This is a selfevaluation by me - Michael Leander - relating to my performance at the recent web-seminar “Email Marketing: Improving results through effective profiling and segmentation”. It will reveal my thoughts about the web-seminar and share with you the feedback given by the attendees.

Over at my Danish blog - www.michaelleander.com - I have started reviewing, criticizing myself. It is very private indeed.  But so many other private thoughts and recollections are shared on the internet these days. So why wouldn’t I risk the chance of being ridiculed by publishing these thoughts for you and everyone else to see.
Below you can read how the attendees evaluated the web-seminar. You can also read their recommendations. It is quite interesting - to me at least.

To sum it all up, the overall value for the participants scored a 6 out of 7, where 7 is the highest possible score. And quite a few people indicated that they liked the actual web-seminar, and many that they see great value in the web-seminar format (you know, not having to leave the home or the office, avoiding traffic, less chance of  being late for the next meeting, the cost aspect, the convenience aspect etc.).

My own reflections
It was the second time I delivered this presentation in a web-seminar. And I am going to be giving the same presentation (with a few improvements, of course) again 8 to 10 times before the end of 2009. So I should be able to get it 100% right sooner or later :- )

To summarize my self-criticism;
_ I need to work on my slow/fast, deep/soft speaking techniques, pausing and more interaction with - what is usually - a wonderful group of people participating. (most of the time quite willing to interact but also quite capable of providing valuable input and suggestions to the marketing topic addressed in the presentation)
- I get too stressed during the event. Probably because of lack of feedback (you know, speaking to a group of people in a web-seminar is very different than speaking in a room full of people).
- I must work on my English. I am using too many words such as “ehh”, “arh” and have a bad tendency to use sentences such as “obviously ….” or “and so on and so on” or “needless to say”, “actually” - it’s  awful.  What might be obvious to me, isn’t necessarily obvious to anyone else.
- My tendency to speak too fast near the end of a web-seminar is a show-stopper.
- Tooooo much content; I need to cut at least 10 minutes off
- Get 5 hours of sleep and don’t change the slides in the last minute
- And ensure that I use the correct presentation from start to finish (ooops), well at least I found out that I wasn’t using the most current presentation
- Beware of “auto-pilot”

Judging by the participants score, the content was not on par with the apparent experience of speaking skills. So for the next web-seminar, I need to work hard to increase the value and the structure of the content. Or perhaps it might be an idea to skip a few areas and then go deeper into certain areas such as the actual hands-on profiling techniques, how to identify weak profiles or other areas. I will need to consider that.

Would you like to see how I do next time? The web-seminar about Email Marketing Profiling for success is on almost every month. If you hurry you might be able to get a free ticket. Click here now