Following this advice will help your audience to feel more engaged with your Speakers and ultimately help them have a better experience with your event. If you’re interested in getting started, claim your free trial now.
Question and Answer sessions (“Q&A”) are one of the best ways to engage your audience during a virtual event. It allows you to interact in real time with your audience while providing value. Q&A can help your speakers to build rapport, engage your audience, and influence the overall perception of your event.
Here are our top suggestions for Speakers to have fantastic Q&A sessions during your virtual events.
Turn off screen sharing and switch to video during Q&A. Seeing the bigger video of Speakers makes it feel more personal for the attendees. Speakers or Panelists can switch to sharing your screen if you’re showing the attendees something or demonstrating a feature.
Manners
Start by thanking the person by name for their question. You can also say “great question” to give yourself a little more time to prepare a good answer (e.g. Thank you for that question Nancy! A lot of people have asked something similar before. It brings up a lot of issues.)
Answering with first names and thanking the person asking the question helps build rapport, personalize the answer, and demonstrate you actually understand their situation.
Restate the person’s question
Always try to re-state the person’s question back to them in your own words. Again, this shows you’re listening and can help prevent misunderstanding.
For example, you might think they’re asking one question but they’re actually asking something completely different.
Ask clarifying questions
Don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions so that the audience understands the question too. This will also help to create space for Speakers to construct a more effective response.
Show (vs tell): Show examples of what you’re discussing in the question and answer session
Many people are visual learners who learn by experience. Showing live examples of what you are talking about can help substantially increase their learning comprehension. Please take this opportunity to actually SHOW them what you’re talking about. This can be incredibly helpful.
It’s okay if it takes a little bit longer to answer the question. That’s why it’s useful to get some questions gathered beforehand so you can have your materials ready to go during Q&A time.
Recap: Summarize the question & your answer
Always try to recap what you’ve discussed once you’ve finished answering a question. This would include re-stating the question, stating what makes the question important, summarizing your answer, and thanking the questioner again for asking a question in the first place. Bonus points for saying their name again.
Ask for more questions or move on
Prevent those uncomfortably quiet periods in your sessions during Q&A by practicing transitions. Speakers should practice asking co-hosts or panelists for more questions they may be seeing from the audience after they’ve finished answering the question.
Another option for Speakers is to use the ending of the question to transition into the next portion of the presentation.
Q&A is a powerful engagement tool
Following this advice will help your audience to feel more engaged with your Speakers and ultimately help them have a better experience with your event. If you’re interested in getting started, claim your free trial now.