by Gilda Bonanno LLC
In addition to your prepared content, answering questions also can be an essential part of your presentation since it enables you to build rapport with your audience and demonstrate your expertise.
You must prepare for questions as much as you do the other parts of your presentation, whether you are making a sales pitch to a potential client, updating the steering committee about your project or reviewing your new safety guidelines with a vendor.
Sometimes, however, you can’t see your audience because you are on a phone call or on a video call where people have turned off their cameras. Handling questions when you can’t see your audience can be even more difficult to manage than when you can see your audience, because you can’t see the audience’s reactions and whether they are even paying attention.
Here are 12 ways to handle questions when you can’t see your audience:
1. Consider whether you really want to answer questions
Answering questions is not a required part of every presentation. Sometimes, because of time, the subject matter or the audience, it's not appropriate, necessary or helpful to answer questions as part of your presentation. As you are preparing, seriously consider whether you need and want to include questions.
2. Set the audience’s expectations regarding questions
Early in your presentation, set the audience’s expectations about if, when and how you will address questions. For example, say, “I’m going to take questions as I go along, so feel free to interrupt me” or “I’m going to handle questions at the end, so I ask that you hold them until then.” Let them know whether they should just unmute themselves and interrupt you, wait until you ask for questions or use the hand-raise feature (if it’s available on your video call application).
3. Stay focused even when answering questions
Your presentation isn’t over until you hang up the phone or end the video call, so make sure you remain focused even after your main presentation is over. While answering questions, keep your voice energized and clear, continue to demonstrate confidence and minimize your “ums” and “ahs.”
4. Be prepared for questions
As you prepare your presentation, ask yourself, “What could people ask me? What would be an easy question? What would be a difficult question?” and then practice answers. Compile a list of essential questions based on your experience and by talking to colleagues about the topic. While you can’t predict all of the questions you will be asked, you can probably anticipate 80-85% of them and prepare responses. That leaves you with only about a few questions you will truly have to answer extemporaneously.
5. For unexpected questions, stay in the moment and trust yourself
Despite all of your preparation, it’s possible that you get a question you haven’t prepared for. When that happens, stay in the moment and trust that you can use your experience, knowledge and preparation to come up with a reasonable answer. You can even say, “Give me a moment. I want to think about this answer.”
6. Prepare a response to give when you don’t know the answer
Even after some thought, it’s possible that you just don’t know the answer to a question. Have something ready to say in this situation. Otherwise, you may stumble, ramble on and undermine your credibility.
A simple response will suffice. For example, “That’s an interesting question. I don’t have an answer to that right now. I will check with my team and get back to you by the end of the day.” Or, “We really didn’t consider that in our analysis. However, I can see how that would be important.” This type of response respects the questioner, shows you value the question and demonstrates your confidence. And make sure you actually follow up if you have promised to do so.
7. Stay on topic
Sometimes you will get a question that is off-topic or requires a detailed answer. You have to be careful not to veer too far from your topic or go into too much detail. You might lose the rest of your audience, especially since you can’t see them to gauge their reactions. If you must address the question, practice saying something like, “Let me address that briefly right now, and then if you need more detail, we can handle that offline.”
8. Be prepared if you get interrupted
Even if you have asked the audience to hold questions until near the end, you may get interrupted earlier in the presentation. Then you have to decide how you will handle the situation, based on who’s asking the question, the timing, the topic and how relevant you think it is. Will you restate that you aren’t handling questions until later or will you answer it anyway? Thinking about this possibility before your presentation will help you make a smarter decision in the moment.
9. Give the audience enough time to ask questions
Make sure you pause long enough to give people time to ask questions. You don’t want to ask, “Any questions?” and then move right into the next topic. Give people enough time to think of a question, unmute themselves, make sure nobody else is speaking and then ask the question.
10. Reconsider how you ask for questions
Rather than asking, “Any questions?” try asking, “What questions do you have?” It’s a subtle shift that assumes there are questions. And then pause and say something like, “I’m going to pause for a moment or two to allow you to think about that, unmute yourself and then ask it.” And then pause, usually longer than you think you need to.
11. Keep track of questions
It’s helpful to keep track of questions for a variety of reasons: to incorporate frequently-asked questions into your next version of the presentation, to be better prepared next time if there was a question you couldn’t answer or to make sure you follow up with something that you’ve promised to do. Often it’s easier to have someone else on the call keep track of the questions for you.
12. Avoid ending your presentation with answering questions
Contrary to popular usage, it is best not to end your presentation with questions. You risk losing control of your ending if you have to reply defensively to an off-topic or hostile question. And if there are no questions, your presentation just trails off into an embarrassing silence.
Instead, do a mini-conclusion and then transition to answering questions. Once you’ve finished with the questions, then deliver your final conclusion. This structure allows you to stay in control of the presentation and also restate your message. (Thanks to professional speaker and consulting expert, Alan Weiss, who first introduced me to the idea of not ending a presentation with the question-and-answer format.)
Answering questions can connect you to the audience, help them understand your message and allow you to demonstrate your confidence and knowledge. Following these tips can help you learn to handle questions during your presentation with ease, even when you can’t see your audience.
P.S. A version of this article first appeared on the 12Most blog.
© Gilda Bonanno LLC - Gilda Bonanno serves as a trusted advisor to executives and entrepreneurs to transform their communication, presentation and leadership skills. She has worked with companies on 4 continents, from Chicago to Shanghai and Rio to Rome. The instructional videos on her YouTube channel have received over 2 million views and her e-newsletter has reached subscribers in over 45 countries since 2008. For other articles or to receive Gilda's e-newsletter, visit www.gildabonanno.com