McKinsey & Company Bain & Company URGENT ADVICE : Presenting to client in 10hours: how to be very time conscious?! Will have like 30m for 12 slides but when on stimulants find it very difficult to be conscious of time or even look at time when I’m busy presenting. Thoughts?! Boston Consulting Group McKinsey & Company Bain & Company Strategy&
Talk as fast as possible and don’t pause for questions or feedback - also add more slides to overwhelm your enemies
Real consulting take - MBB material
Rehearse. Get comfortable with the content. Time yourself with each slide. Is someone from your team going to be on the meeting? Ask them to play time cop and ping you
Also maybe see if you can cut the slides. Be efficient with intros and leave 5 mins for questions
Send the deck to your client for a pre-read the night before or at least 6 hours before. This will help a ton.
Have your AC write all the questions you anticipate on a different doc with the answers to each question. That’s gonna help you answer quickly to some hopefully most questions.
Now just relax and go with the flow. Clients may ask a ton of questions and you barely get to slide#5.
Dont rush to try to cover all materials. I think It’s better for the client to fully get 5 slides and align with you vs you running through 12 slides and they dont get a single thing
I know some people try to have a timer but if the discussion is interesting and in depth, you dont want to rush your client as you could appear rude.
Hope that helps
I can’t remember ever walking through 12 pages sequentially exactly as planned. A few points:
- think about what are the most important things on the client’s mind and try to anticipate what questions they’re likely to have
- be ready to take the client’s lead; if they’re most interested in the topic you have on page 9 and start asking about that right away, don’t trudge through every page to get there, jump there and focus the discussion there until they’re satisfied
- know the 2-3 most important messages you have to land / decisions you need made / etc and make sure you hit those
- if you think you’re speaking too slowly, you’re not; take a breath, slow down
- once you’ve covered 2-3 slides, make a conscious point to check time and redirect the discussion as needed; if possible, have one of your colleagues in the room on point to keep an eye on the clock and give you a heads up when you’re halfway through, 10, 5 min remaining
We’re just gonna stroll past the stimulants comment? Ok
Could they have euphemized it and called it medication, sure? But at the end of the day most ADHD meds are stimulants.
I sometimes set a timer with vibrate feature that warns me I have 5 min left
Difficulty to be conscious of time (a.k.a. time blindness) is a classic ADHD symptom, may not be due to medication.
Send the deck to your client for a pre-read the night before or at least 6 hours before. This will help a ton.
Have your AC write all the questions you anticipate on a different doc with the answers to each question. That’s gonna help you answer quickly to some hopefully most questions.
Now just relax and go with the flow. Clients may ask a ton of questions and you barely get to slide#5.
Dont rush to try to cover all materials. I think It’s better for the client to fully get 5 slides and align with you vs you running through 12 slides and they dont get a single thing
I know some people try to have a timer but if the discussion is interesting and in depth, you dont want to rush your client as you could appear rude.
Hope that helps
I always use a timer with a vibration in my pocket to help me be careful about my time.