The opening moments of your speech are so important. But getting started is sometimes the most difficult part of speaking. How do you prove the relevance and value of your presentation?
We are in a 5-part blog series exploring the 5 goals speech experts say you should accomplish in your introduction: get the audience’s attention, show the value and relevance of your ideas, establish your credibility, state your main idea, and provide a verbal map of the presentation. In case you missed it, you can check out our last blog on getting your audience’s attention here.
Today, we’ll be talking about the second goal: showing the audience that your presentation has relevance and value for them. That begins with being able to see the presentation from the audience’s perspective.
Audience Perspective
The authors of the book Symbols, Selves, and Social Reality give us this important reminder:
“We usually do not think about how our understandings are relative. We believe the world around us to be largely the same as our interpretations of it. We presume that we see “reality.” We look at people, objects, and events and assume that their meaning and significance are easily discerned and that others will agree with us.”
If you speak with the belief that your interpretation is the only one that exists or matters, you are bound to have trouble connecting with some audience members. As speakers, we have to realize that just because something seems exciting, troubling, or important to us, doesn’t mean it seems that way to our audience.
Relevance and Value
That’s why it’s important to communicate the relevance and value of your presentation in those important beginning moments. This tactic is sometimes called a “tie to the audience” or a “link to the audience.” The following questions will help you establish that tie.
- What important thing(s) will my audience learn or take away if they chose to listen?
- How does this topic/presentation impact the daily lives of my listeners?
- What could the harm be in not listening?
- What is this information worth to my audience?
Once you’ve taken time to understand these answers, figure out a way to communicate your understanding to your audience. It could be something as simple as an “I believe” or a “here’s why” statement. Like, “I believe that if you’ll hang with me for the next 20 minutes, you’ll understand how you can drastically improve your family culture.” Or “Here’s why this matters for you and your company.” Usually, simple statements of relevance and value work best.
Keeping Circling & Adapting
Once you’ve discovered and communicated the relevance and value your presentation holds for your audience, you need to keep circling back. Keep telling the audience why this matters, specifically for them. Keep pointing to the worth.
We know the old adage, what’s in it for me? But presentation coach and author Jerry Weissman says presenters should change that slightly to take on the burden of knowing and then communicating to the audience what’s in it for you. He reminds us to link “every element of [the] presentation to a clear audience benefit, or, a WIIFY.”
And we should remember that the benefits we’ve identified will change every time our audience does. Our WIIFY can’t be generic. As Weissman puts it, “the same story that excites and inspires your own employees may bore your customers and actually alienate and anger your suppliers, or vice versa. The same story that persuades technical customers to buy your product may confound your potential investors.” Keeping adapting your message’s worth to match your specific audience.
When you establish the value of your ideas for your particular audience, they can clearly see how the message has relevance. This piques their interest. Next time, we’ll discuss the third goal to accomplish in your introduction: how to demonstrate your credibility or expertise.
In the meantime, let us know how we can help you with your presentation. From design to delivery, Ethos3 can help.
