Presentation- It is everything, in all that we do, life is a presentation! No matter the method, PowerPoint, Webinar, written and even Public Speaking. There are ALWAYS 3 unique audiences listening to your presentation.
First Audience – You, the one giving the Presentation
It’s this audience that can really get things screwed up. You start to put some information together and they create a presentation that they love, that they would
want to hear, that they think is a “killer” presentation. WRONG… hope I’m not the first to tell you this: THE OTHER 2 AUDIENCES DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!
They really don’t. So first clue, if you are creating your story from your perspective.. STOP.. you will be glad you did.
It really hit me, the fact that no one cares what I have to say, when I was living in Puerto Rico for 5 or so years. I was there running a business, and before I learned how to speak Spanish, I had to have someone translate every presentation for me. In the beginning I thought I was a Rock Star, because of the success I was creating. Then when I learned more and more Spanish, I realized, they are not even saying what was saying in my presentation. It was a version of it, but it’s not the message I was saying. WOW – Ego Blow!!! So then it hit me… The 2 audience.
Audience 2 – The First Level
These are the people that are the first to hear, read, see your presentation.
All to often we think these are the people that are going to take the information and run with it, use it on a daily basis and by the simple fact of this audience being a part of your message, their life is going to be the better for it. Not So Much! They will have some great memories of the event and there will be some that take it and run with it and change their lives. The challenge is, most presenters have crafted their material for this audience. You say it, they hear it… and then they will incorporate some part of the message into their life.
The reality is, if you are only playing 1 level deep… just to this first level of audience, 97% of your audience will never get the benefit of your message. I know this because I used to be that “presenter”. 
Nothing is more exciting then getting a Standing Ovation after you are done with your presentation. In the beginning many speakers use this as a bench mark for their success, and it’s a formula for failure. If you really want to know if you message is getting across, you need to track the activity that is happening the weeks after you share your presentation. To get the maximum effect “post” event, you need to make sure you are speaking to Audience 3.
Audience 3 – The Fire Hose & Fire Starters
Now some of you are wondering, “who the heck are these people?” These are the people Audience #2 have to sell on the message you shared in your presentation! If you did not give them the tools on how to deal with these people, you will find yourself with a lot of applause and no results.
The key to delivering a great message is to help those that are your first level participants, help them to see in their own mind, how they can implement the tools and the steps based on the life they will be faced with as soon as they leave your presentation. The reality is, every person that ever is a part of your audience was doing something just before they “joined” your audience, makes sense right?
So first you have overcome preoccupation, get them focused on what you are doing, saying and sharing. You become an interruption in their life, and we all know how much people like to be interrupted. It then becomes critical that you bring them immediate value so they begin to “plugin” to your message. Now you have to take them through the 3 phases of understanding, and when you do that, you now have an audience ready to “defend” the message they just took on as their own. This is what you need to look at to see how effective your presentation really is.
They will have to defend against the Fire Hose folks, those that tell them: ‘what a waste of time and money to get those books or tapes”, “you wasted an entire Saturday listening to someone that made their money selling you books and tapes”… and there will be folks like that, we have all ran into them. If your audience is not prepared, and taught how to deal with this… bam… out goes their “fire” and another casualty of life gets put in the books. You can prepare these folks in a very simple easy way, I teach it in about a day to my students so can create Warrior’s and not Wimp’s. This in one of the most requested presentations that I have.
The Fire Starters can do as much damage as well. You audience goes back, starts sharing cause they are excited and the audience they are sharing it with gets super excited and begins asking all kinds of great questions… and your audience member can’t answer them! They think, I guess I really don’t understand the process, so lets never talk about this subject again!
Now before you start changing everything in your presneation, you first have to understand that the best way to get this message across it via stories. Remember most of the content, especially if you are speaking should be about fun stories, not boring material. You need to think of it as “selling recess not history class”, because your audience is going to see it as one or the other. They make their mind up very, very early into the message how they are going to interpret the information. Keep it fun, build your “teaching stories” that go along with your information and you will see some incredible things happen in your business.
If you would like to have a No-Fee 30 Min review to help you implement the 3rd Audience into your business, click here:
seangmurphy.com/work_with_ |
Fill out the form and we will have a blast taking your success to the next level.
Your friend and student
Hugs from Dallas,
Sean G Murphy
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