The difficulty with training employees isn’t necessarily the employees; it is finding the time, determining the subject matter and staying determined.

Here at Spirit and PalmettoNet, we have done that by living up to a challenge by our EVP of business development who wanted our internal training to have more WOW.

We decided to revamp our lunch and learn from the year before and created the Hampton Academy of Learning, complete with a nice incentive to attend and a fun way to track attendance. Our offices are on Hampton Street in Columbia, S.C., and the name helps accommodate both companies.

First we got approval for a weekend stay at the Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C., when it is dressed to the hilt in its Christmas finest. Then we created passports. That’s right, every employee of the two companies got a passport complete with a passport ID, personal identification, space for confirming travels to the sessions and rubber stamps to make official.

At the end of the year, we’ll collect the passports, tally attendance and draw for the weekend for two at the Biltmore. We also persuaded senior management to throw in an extra day off so the winning couple could spend Friday and Saturday night in Asheville.

And now, every other Wednesday, for one hour around lunch time, we gather in our training room for a presentation by one of our employees.

And the subject matter? Spirit and PalmettoNet. After each session, we survey employees for ideas on additional topics. To our surprise we get repeated requests for sessions on our services, network, engineering projects, what other departments do, how they do it and what’s involved.

In a recent session on our voice network, one of the employees spoke up and requested a session on our Voice over IP services.

We do not want for subject matter or the right person to present it – they are all right here under one roof. But, on occasion, we invite one of our vendors in to provide a session on their product. And they are greeted with the same enthusiasm as our own presenters.

Now back to the Ziglar quote. We want our employees to stay, but more important than that, we want them to know all they can about our companies, our products and our services. With knowledgeable and trained employees, both Spirit and PalmettoNet are better companies.

We continue to survey our employees on the training and we continue to get very positive feedback. And we continue to get encouraging comments about the value and worth of the training.

We recommend going with choice a – it’s sure to serve you better in the long run. But how do you put together a presentation that looks polished and professional even if you aren’t feeling very polished and professional?

• Visuals – These days PowerPoint is typically the presentation tool of choice. It’s great, but don’t overdo it. Do not put your entire talk – word for word – on the slides. Just offer up key points, statistics, charts or images. The PowerPoint should serve as a guide to your presentation, not a script.
• Expect the worst – Just assume the Internet connection will work fine five minutes before the presentation begins and then freeze up five minutes into your talk. If your presentation depends on showing Web sites, for example, then pull some screen shots and have them ready should you lose Internet connection.
• Keep it casual – Invite the audience to ask questions during the presentation, which makes it feel less like a presentation and more like a conversation.
• Keep it short – Try to contain your talk to about 20-30 minutes. This not only keeps people from getting distracted or overwhelmed by the information, but also forces you to distill your key points into the most compelling and useful information. Now is not the time to take 40 minutes to explain the entire process of how you came up with this new product line – just get to the point of how it will help your audience.
• Practice – If you’re not accustomed to giving public presentations, gather a couple of co-workers, family members or even the family dog and do a trial run.
• You hold the power – Remember, people are here to listen to what you have to say. You have information, experiences or advice they want to hear, so be confident in your approach.

Share your best tips for giving effective presentations. And, if you’re brave, we’d love a good story about what worked – and what didn’t – in your presentations.