4 Types of presentation
There are some kinds of presentation opportunities.
So it’s important to prepare a presentation based on the type of presentation.
I pick up 4 types of presentation and describe how it looks like.
1. Academic / Industry Conference
Purpose: provide information such as the research result.
Attendee: 30 to 100 or more
Duration: 15 to 60 min
Interactive: Yes it may have a Q&A session
The main purpose of academic and industry conferences is to provide information from the speaker and report some important findings.
I have the experience of attending academic conferences and industry conferences. Usually, there are many audiences such as 30 to more than 100 attendees for sessions.
Presentation time depends on the conference for example in the case of 60 min time slot, 50 min for a presentation, and 10 min for a Q&A session.
This is basically a one-way presentation that the audience should not interrupt during presentation time. But the audience may ask a question in the Q&A session.
The first presentation I provided in this type of presentation is an academic conference when I was graduated school of engineering. At that time presentation time was 15 min in total including a presentation and Q&A session.
I spent a lot of time for preparation and got many, actually so many, iterations under the professor’s and senior researcher’s advice and did a few rehearsals. It was a good opportunity to learn how to prepare presentations for academic conferences.
2. Public Speech
Purpose: provide their thoughts or feeling and appreciation.
Attendee: 30 to 100
Duration: 5 to 10 min
Interactive: No
This is like a greeting in the public ceremony from Mayer or a wedding speech to celebrate a friend’s marriage. The main purpose of public speaking is to express your thoughts or feeling or appreciation.
Usually, we don’t use the presentation tool and so we need to talk to the story to attract attendees without visual images.
It takes just 5 to 10 min usually. And someone may try to make small jokes to entertain. By the way, this might be another difficult part.
Usually, Public speech is definitely a one-way presentation and should not have any objections or questions.
3. Panel discussion
Purpose: provide my thoughts and show discussion with experts
Attendee: 30 to 100 or more
Duration: 30 to 60 min
Interactive: No
Normally a panel discussion is like that 2-3 industry experts or executives are sitting in the chairs and discussing prepared topics. In some cases, there is an MC and facilitate panelists with a casual atmosphere.
Attendee and duration depend on the event. Sometimes there is a big event hall with many attendees.
Usually, there is no interaction with the audience but with other panelists.
4. Customer meeting
Purpose: Provide information and get customer information and have a discussion
Attendee: 5 to 10
Duration: 60 to 120 min
Interactive: Yes
In the case of sale promotion, the final goal of the customer meeting is to sell our product or service. So we need to provide our product information and get the customer’s information and may need to have a discussion.
From my experience, the attendee is usually 5 to 10 people, but sometimes it’s one on one and sometimes it has more than 20 attendees.
I have more than 100 customer meetings a year across the country, including the United States, Asia, and Europe, so I have a lot of experience with this type of presentation rather than the other 3 types of presentation.
There are local rules and business etiquette for each region. So it may be better to learn them from local friends and colleagues.
And usually, we have a lot of interaction with customers such as Q&A and discussion.
A great presentation for customer meetings
Address customer’s interest and concern
Provide the right information at the right timing
Easy to understand
Call for action
Thank you for reading this post.
Based on my experience I wrote some tips for the business presentation for customer meetings.
Please check the 5 steps for how to prepare your presentation.
