Bedell Communications

I’ve posted about the value in meeting with media/analyst contacts prior to a briefing to ensure that you’re presenting information your contact can use. This is all well and good — assuming your contact can hear and understand your speaker, which brings me to another briefing blunder: failure to use a clear communications channel (I’m talking about the telephone line!) and/or a presenter that speaks clearly.

Most technology briefings are conducted via a conference call between the speaker, a marketing manager, a PR rep, and of course the media/analyst contact. This is understandably unavoidable. It’s difficult to get all these people in the same room. However, speakers should not be presenting briefings from a mobile phone while driving or sitting in a noisy airport terminal. If the speaker does manage to stay focused, he/she may not be heard over the background noise. This can also be a problem when using VoIP lines. Make certain ahead of time that the speaker can call in from a quiet location on a line that provides decent quality of service.

Once you’ve established that your speaker will be clearly heard, ensure that he/she will be understood. There are a lot of smart technology managers and executives outside the U.S., and many of them are non-native English speakers. Unfortunately, a heavy accent or broken English can make a highly-detailed technical conversation difficult to follow, especially if your contact is new to your product. This is not to say that your speaker cannot still give the presentation. Consider providing your contacts with speaker notes prior to the briefing, or be prepared to answer questions, clarify quotes, etc., after the briefing. — Crystal Bedell

In my experience, most technology media briefings go one of two ways: They’re either very productive or a huge waste of time. Media and analyst briefings take an incredible amount of effort to pull off. Someone needs to create the PowerPoint presentation (if there is one), schedules need to be coordinated amongst three or four people, and the speaker needs to be prepped on the correct messaging. After all this work, it’s in your best interest to ensure that your audience isn’t snoozing on the other end of the phone or daydreaming about lunch — which brings us to briefing blunder No. 1: failure to define the briefing’s objectives in terms of your contact’s information needs.

Once your media or analyst contact has agreed to a briefing, take 10-15 minutes to understand what it is they want to learn regarding your announcement. What do they hope to walk away with, and what kind of coverage — if any — is likely to come out of the briefing? How much time do they have for the briefing? This information will help focus the conversation so that you both meet your objectives.

Even after warning PR reps ahead of time that I only have 30 minutes for a briefing, it is not unusual to sit through a lengthy introduction to the company, leaving little time for the real meat of the presentation. This can be avoided with a little bit of prep work. In this case, why not send the company info prior to the briefing and have the speaker skip that slide?

While discussing your contact’s goals for the briefing, dig a little bit to get a sense of his/her knowledge of your product and related technology. Does your contact need technical details, and what level of detail does he/she already understand? Again, you’re wasting valuable time by digging into the inner-technical workings of a product that’s beyond both the contact’s information needs and understanding. On the other hand, you don’t want to force your contact to repeatedly interrupt the speaker to say, “Yes, I know how a firewall/SAN/virtualization/etc. works.”

Once you know your contact’s objectives for the briefing and the appropriate level of technical detail required, give this information to the speaker — ahead of time; not as you’re kicking off the briefing. This will give the speaker time to properly prepare and ensure that you get the most out of the time and effort that went into landing the briefing in the first place. — Crystal Bedell