HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations (HBR Guide Series)

Keep Remote Listeners Interested

When people tune in to a webinar or dial in to a teleconference, you can’t see them, so their temptation to multitask is great.

My firm recently surveyed almost 400 people who’ve attended a webinar within the last year, and it turns out that more of them checked e-mail than doing any other activity—including watching the webinar (figure 6-4). That makes people’s in-boxes your biggest competitor.

So what can you do to lure people away from their other tasks?

• Break the content down into small bites: Feed participants small, tasty morsels one by one so they stay tuned in. Move through your points quickly—don’t spend a long time explaining concepts. And if you have slides, change them up about every 20 seconds.