Continuing my post from yesterday about interpreting feedback and deciding who to ignore, and who to believe.
In very short presentations (15 minutes) you can get away with a small glitch in your story flow. Your audience will get the whole picture fairly quickly, even if there was a slide bump in the way you told the story. You like to tell the story this way, the test audience liked it the other way, so be it.
A big red flag though will come from the sort of (content, substance) questions people ask.
- Do you find yourself answering a question by giving a completely new mini presentation on a white board to explain something fundamental to your idea? Time to incorporate this into the main presentation.
- Does the test audience ask questions that are totally trivial to you? Example: the reasons why current solutions do not work. Maybe you are going to fast in the opening of your presentation. Time to back up and take it slower at the beginning.
- Do people try to compare you to specific other players, competitors? It is rarely a good idea to overly emphasise your competitors in a presentation, but if an issue comes up all the time in Q&A, it is better to take it head on in your main story.
Questions are important indicators of whether the audience got your message, or not.