Don't expect your audience to be beta testers

I get it. Every new product or topic or whatever has to be presented for the first time. And as someone who has spent many, many hours as both a presenter and audience member, I get that things go wrong. No matter how hard you try to prepare, stuff will happen. And most audiences will be forgiving of glitches. They will stick with you through some bumps. They really want you to succeed because if they are there (unless they have to be for some reason) they want their time to be spent well and they want to learn or be inspired or entertained or whatever.

But, never, ever, ever, should your audience be beta testers, even if they are the first audience to hear the presentation. What do I mean but that? For starters, know who they are, respect who they are, and make sure that what you are presenting focuses on benefitting them. Secondly, double-check everything that is in your control. As discussed above, stuff happens, but you have control over the content you put forward, so make sure it is correct.

Why am I ranty about this today? Well, I had an hour of my time wasted by a bad presentation this morning.

Pain point #1 - Be clear about your intention

The least offensive point for me was that it was basically a paid advertisement. It wasn't really made clear in the session description that that is what it would be but the company presenting was a sponsor of the event so it wasn't entirely surprising that the price of admission to a free event was a sales pitch. I would have listened to it if they had be more transparent up front but there were a number of people in the chat making it clear that they felt a bit duped.

Pain point #2 - Be clear about who your audience is

It wasn't until well into the questions that it was announced that the product would only be available in the US. What? You knew ahead of time that you had a global audience tuning in. At least make it clear up front that this product is going into limited release with other countries to come. This way, you had some people getting interested and then you poked a giant pin in their bubble. One even wrote: "You just lost my interest."

Pain point #3 - Be clear about the benefit

I am sure that there is lots of great content available as part of the product they were announcing but it wasn't really clear how that would benefit the organizations they were pitching to. Question rolled in about case studies, what industries had seen benefits, and the like. Only then did it really come out that this was really a new product and they did have some examples, but you would have to email them and they would send them to you. OK, I get you don't want to give away all the trade secrets, but, hey, throw us a bone. A crumb. Show me why I should care.

Pain point #4 - Be sure the email address works

Yep, you read that right. They were announcing the kickoff of a great new service and if you wanted a free 30-day trial you could email the address on the slide. Well, people started emailing during the session and one announced quickly in the chat that their message returned undeliverable. Wow, talk about all of the air getting sucked out of the virtual room. Huh? The email doesn't work? You didn't test it? How am I supposed to have any confidence about your service?

OK, enough pain. Phew, I feel better now. So, please don't let my suffering be in vain. Learn from the mistakes I lived through and please don't ever inflict them on your audience. Don't give your audience beta, give them better.