One of the key things that a presenter is often taught is to start and end your presentation on time. Now, this sounds so easy, doesn’t it?

But the problem is that the time before a presentation is often when much of the networking happens, and you end up having a roomful of really chatty people who are so busy networking that they loose complete track of the time,and it becomes difficult to get their attention. So, how do you get their attention, get them to take their seats and settle down so that you can begin your presentation on time?

Here is a really simple solution that Mike Futty, a fellow associate at Powerful Presentation Alliance, suggested to me. Create a ten minute time-check presentation that you show before you start speaking. In other words, show on the screen how much time remains before the programme begins. Simple, isn’t it?

This gives people a clear visual indicator that:

• You are aware of time
• You expect the audience to be aware of time
• You intend to start on time

To make it easy for you, we have provided you a simple Power Point presentation for you. All it does is to show a simple countdown timer. Just download it and run it ten minutes before you are going to start. Feel free to distribute it. You can download it here.

Enjoy!

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