Preparing for Presentations on Webex, Skype and Zoom

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate. Hi and welcome to the program today. Short program today I would really just want to delve deep into one little lesson. This is based on a couple of blunders I've made lately. Now the good news is more and more clients, prospects, people I deal with in every single industry, they want to communicate online, they want to communicate with audio and video. That's great. I've been preaching that for years and fortunately or unfortunately, there are more and more resources for doing that. There's Zoom, there's WebEx, there are all sorts of new services popping up and I'm not here to praise or condemn one or the other. Now for years I've been somewhat partial to Skype with a lot of my communication of audio and video has been around. But I take the attitude of anything a client or a prospect wants to communicate on with me, I'll bend to them. Here's the tip for the day and here is the exposure of where I have blundered a couple of times in the last few weeks. I have not walked the talk. I have not practiced what I preach. If you're using a new technology, my recommendation is give yourself plenty of time to make sure everything is configured correctly on your computer. Now, if you're like me, and I hope you're not in this regard, you may have a sophisticated setup. I have a broadcast quality camera, I have a couple of different sound cards. I have other web videos, webcams. What that means is when I'm switching from a Skype which has all my preset programs and inputs and outputs the right way, when I'm going to a new service like Webinar or Zoom or other things, my computer doesn't know which one to use, so it might grab the wrong one. So all of a sudden I'm trying to communicate with people and I can't hear them or they can't hear me. It's awkward and it can make you literally sweat. And by you, I mean me. All of these things are relatively easy to fix if you give yourself plenty of time. Don't hop on to your computer at five minutes until the top of the hour when your online meeting is supposed to start, get there a good half hour, preferably the day before you test it, if it's a really big presentation or you're giving a keynote speech. And this applies to Google Hangouts, other Google Live applications. I mean, there's a gazillion services these days and all of them have slightly different settings. And I don't care how experienced you are, how comfortable, calm, cool and collected you are, if you know you're late for a meeting and there are 5, 10, 15, 20 people perhaps around the globe all waiting for you, that puts pressure on you. That's the worst time to learn a new technology. That's the worst time to adjust settings. You want to be adjusting your settings for your presentation when no one's there, when no one's looking at you, when no one is thinking, why can't this guy, why can't this person show up on time? You don't want to be late because that can throw a crimp in things and make the start of your presentation awkward. Now, I'm a big believer in never starting presentations with apologizing or saying you're sorry. But if you're not up and ready to go until five after the hour and everyone stopped what they're doing and they were there right on time, it is a dilemma. It is awkward. You don't put yourself in that situation. So give yourself plenty of time, Prepare. And I made a vow. I'm never going to make that mistake again. I don't care how busy it is. I got to get up earlier. I've got to not have that second cup of coffee, whatever it is. I've got to get in front of my computer and do an actual test. Even if it's a service I've used. I haven't used good Google Hangouts in a while. So if I've got to connect with someone through Google Hangouts, you can bet I'm going to get there a half an hour early test. Best thing is if you then call some other colleague, friend, family member, someone in a cubicle down the hall, call them and test it and make sure everything is working fine. Because here's the other thing. Sometimes when you're plugging a new microphone in or plugging a different camera in, you need to restart your computer. And if your computer is one week old, maybe that's really fast. But if you have a computer that's more than six months old, as some of mine are, you may find that just restarting your computer and going through a full restart and programs, opening up Skype, Webex, Zoom, all these others, that can take five minutes. So if something doesn't work and it's now three minutes till the start of your online presentation and you're just now hitting restart, a terrible feeling, I gotta tell you, I'm a pretty relaxed person. I'm pretty easygoing. How I sound to you here is pretty much how I sound in real life. But there is nothing that gets my blood pressure higher. There's nothing that makes me more of a nervous wreck than being late for people. I don't like it when people are late for me, and I sure don't like making anybody wait. And that's why the lesson for the day just because it's an online presentation and you can do it from your office or home. Get there early, do your due diligence practice. Make sure everything is working correctly. Don't practice on your clients, don't practice on your customers. Don't practice on your prospects. Practice on your own time with your own colleagues and you will not regret it. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. The program is brought to you, as always, by Media Training Worldwide. If you're looking for a group public speaking training or group media training, give us a call. 212-764-4955. If you're out of the U.S. country, code is one. If you'd like more information about private trainings, one on one trainings, group trainings, our new online coaching program. Give us a call or stop by the website. The link is in the show notes below, so check it out. And don't go another day giving a substandard speech or presentation or talk. Why not make it great? You can start by going through our training right now. Thanks a lot. I'm TJ Walker. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to speaking with T.J. walker.