The 9 top reasons you don’t want questions during your webinars

1. Good material that's well presented doesn't need gimmicks to keep the viewers' attention

Tom Cruise doesn't stop in the middle of a movie to poll the audience.

A webinar that needs to create artificial interaction like polls or surveys to keep their attendees from leaving is a failure of the material and/or the speaker.

For the past six months, I’ve been conducting 3-5 webinars per week for firms and associations worldwide. Let me disagree with “conventional webinar wisdom”―I don’t want to encourage questions during my programs.

2. Online presenters must work much harder

A speaker's job is to provide a valuable and entertaining education. Packing up and walking out in the middle of a bad in-person presentation is difficult; there’s enormous social pressure to stay. But to exit a mediocre webinar, you just click <Leave >. Webinars can’t lag for a single minute. Questions and surveys disturb the flow; they're like inserting TV commercials during a movie's chase scene. Don't risk losing audience attention with a disruption.

3. You can pack 55 minutes of powerful content into 60 minutes

Sixty minutes goes by fast, but skilled presenters can pack an enormous amount of content into it if they strictly control the pacing. I don’t want to interrupt the smooth flow of a well-timed presentation, or hold back 15 minutes of that precious time at the end to field random questions.

Some firm or organization has selected me as the subject-matter expert and they're paying me a lot of money to provide my best advice in the allotted time.

I know precisely what I want the audience to learn. I’ll have conducted all the research, worked with dozens or hundreds of different clients on this specific issue and, as a result, know just about everything available on this topic. I’ve distilled an enormous amount of data down to just one tight hour, discarding anything that’s not critical.

I’ll have carefully woven into the presentation a selection of stories, examples, evidence, and bullets, and supported it with eye-catching visuals. I’ll typically have created 50-100 scrupulously curated PowerPoint slides for the hour (I know, experts suggest that you should only have 10-20 slides, but this is what works best for me).

I’ll have edited at least two hours of material into just one, added humor where possible, and rehearsed it literally dozens of times to get the timing and transitions just right before the first person sees it. I typically spend at least 100 hours preparing every presentation. It’s like a movie―there’s a carefully structured flow of information with a defined beginning, middle, and end.

A good presentation should lead the viewers along, step by step, telling a memorable story, each point building on the previous ones like a trial lawyer’s closing argument to the jury. Then it must be tweaked and tailored to each firm or organization’s particular audience.

I recently watched a 60-minute webinar by a leader in the field where I learned some useful tips. Unfortunately, I only received 30 minutes of total education because, following “generally accepted webinar rules,” she left 15 minutes at the end for audience questions. And, as always, most of them were either (a) pretty far afield, or (b) specific to the questioner’s personal situation, i.e. not useful to the majority of the attendees. So, after starting 3-5 minutes late to accommodate the late log-ins, and another 5-7 minutes on basic housekeeping, holding the last 15 minutes for questions left just 30 minutes for her actual content.

This means that we all missed ~45% of the potential value from the program. The presenter was an expert who assuredly had 15 minutes more useful wisdom she could have imparted. Instead, she spent it answering narrow questions that only applied to a few people.

4. A great question means the speaker failed

At a recent webinar the speaker opened the Q&A with "Oh, here's a question I get a lot..." I immediately thought, "Then why didn't you include that info when you addressed that topic 20 minutes earlier?"

If I receive a question that is universally applicable to the entire audience then I screwed up. And considering how much time I’ve spent on preparation, that’s pretty rare. But when it happens, I immediately add that information into the slide deck. This continuously improves the presentation and ensures that no one’s frustratedly wondering about that same point the next time I present it; I want audiences enthralled, not confused.

5. Answer personal questions after the program

I think it’s preferable to answer individualized questions after the program. I’ll contact the person offline or stay online a bit longer―like when people used to line up to chat with the presenter after an in-person program. Speakers generally want to help, I just don't feel that we need to do so in front of everyone.

6. Every group thinks their audience is especially demanding…

…and that they need interactivity to keep them focused. That’s a fallacy. That just means that the previous presenters didn’t do their job well enough. Yes, maintaining attendees’ attention on a small phone or tablet screen is extremely challenging. Today’s presenters must work even harder to ensure that every single minute of the presentation is informative and entertaining. That's a tall order but that's today's reality.

7. Have a moderator screen Chat questions

Of course, I’m always happy to take important and widely applicable questions during the program. I do so by having a moderator conduct a preliminary analysis of any questions typed into the Chat box, to determine whether they are of sufficiently widespread applicability to merit interrupting me on the spot, while we’re still on that topic.

That is, is it something nearly every viewer is likely to be wondering about? If so, by all means, chime in. But if not, I’ll respond after the program. Because the 3-5 minutes it’ll take responding to Tiffany's very-personal question will squeeze out 3-5 minutes of other material that I’ve already vetted as vital enough to share with everyone.

8. Don't squander your big finale with Q&A

The end of a great movie is the explosive finish―the last memorable scene that bookends the powerful opening and motivates attendees to come back the next time. It's when Batman catches the Joker or the star-crossed lovers finally get together, and everyone leaves exhausted and buzzing about what they just experienced. Why waste that precious time with a limp finish? Harry Potter didn't zap Voldemort then cut the movie short to spend 15 minutes asking the audience if they had any questions.

Displaying a "Q&A" slide at the end of a webinar is the signal for people to start logging off. I’ve seen the statistics―attendance plummets. Most of us have learned that your peers' questions are likely to be a waste of time. Consider how many brilliant audience questions you've heard in a post-webinar Q&A segment―I'd suggest the answer is "not many."

More importantly, that 15-minute holdback wastes 25% of the session that could have been spent teaching something vitally important.

9. Don't "seed" the Q&A section

Some speakers recommend planting some good questions in advance, to start the conversation. Why would you intentionally confound the audience during the program so there's something to discuss after it? Not a fan.

Do you agree?

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