Which Do You Prefer: Beginnings or Endings?

Posted by Jozzua on Jun 28, 2007 in Random Blabber | 3 comments

I’m talking about presentations here, ok? When you present to a group of people, do you prefer to do it at the beginning of a program or at the end part?

I’ve been busy making presentations for groups of people. They had other agendas in their session and we had to make our pitch near the end. I had concerns about this. First, the people were generally too tired from the long sessions. Some actually left early for other appointments.

The good thing about it though is that since there wasn’t anything else after my presentations, the Q&A time was pretty much unlimited. This provided those really interested to ask some more details questions. From here, you could find out which ones were very good leads.

On the other hand, if we had presented at the very first part of the session, the latecomers would not have seen our presentation. Some might actually forget about the entire thing by the end.

So which one is better?

Present at the start:
- Latecomers might not see it
- They might not remember the presentation
- The group, however, tend to be more attentive at the start of the program

Present at the end:
- Some people leave early and won’t see the presentation
- They are less attentive after long sessions
- The presentor, however, has a longer Question and Answer(Q&A) portion

In my case, I felt it was easier to follow up immediately after a long Q&A session at the end of the program. I even talked to some good leads after the entire meeting. There was good follow-through.