How long should a vendor executive overview presentation last..?
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
I know this must sound like a trivial question and of course the answer is always that it depends. But having said that, a colleague of mine recently sat through a two and a half hour vendor presentation, with her boss, that she arranged. The presentation was only suppose to last an hour, which she felt was reasonable. They could have left at the end of the hour and probably should have. They didn't want to be rude. (I don't think leaving a presentation at the time it was schedule to end is rude). But, needlessly to say, more time was spent talking about the length of the presentation than the content of the "pitch". Is a two and a half hour vendor presentation, in this case an executive overview, too long..? And, would you have stayed or left at the end of the scheduled one hour mark..? Saving Changes...
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What an unpleasant situation. In my opinion, it would have been appropriate to have told the vendors "an hour has passed, thank you for your information... etc., etc" and left. Many vendors will talk as long as you let them. They need definite time restraints for their own and the audience's purpose. Open ended vendor presentations often turn to rambling. At the last vendor presentation I helped coordinate, we gave strict time guidelines. We were flexible up to 5 to 10 minutes, but warned them that we'd cut them off if they didn't stick to the schedule. All of them did. Saving Changes...
Wayne MackRetired| RetiredSouth Riding, Va, United States
The meeting definitely sounds like a lose-lose situation. With few exceptions, sticking to time limits is a requirement for any meeting. Some things to try in the future to address the situation (and hind sight is always 20-20!).
Make sure to set the time duration prior to the meeting.
Remind everyone of the time duration at the start of the meeting.
If the meeting is dragging or you have only seen 10% of the PowerPoint slides during the first half of the meeting, remind everyone, again, of the time constraint.
Plan for a grace period, but be prepared to politely leave if the meeting runs over by too much. 10 minutes over for a 1 hour meeting is okay, but 1 1/2 hours over is out of the question.
It is okay to keep a meeting on schedule, just be polite while doing it. And I commiserate because I have been stuck in never ending meetings that I did not have the courage to walk out of.
I agree to what Wayne said. Many times we face this situation. As such presentations, meetings, more often Group Discussion skill comes handy. Guide the discussions, so that it will not fall out of line of agenda. Saving Changes...
Personally I think it is incredibly rude of the vendor to use your time that way. If they were going to go over the scheduled hour, they should have asked permission to continue and to take more time than scheduled.
I would probably have interrupted sometime around the 1-hour mark and asked everyone if we were going to continue, saying that I had only scheduled and hour for this. I do not think it is rude to interrupt this way; it is professional. It is also courteous to the other people in the room. If the person running the meeting is not thoughtful enough to ask everyone, it is up to you as a leader to take the lead and demonstrate the right way to do things. People really appreciate this type of behavior, I have found. The meeting organizer is relieved and the participants get their voice heard about whether or not to continue.
It does not surprise me that people only talked about the length of the presentation and not the content. This is a "hygiene" issue. If the vendor cannot control their own presentation, then that is a major issue and needs to be discussed before the pros and cons of their services or product.
This is a great story, and a useful cautionary tale for any vendor or salesperson. Thanks for sharing it. Saving Changes...
Kay BanhamProject Manager| Barking and Dagenham CollegeEssex, United Kingdom
i agree with Ed where he states "What an unpleasant situation. In my opinion, it would have been appropriate to have told the vendors "an hour has passed, thank you for your information."
But i can see the situration there imagin your sitting there with your boss and the presentation is going on and on i would propbably have sat there too as i would be to embarrassed say your hour as passed thanks a lot and good bye Saving Changes...
George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
Same as Alex, I also think the meeting organizer must keep the meeting on-track. I recently organized a series of vendor consultations (12 sessions) prior to the release of an RFP, with audience from executives to senior technical staff, both from business and IT area - generally between 20 to 50 people attending. With vendors trying to convey as much as they can while reaching everyone in the audience, and with questions allowed from so many people, my prime concern was exactly rational use of time and sticking to allotted timeframe.
Here is a summary of what I did:
- collected topics of interest from participants ahead of time, centralized them to avoid redundancy and sent them to vendors ahead of time
- included a 10 minutes summary at the end of the agenda and used them as buffer if the session went late
- created a Consultation Session Protocol that was distributed both to vendors and internal staff containing the major topics to be addressed and estimated time for each, question rules (e.g. question only - no editorials, 1 question + 1 follow-on at one time per person etc)
- when opening the session I re-stated the timelines as indicated in the Protocol
- when a participant asked the 3rd question, before the vendor started to respond I stated that after this response next person will ask a question
- if a vendor’s response took more than 1 minute I interrupted and asked to park the question for a private discussion at the end of the session
- if a vendor went 5 minutes over the time for the section I waited for a brief pause (change of slide, sip of water etc.) and stated “can we summarize this topic and move on, we really don’t want to run out of time and we’re interested in all topics planned for today?”
- I stopped the session at the end of the time allotted (if it went couple of minutes over I allowed it but I cut out the Summary agenda item) and asked participants to address any outstanding questions directly to vendor representatives in private conversations after the other people leave.
I think it’s better to control the meeting in segments, so each can have a small delay, rather than accumulating a significant delay at the end or not be able to cover all material. After first or second section where I had to speak up the vendor usually “gets it” and picks up the pace through the rest of the material. I did not encounter any problems keeping the meeting on-track as long as the moderator is very polite and reminds all participants that the main goal is to get through all material before some people have to leave for other meetings immediately after the session.
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