From Paula Purtell, Business Presentation Manager, Palio

Have you ever been the presenter in a meeting, going through your material, believing everything is going smoothly …  only to look out into your audience and realize you’ve lost the attention of some of the attendees? You panic. Sweat beads on your forehead. You start to lose confidence in your content. You wonder if your interesting presentation has somehow morphed into a recitation that has bored your audience to death.

The next time this happens to you, take a step back and try to assess what’s really happening. I have seen many presentations ruined not by the presenter, but by the attendee(s) — those super busy, very important people in the audience who just can’t stand to be disconnected from their Blackberries or laptops. I’ve been in pitch meetings where an attendee answered a call, returned emails and texts, and read over non-pitch-related documents! Are these people forgetting that the team in front of them took great pains to prepare a compelling presentation and are excited to introduce themselves and share their story?!

Now, I happen to be talking about a pitch meeting, which is large in its importance and scope, but we’ve all seen the same inconsiderate behaviors in day-to-day meetings as well. In business, we need to start treating every meeting as a reflection of ourselves and the company we work for.

From searching the internet, I found a few people’s advice and thought I’d share the 10 commandments of meeting etiquette.

10. Arrive Early (or at least on time)

9. Clear your schedule. Come into the meeting ready to give 100% attention.

8. Be Considerate. Leave your electronics out of the room. Do not put your Blackberry, Treo, or other email organizer on the table. It’s too tempting to check your email, voicemail, social media, etc.

7. Do Not Interrupt. Unless the speaker has invited you to interact with him or her during the meeting, hold your comments until the meeting has finished or until the speaker asks for comments.

6. Pay Attention. Listen to the speaker. You do not want to waste meeting time asking a question that has already been answered or asked. Do not fidget, drum your fingers, tap your pen.

5. Never Carry On Separate Conversations. This is incredibly distracting to the speaker.

4. Come Prepared. Always bring something to write on as well as to write with. If you are the presenter, be prepared to provide these items for the attendees.

3. Be succinct and clear when asking questions of the presenter or team. If your question is detailed, break it into parts or several questions. But be sure to ask only one question at a time; others may have questions as well.

2. Attend the Entire Meeting. Leave only when the meeting is finished. Leaving before the end of the meeting can be disruptive to other attendees and inconsiderate of the speaker.

1. Feedback. If you’ve found the presentation interesting, let the team know.  And if you found the presentation sorely lacking, let them know that too, in the most diplomatic way possible.

Remember that meetings have a purpose – to inform and to gather insights from those in attendance. Showing the speaker some courtesy by listening and asking pertinent questions can help everyone seated in the room walk away feeling as though their time was well-spent.

From Steve Dubansky, MD, SVP, Medical Director, Palio

As a confirmed, proud, self-professed Luddite, I have somewhat stubbornly resisted the onslaught of social media, preferring to use the telephone (rotary of course) or the person-to-person meeting in order to do my socializing. Keystrokes, whether 140 (tweet tweet) or more (blog blog) just didn’t do it for me.

Strongly “encouraged” to tweet and blog by my employers, I hesitatingly dipped my toe into the social media water with a few very tentative blogs and tweets. However, rather than find the anodyne experience that social intercourse usually provides, I found the experiences polymorphously frustrating. What do I say? What about this? Would that interest anyone? How do I keep it ≤140 spaces? Who even cares what I think? Paraphrasing Groucho Marx, would I ever want to “friend” someone who wastes their precious timing reading my thoughts on-line?

Most frustrating was the simple fact that I never received feedback. Never. It was akin to talking to (not “with”!) someone at a party who spends the entire time looking everywhere but at you, searching desperately for someone more interesting and/or attractive. No real conversation. Kind of like dinner table conversation when you ask your children the dreaded question, “How was school today?” What you hear, minus the “Okay,” is the sound of silence that tweets and blogs give you.

But then one day, about 2 months into my daily enforced tweeting, after posting a tweet about an Environmental Working Group report on pesticides poisoning fruits and vegetables, my epiphany came in a tweet response from “Chem React.” Just a few simple words, “Agreed. Even just on Twitter, every day-so much evidence of the scary dangers around us. But nothing happens… Time to change.”

That’s all it took to get me to realize that while I may never see their responses, there are people who are reading what I’m writing. Perhaps they dismiss it, perhaps they think it unworthy of a response, or perhaps they simply don’t have the time to respond. Doesn’t matter. It’s kind of like a party, where not everyone is interested in conversing with you. It’s even better than a party in one important aspect. When tweeting or blogging, you don’t have to see the other people ignoring you, or looking past you for more fertile social intercourse.

So rather than curse the darkness, I’ve now lit the candle and brightened my attitude about social media. The applications are just waiting to be discovered. I can see potential utility in both the pharma and medical spaces.

Just this week, the Disney Company launched a Facebook application called Tickets Together, which lets you buy tickets via Facebook. When you do, your Facebook friends get messages letting them know where and when you’re going to the movies, in this case it’s “Toy Story 3.” Tickets, not available to the “general public” till the middle of June, may be bought in groups of up to 80.

Marketers in the pharma space should readily be able to use the social media to rapidly disseminate things such as drug-related information and discount coupons. Any marketer worth his/her salt should be able to come up with even better ideas than those.

Physicians can easily disseminate health maintenance, disease prevention information to their patients. Practice-related information (appointment times, doctor is running late, meet-up support groups of similarly affected patients) presents lots of opportunities.

While I’m not completely sold on the idea, social media is here to stay. It will without doubt evolve in ways we can’t imagine. An open mind is the prepared mind, and we better be prepared because things are moving fast. This deconstructed Luddite doesn’t want to be left behind. In fact, I think I’ll blog about this right now. Oops. First I’ll have to bike to the store and pick up some ink for my fountain pen.

From Mike Myers, President, Palio

Earlier today, Palio sent out a tweet on Twitter from @Palio_Saratoga. It said “$5 per new follower through 2/5 to Red Cross for Haiti. At 773. Cap at $10K for donation. Viral mktg at work. #pharma”

We’ve already received calls asking why we did it. So, here’s a reasonably quick answer:

• Since our founding, we’ve focused on giving back. Philanthropy is in our blood.
• This is a good cause and we’ve already raised over $2,000 through a Palio Giving Back Lunch for Haiti.
• Like all agencies worth their stuff in social media, we want to live in social media not just advise clients on it.
• Buying friends and followers? Nope – never thought of that one. More than anything, we wanted to support the Haitian relief effort, have some fun with Twitter, and test out a viral marketing idea. And if we get some people following us a result, that’s a bonus.

We’re up to three new followers. Pass the word. Only 1997 more to hit our target donation of $10,000.

@Palio_Saratoga