From TG... to TA

Presentations are always difficult- for most, exception could be Garry Reynolds. We all know that it requires intensive preparation on the topic that one is going to speak, I also feel that it is important that the speaker understand the listeners requirement- which most of them forgets. Yesterday I attended Arab beverage forum held at Dubai, audience comprised of marketers from the Middle East beverage industry.

I happen to listen to a speaker who had his 50-60 odd slides filled with statistics and information which any one in the beverage category would already be having. These numbers ( population,Mkt Share) are bread and butter for a marketer, and all of them would surely have tucked them in their ‘Market Share’ folder somewhere in the notebook. I can bet some people in audience would have had these numbers on their finger tip, at least I saw 4 spelling errors and graphs with numbers all wrong. When the presentation ended the audience pummeled the speaker with some questions that indicated how prepared and well informed the audience was – since the crowd corrected the speaker on some of the numbers. Knowing your TG is not just for hawking a product; it is equally relevant for a speaker also- one should know the TA - Target Audience well.