I’ve attended three industry conferences in the past four weeks. I’ve attended a handful of keynote addresses and sat through dozens of presentation sessions. Two were inspiring. A few were mediocre. Most were disappointing or downright annoying.
Why?
The speakers, all of whom were highly accomplished professionals in their fields and well qualified to present their material, were nonetheless not prepared to deliver a public address. Here then, are four tips to help the speakers at your events connect with the audience.
Identify the audience Point of View
What should the content of your presentation engender? Interaction with you audience. Your message must speak to the interests of the audience, not talk at them. Identifying the mindset of your target and understanding their point of view is everything. Without a concrete understanding of the forces that drive their behavior, there is no effective way to organize your message. To get started, ask questions like:
What challenges does my audience face everyday?
Why would they want to hear my message?
What are their stated needs?
What are their unspoken needs?
What one thing is sure to hook their attention?
How do their needs and my objectives intersect?
Don’t Write or Outline the Presentation
Don’t write your presentation and don’t outline it in bullet or PowerPoint form. Instead, use that time to gather as many sources and collect as much data as possible. Ideally, you’ll have more source data than is ultimately needed for your spoken presentation.
Identify Audience Compatible Content
Since you’ve already assessed your audience’s point of view, you’ll be able to identify content sources and data that are likely to ignite the interest of your audience. Sort your audience compatible data by answering the following questions.
If I could only present one piece of information, what would it be?
If I could only present three pieces of information, what would they be?
Choose a key word for each piece of information that you wish to include in your presentation.
Write the words on cards, one word per card.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Most of the jittery presentations that I’ve sat through lately had nothing to do with stage fright. The speaker nerves arose because the presenters didn’t prepare their content properly. Practicing a presentation out loud is absolutely essential. Whenever possible, work through the development of your presentation with a partner or a team. The only thing that truly prepares you for a live audience is live practice. Use the following method:
Shuffle the subject cards you made in the step above.
Look at the first card and improvise verbally on the subject of that card.
Repeat the process until you’ve improvised on all of your cards. Trust your sense of what’s working.
Edit your subject cards based on what you discovered in the verbal improvisation. You may find that two cards can be combined into one card or that you actually need more content for some of the cards.
Place your subject cards in an order that you feel will be effective for your audience and repeat the verbal intelligence exercise.
Edit your index cards as necessary. Note the links that start to develop between each of your subject cards during your verbal improvisation. Remember these links are crucial to the “audience friendly” flow of information.
Finalize the order of your cards and do several more verbal improvisation runs.
With enough practice, your presentation will automatically become simpler, more direct and more effective.