How to Prepare Speaker Notes and Handle Questions

Reading it in your head is not rehearsing

Here is the uncomfortable fact about preparation. Almost everyone who says they rehearsed actually means they clicked through the slides while thinking the words. That is not rehearsal, it is a slideshow with a soundtrack in your head, and it hides every problem you have.

The problems only appear out loud. The sentence that looked fine and turns out to have no end. The transition between slide four and slide five that you had not actually invented. The bit you thought would take two minutes and takes six.

Say it out loud once, standing up, all the way through, without stopping to fix things. It will be worse than you expect and that is the point. That first ugly run tells you more than five silent read-throughs, and it usually takes less time than the fussing you would otherwise do with fonts.

Notes that prompt, not notes that script

A full script feels safe. It is a trap. Nobody can read a script and sound like a person at the same time, so you end up either reciting or losing your place, and losing your place in a script is far more frightening than losing your place in a set of prompts.

Good speaker notes are a few short lines: the one point of this slide, the number you must not misquote, the story you want to tell, and the bridge to the next slide. That is all. Three to five lines, in fragments, in big enough type to catch with a glance.

Here is what I want to say on this slide, written out in full:
[paste your paragraph]
Turn it into speaker notes: at most 5 short lines, fragments not sentences.
Include the one point of the slide, any number I must get right,
and a one line bridge into the next slide, which is about [next topic].
Do not write it as a script. I need prompts I can glance at.

Rehearsing with an AI listener

You can rehearse alone, but the useful version involves saying it to something that responds. Most AI assistants now take voice input, and even without that you can paste what you said and get a read on it.

This is a transcript of me rehearsing a [12] minute talk to [audience].
My point is: [your one sentence].
Tell me: where does it drag, where do I repeat myself, and where does
my point actually land? Quote the exact lines that are doing the least work.
Then tell me the one section I should cut if I run over time.

Watch the clock while you rehearse. Almost everyone runs over, and almost everyone deals with it by speaking faster, which is the worst available option. Cut a section instead. Decide now which section it is, so that when you are eight minutes in and behind, the decision has already been made by a calmer version of you.

The question you are dreading

You know the one. Every presenter does. There is a question that if someone asks it, you will feel your ears go hot. Write it down. It is nearly always something like: how do we know this will work, what does it cost, why did the last attempt fail, or why should we believe your numbers.

The relief here is real: preparing three or four hard questions removes most of the fear, because the fear is not really of the question. It is of being caught without an answer in front of people. Prepare the answers and the room stops being dangerous.

Role play as [a sceptical finance director / a technical lead who was not consulted /
a customer who has been let down before]. Here is my presentation summary:
[paste your outline and your ask].
Ask me the hardest questions that person would genuinely ask, one at a time,
in their own words. Wait for my answer each time, then push back on it once
if it is weak. Stay sceptical, not hostile.

Handling the awkward moment

Not every hard moment is a question. Sometimes it is the person who interrupts on slide two with the thing you were going to cover on slide nine, or the senior person who disagrees in public, or the silence when you say "any questions."

For the interrupter: answer in one line and say when you will come back to it. For public disagreement: acknowledge it honestly, say what you would need to see to change your mind, and move on rather than winning in front of an audience. For the silence: ask a specific question instead of a general one. Nobody answers "any questions." Plenty of people answer "what would stop your team using this in October."