Virtual presentation optimisation

The hardest pitch I ever delivered was to a screen full of black rectangles. Mics off.

In-person presentations give you everything: body language, eye contact, the subtle shift when someone leans forward because you've said something that landed. You can read the sceptic, spot the champion and adjust in real time. The room gives you data before anyone asks a single question.

Virtual presentations strip most of that away. In the Middle East particularly, it's common for client teams to keep cameras off during virtual pitches. There are good reasons for this and it's simply how many organisations operate. But it does mean you're presenting without the visual feedback that most presenters rely on instinctively. You have to earn attention differently.

I've learned to adapt. Ask direct questions early and by name. Create moments in the deck that require a response, not just a nod (or the unseen implication that there might have been one). Keep sections shorter because attention drifts faster on screen. Communicate with your team in the background (though only if you've set that up in advance; mid-pitch is not the time to discover nobody is monitoring the chat).

The one big advantage of virtual is control. You can easily refer to your notes. You can have your brief open on a second screen. You own the narrative more tightly. In person, the room owns part of it, which is both the risk and the reward.

I always prefer a F2F presentation, but neither format is optically ‘better’ - you have to play the cards that you’re dealt. But they require fundamentally different preparation and too many teams prepare the same way for both.

How do you approach virtual presentations differently from in-person?