Preparing Speakers for Your Annual Meeting

Should You Bring in a Speech Coach?

We are routinely tapped by Fortune 1000 companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, national unions and others to prepare their organization’s senior leadership for their annual meetings. In the last week alone, two of our team members were prepping firms for their high-profile events. The pressure to deliver an engaging, compelling and informative presentation in these forums is immense and often takes months of planning. Annual and investor meetings demand concise and heightened clarity in all communications. What may look smooth and seamless on event day often requires months of work and preparation.

Don’t Wait Until the Last Minute

You cannot leave annual meeting presentations to chance.  If you “wing it” and things do not go well, you may never recover from the damages to your reputation.

Benefits of a Presentation Coach

Transforming into a great presenter doesn’t happen overnight, but presentation coaching can have a lasting positive impact on the perceptions of your senior leadership. Working with senior leaders takes a special approach. They are already good communicators, or they would not have been elevated to the higher ranks. But good isn’t good enough, anymore. At these high-stakes events, your leadership needs to be great.

Even experienced leaders need to be challenged: Are their messages strong enough? Do they resonate with the audience? Is each speaker authentic? Are the slides on target or do they overpower the speaker?

Why Hire a Presentation Coach

External presentation coaches play an important role by acting as your intended audience and pushing back where we see vulnerabilities in your presentation. We are also skilled at bringing out your executive’s personality in speeches. Achieving audience buy-in doesn’t happen just because you have a nice looking batch of slides, but someone may be motivated to act because of something you say with conviction.

After one recent annual meeting, a key analyst interjected, “that was your best meeting yet.” While we could tell him he did a fantastic job, the remarks from the analyst were what he needed to hear.