The era of rigidly structured presentations, crammed with facts and figures, is over. What's needed today is flexibility and adaptability. With ever-increasing time pressure, it's essential to deliver customer-relevant information quickly and precisely, rather than wasting the audience's time with lengthy and potentially irrelevant slides.

Depending on the topic of your presentation and the mood of the audience, it may be useful to move away from the PowerPoint presentation during the presentation and engage in a direct conversation with the audience.

The advantages of a dialogue

Switching from presentation to conversation has several advantages:

• You receive feedback during the presentation, not just afterward. This allows the content to be tailored to the audience's interests. Depending on who is in the audience, some parts of the presentation will be more or less interesting, and sometimes it makes sense to change the order of the slides.
• Conversations are generally more interesting and engaging than lectures because the audience can participate and contribute. Furthermore, as a rule of thumb, conversations are remembered better and for longer than lectures alone.

When does a change make sense?

However, switching from a presentation to a conversation requires certain conditions to be met. Such a switch is not always sensible or effective.

• The audience should be rather small. The more people want to participate in the conversation, the more chaotic and confusing the whole thing becomes. With a small audience, everyone can have a chance to speak and be addressed individually.
• The audience should be interested and ask many questions. It's pointless to try to engage in dialogue if you realize the audience is passive or inattentive. A conversation always involves at least two parties.
• While not a requirement, a weak presentation is still a valid reason to switch to a more interactive format. If you notice during a presentation that your audience doubts the information you're presenting or seems bored, then transitioning to a dialogue can be helpful. On the one hand, it encourages audience participation, and on the other hand, you can immediately answer questions and quickly reassure skeptics.

  

• The most important prerequisite, however, is that you don't approach a conversation unprepared. Switching to a dialogue doesn't mean you don't have to prepare a presentation, but rather that you're able to speak about your topic even without the aid of your slides and a certain structure. Having no points to refer to and having to answer spontaneous questions requires far more knowledge and competence than traditionally going through a set of slides. So make sure you are truly well-versed in the subject matter.

  

As you can see, dialogues with your audience offer several advantages, but only make sense under certain circumstances. As with any presentation, the topic, the style of presentation, and the audience all play a role in determining which option works best. It's certainly advisable to try out conversations with the audience on a smaller scale first to see if they're right for you.