Appropriate Visual Aids

Hand-outs and other take-homes

Providing meeting attendees with written matter for later reference offers several advantages:

• You are appealing to the more visual person


• You are showing that you took the effort to put something together


• You are forced to organize your thoughts on paper


• Your attendees will also have a place to refer back to once they leave the meeting and are trying to recall details. For example, they might remember that your new computer software package could make their company 40% more efficient, but their boss might want just a few more particulars about how.


• Handouts provide an easy reference to your contact information. Even if that one attendee can't use your product, he might leave your flyer or folder lying around in a location where another potential customer could pick it up and possibly be interested.

If you choose to use visuals, there are a few basic guidelines that can help make the process easier.

Consider the Situation

Example: A professional speaker offers a half-day seminar on memory improvement. It is targeted toward college students, and it is fairly pricey. All attendees receive three-ring binders with printed copies of everything the presenter discussed. Presumably, since the audience shelled out the cash to go to a memory-improvement seminar, they knew they needed help with recall and would appreciate the handouts.

In a meeting or conference where attendees have had to pay a significant entry fee, some sort of substantial handout is usually appropriate. Likewise, with a sales presentation, you will want your client to be able to remember exactly how wonderful your product is, and you might also want to use your print materials to convey an image of stability (through sturdy or custom-made brochures, notebooks and flyers).

However, in an in-house meeting where your department is footing the bill, or if you are trying to highlight ways your organization could cut costs, or if you are discussing ways to be more environmentally-friendly, then killing thousands of trees and paying for ink and paper (plus the investment of time involved in creating quality print materials) may not meld with the message you're trying to put across. In that case, find a way to collect email addresses so you can send out a short synopsis later on--your organization will save on paper and ink, and your attendees will still have a written reminder of what they heard, and your all-important contact information.

The length of the presentation also matters: a ten-minute briefing on your pet project's status may need only one single chart or slide. A half-day course on management skills would require more reference material.

To sum up, always consider the situation at hand, the amount of information involved, and what the audience needs and expects.