Guest Post from Jennifer Fong, jenfongspeaks.com 

I’ve been involved with webinar technology from close to its very inception. Back in my instructional design days, I remember working with trainers employed by the corporation I was working with, trying to create an instructional script format that would make it easy for them to deliver training using this new technology.

Since then, I’ve watched the providers of this technology move in and out of prominence, and watched the pricing structure largely favor corporations with big budgets. This has troubled me a bit, because I’ve lately had the opportunity to work with a lot of direct sellers (think Tupperware or Mary Kay ladies) and see the online meeting tool provider market largely ignore this key demographic (which is a mistake, since at last count there were 15.1 million people involved in direct selling in the US alone, and more than 59 million worldwide.)

You see, direct sellers make a lot of presentations, but often they are moms (or dads) living on a family budget, and 50 bucks a month or more can often be a big hit. Add to that the fact that, until recently, all you could really do was PowerPoint, and these providers really didn’t do what we needed them to.

There are a few reasons why direct sellers need a good online meeting tool:

1. Online group sales events (“online parties”)
2. Online events to present the business opportunity
3. Sales force training
4. New product roll-outs

As part of these meetings, we typically need to share information, possibly a live demo or two, and often do some group browsing of websites.

In order to really effectively do these things, here are some of the features that direct sellers have said they would find incredibly useful in an online meeting tool.

1. Reasonable pricing.
2. Video. In the direct selling business, face to face communication is a must. It would also be great to enable web cams of anyone participating.
3. Embedded chat. Chat can be a great way to share websites, as well as facilitate discussion with participants.
4. PowerPoint/Presentation capabilities. This is a no-brainer for any kind of presentation.
5. Live browsing that enables each viewer to independently interact with the website being shared. Especially when doing group sales presentations, we need to be able to take people to a specific website and then allow them to shop independently.
6. Easy recording, with the ability to download that recording (not tied to a specific provider to keep/reuse the recording.) Our training libraries are a huge asset for our businesses, and it’s useful for folks who couldn’t make, for example, a live product rollout to still be able to see it.
7. Polls to keep participants engaged.
8. Viewable attendee list that captures contact info and makes it available to the moderator after the event.

Direct sales provide such an incredible opportunity for online meeting tool providers. We’re typically a loyal bunch, we are the poster child of word of mouth (we’re constantly sharing great resources with one another), and our use of certain technologies can put those tools in front of millions. It’s time for the online meeting industry to take a closer look at this demographic. There’s a world of opportunity just waiting for them.

Do you do online sales that involve live presentations? How do you use online meeting technology to facilitate those presentations? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

About the author:

Jennifer Fong is a social media speaker and consultant who helps direct selling companies and individual direct sellers use social media effectively as a business building tool. A former direct sales company CEO, Jennifer built her company from the ground up, and understands what it takes to build, lead, and train a team, as well as the underlying principles of any direct selling business: network, sell, and recruit. She combines her expertise in direct sales with her passion for social media marketing to provide direct sellers with the knowledge they need to put social media to work for their businesses in a strategic and profitable way.

Jennifer offers free information about social media and how to use it for direct sales on her blog at http://jenfongspeaks.com. Find her on Facebook at http://facebook.com/jenfongspeaks, and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jenfongspeaks.

Tis the season for … snow, ice, and roads that you can’t even look at without spinning wildly out of control. In most parts of the country there is one constant in every winter season – winter weather, and it causes a headache. Seattle, WA and Buffalo, NY have already experienced a snow storm, one that snarls traffic, and makes getting to work nearly impossible.

Earlier this week, there were reports that we were going to get some “record-breaking snowfall” here in DFW. That report has since started to fade from the forecast, but if the early season computer models are already starting to predict snowfalls, I can only imagine what will happen come January.

Not only is this the beginning of the winter weather season but it’s also the holidays – a time of year when non-profit organizations are hosting fundraisers. What happens when an event you planned has to be cancelled or if your guests cannot safely arrive? As an educator, how do you prepare when a crucial lecture must be rescheduled? In government, you can’t run a country without being able to get people in the same place – so how do you continue when you can’t get to work, school, or your event?

Check with your conference call provider to see what their capacity is for last minute / large events. Get everyone on your conference call and let business continue as usual. Even if you’re in sunny California with a speaker who’s stranded in their hometown, you can get a phone hooked up to the loudspeakers and have your speaker call in. Their presentation still happens and your guests are still happy. Your event happens, despite Mother Nature’s disagreement with you.

Where was the worst place you were stranded during snow or ice? How did you continue conducting your business or did you crawl under a blanket and come out after everything thawed out?

Until today, I had never heard of ICEPAC, but this acronym stands for the steps of creating a great presentation. Whether you have weeks to craft, or get handed the project last minute, this acronym--and the other tips in the article--break down a presentation into easy-made parts.

ICEPAC

Interest - If no one cares about a subject, then why bother with a web conference? If they’re supposed to care, then it’s your job to make them care. Think about how your message will affect your participants daily lives and business, and emphasize the more interesting points.

Comprehension - There’s such a thing as too much detail, especially if your participants will get information overload. Keep data to bite sized chunks, avoid jargon, and cater to their--not your--expertise.

Emphasis - The main message is the whole point of your presentation, so emphasize it. Put key information on its own slide. Pause after saying a main point, or even precede it with, “This is important.”

Participation - Getting your participants involved creates more investment on their part. Utilize Q&A often, or ask impromptu, “soft ball” questions. Use the Socratic Method to draw people out, and praise highly when it works.

Accomplishment - For people to be more open to ideas, they have to like the ideas. And the best way of getting them to like ideas is for them to be a part of their creation. With good participation, you’re halfway there, but the web conference as a whole should be satisfying with something completed, decided on, or improved.

Confirmation - This is more than follow-up after the conference, it includes during as well. Q&A throughout is good to make sure you’re on track. And it never hurts to get participants to repeat their assignments so you know they understand.

Try ICEPAC when you create your next presentation and let us know how it worked for you.

While everyone might now be over excited about the appearance of two-way video calling on cell phones, I am. Since I work in an industry where we talk about how certain products and services allow you to take your office and meetings everywhere, being able to actually do that is a very cool change. Since Wi-Fi is everywhere you can take your laptop out and host or attend a conference without having to worry about being in the office.

Right now, if you’re stuck in traffic or on a train it’s not always an easy move to whip out your laptop and connect to a meeting. In the next year, we are going to be able to whip out our phones and see the person we’re talking to. Here are some of the companies that are making this happen.

Apple:  While official confirmation hasn’t come out yet, it’s a pretty good guess that the new iPhone 4G will support (at least) two way video conferencing, among many other things. More than likely, it will (with no big surprise here) support iChat or some other form of Apple based product, but I suspect with time, video conferencing providers and services will find a way to make their products compatible with that kind of video availability.

Evo 4G: A strong response to the iPhone, it’s got a similar layout and will provide a means for video chatting. The initial concerns to the Evo video chat was that there would be a charge for the service, but it seems like now, it will not require an additional fee to access, only an additional fee to access premium services (whatever those will be).

I guess the basic question comes down to if you see yourself using this kind of service, or if you will just try it out because you’re in the market for a new phone.  Are you more excited about Apple or Sprint being able to offer this kind of service and will it make your life easier, or harder?

The story that’s been circulating for the last couple of days is from the New York Times about General James Mattis saying that “PowerPoint makes us stupid”. As someone who deals a lot with presenters, I have to say that I, very respectfully, sir, disagree.

Simply using a PowerPoint doesn’t make us stupid, but it does run the risk of making presenters boring and making audiences complacent.  How many times have you been attending a web conference and you find yourself staring off into space or working on something else because you’re busy and you can “always look at the presentation slides later.”

It’s because a lot of presenters “abuse the power” of the PowerPoint. When you attend a conference or view a webinar, you often come up against the fact that speakers are reading off the slides. Just because you put your sentences into short bullet points doesn’t mean you’re not breaking one of the cardinal rules of presenting. PowerPoint presentations should be used as a guide, never as the meat of your presentation – that should be you.

With that being said, let’s talk about some of the other important things to keep in mind when putting together a presentation for a group.

Pictures should enhance a story, not tell it. I think the biggest “what were they thinking” moment comes from the presentation slide that’s been circulating the internet. Who can read that? It says nothing. If you’re relying on your slides to tell the story, you’re going to lose your audience almost instantly. It’s better to use them to support a story that you tell.

Not all subjects need slide presentations. Sure, the US Military has a lot of ground to cover and probably a short amount of time to do it in, but the everyday company doesn’t always need to have a presentation. There are some subjects that can be fully discussed just with a conference call. If you over saturate your audience with slides, they simply won’t mean anything anymore. For more presentation tips and tricks, check out some of my previous posts.

Presentations, like most things in the US, are all about the balance of power – when to use them, when to not, and how to use them in the right way. How do you determine when to use a presentation and when not to?

There are a ton of things to consider when planning a conference. Believe it or not, one of the considerations that can give you the biggest headache is “What time?”. Here are three things to take into consideration when setting your conference time.
 
Be advised. Always alert participants that the time zones listed on the meeting invitation may not reflect their time zone. Be sure to note on the invitation what time zone you’re listing things in. For example, our company is in central time, so anytime you hear us refer to times, it would be CST. We note all the major US time zones on invitations and agreements, so hopefully; we can help keep things clear.

Special Considerations. When the US goes on Daylight Savings Time, everyone skips ahead an hour – except for the state of Arizona. As confusing as it can be for you, I’ve actually found it is pretty confusing for them too. When DST is in effect, it’s a good idea to note your invitation that the times reflect daylight savings.  

International Participants. When setting up your meetings, remember when dealing with international participants they can sometimes be up to a day ahead of you currently time wise.
 
Knowing who is invited to your conference and where they are located makes the planning process smoother as well as helping things move along well. Being well prepared will help relieve your stress and make things go a little smoother so that you can focus on the reason why everyone is together.
 
Besides time zones, what are some other things to consider when planning a conference?

Okay, I’m not, but a couple weeks ago I wrote a post about Cooking with Gordon Ramsey and how cool I thought it was that he was using a simple video conferencing process to teach normal, everyday American’s how to cook. As someone who spends a lot of time in my kitchen, it was easy for me to pick up on what I would consider simple things to do. Mince? No problem. Garlic press? Got one right here. While it was awesome to me, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would benefit for someone who didn’t like to cook the way I did.

I concocted an experiment. I would test the Gordon Ramsey theory on someone who had minimal knowledge in the kitchen – meaning she can cook without burning the house down, but has rarely made things from scratch. Our menu was simple: sautéed chicken with basil and butter and a honey mustard sauce. My goal here wasn’t so much to teach her how to cook but to test the theory that a video conference can be used just as well as a live demonstration.

My test subject?  Meet my best friend, Rachel. Her cooking skills aren’t terrible, but I would call her a novice and chicken is one of her least favorite things to cook. She doesn’t trust herself to know when it’s done, and even as much as I cook, I tend to find chicken very tricky and have experienced a couple of failures with it.

Since Christmas Day, weary travelers have been trekking through airports worldwide with one thought in mind: How long is this going to take? The TSA already recommended that you give yourself one to two hours for security checkpoints before your flight, especially when flying to international locations or in to the United States. Since the failed bombing on Christmas Day, security is even tighter. Now, the TSA website states that "At this time, security checkpoint requirements for passengers departing U.S. airports remain the same. Passengers do not need to do anything differently, but they may notice additional security measures at the airport." Interesting, since the day that Joan Rivers can't get on a plane and people are detained for not exposing the amount of money they make seems like more than just "additional security measures". Taking my shoes off is an additional security measure, limiting the amount of liquid I can take on my carry-on bag is an additional security measure. Getting a full body scan is a bit more than an "additional measure" and a bomb sniffing German Sheppard is not the way I was to spend my time hanging out in the terminal. Good luck if you're trying to fly into the United States from another country.

Why are we still putting ourselves through the hassle? In the past it had always been about trying to close a deal or do some training but with conference call providers that can do audio, desktop and web sharing, I have to ask, what's the point of the headache when you can easily do something different? Set up a conference, stay in your office, and avoid the delays. I can guarantee no one on the conference is going to mistake your white chocolate mocha as an explosive device.