asking responsible persons to attend and prepare the material.

So the agenda is useful to make sure what we will talk about and avoid misunderstanding and control expectations.

Attendee

I would like to understand the customer’s attendees, especially the number of attendees, job function, and title.

Usually, if many people attend the meeting it might be difficult to discuss detail and get feedback. However, we can deliver our company and product info to many people. So the number of attendees is important to decide what we will talk about.

How do we define “many” attendees? From my experience, if the number of attendees is more than 10, I would say it’s “many”.

Secondly, the attendee’s job function is useful info to prepare the content of the presentation. If one of the attendees is a purchaser who is responsible for purchasing components, we may prepare some market info to explain supply & demand status and also price trend as well as product roadmap to show the longevity support of the product. So we can pick up the content to address the attendee’s interest and responsibility.

And lastly, the attendee’s job function gives us a hint of their responsibility and interest. And if some engineers join the meeting, I prepare some technical slides such as common issue & technology trend of the industry, new function & feature adopted in the market, a performance spec comparison between old product and new product.

Previous meeting

Also, we need to check about the previous meeting to know

• Meeting date

• Attendee

• Previous presentation

• Action items

The meeting date is important to understand what is new for the customer. If the previous meeting was 6 months ago and then our new product was released 3 months ago, we would like to introduce the new product.

In addition, attendees and previous presentations are important to understand what is new for customers. If attendees are the same, we don’t need to explain what we showed in the previous meeting. On the other hand, if some attendees are different or a key person newly join, we may need to show our company introduction and some key messages what we showed in the previous meeting.

And we have to check all action items were done. Even if we did all action items, we may pick up something to explain directly and confirm if there is no question or concern about those items.

Actually, there is the case that you may not join the previous meeting if so you need to check what was shown and talked about and any action items or follow-up items in the next meeting.

So now we know “Agenda” from both sides that we should address and also we know  “Attendee” and “Previous meeting” to make sure what is the update for the customer.

Let’s move to the next step!  Step2: Make a plan.

Others

If our company sells other products for which I’m not responsible, I may check the business status if any problem or issue is being discussed with our different division or department. For example, if other products had quality problems I may touch about our product quality or be prepared if the customer asks about quality. I can guess the customer may have the same concern for our product.

Also if the customer has some news such as releasing a new product or collaboration with other companies, we can pick up that news and ask some questions. It’s good for an ice-breaking.

I may pick up some industry news to hear customer opinions on that news.

Thank you for reading this post. Here are other steps for how to prepare your presentation.

1. Collect information

2. Make a Plan

3. Design slides

4. Review

5. Rehearsal