There’s nothing worse than attending a briefing or worse a keynote that misses the mark and fails to connect with the audience. If we’re asked to speak before an audience on any given subject let’s begin with asking the obvious questions:
- What is the objective of the meeting?
- Who are the audience members? What organizations do they represent, e.g. public, private, non-profit? Is there someone in the room that you should recognize?
- What geographies do they represent, e.g. urban, rural, etc?
- What are their motivations for being present?
- What lesson are they expecting to get from us?
- Am I the very best person to speak on this?
The organizer of such meeting will likely have this information, otherwise ask him/her to get it to you before you walk in the room. The last one requires self-reflection and critique.
Audience
I’m in the audience and I’m looking forward to you speaking with great anticipation. I’ve read your bio and I’m expecting to be wowed. I’m expecting a personal connection. If your the son/daughter of emmigrants and former migrant farm workers and rose to become something of yourself–great–we’ll both have something in common. A shared bond. I’m also expecting to not need coffee while your speaking so eye-contact and a temperature read of your audience is key. Engage us. For starters ask us if we could see your slides. What’s the point of you flipping through slides if we’re blinded by the light and we can’t see you? And, no we’re not asking to get up and stretch it out, although you can.
Outline
We’re looking for animation, unique outline and a concise underlying statement. Memorable. Keep it to 3, at the most, major points. Select unconventional terms or statement but tie back into your message so that we never forget what you said. While its okay to highlight your company–refrain from highlighting it the entire time and appear as an infomercial. Unless of course your pitching before Venture Capitalist and Angel investors.
Real-Time Feedback
We’re in the audience and if we have our Smartphones we’ll have internet and an ability to provide real-time feedback.
- We may shoot a picture of you speaking and upload it which automatically feeds into Twitter and Facebook. What will the picture say? What will we say?
- We may shoot a 12 second video and upload it which automatically feeds into Twitter and Facebook. Will those 12 seconds be powerful and inspiring?
- We may blog in real-time while your standing or sitting there. What will these short 140 characters that will be archived by the Library of Congress say?
Finally. Review Yourself Regularly.
Author, speaker and President of New Marketing Labs, Chris Brogan recently put it this way:
It’s important to “roll back the tapes” and look at how you’re doing. Go over your last 10 blog posts. Whatever your role, take a look at how you’re doing. If you’re working on your fitness and health issues, do it for that. That’s not the main point. Set yourself up for regular reviews and be very frank and honest about how you’re doing. Tear yourself apart. It’s great to work on confidence, but this is the place where you confidently decide that you have room to improve. [read the full post Tighten Up].
Deal? Deal.
David Molina is the Founder and CEO of BilingualHire and blogs periodically here and here. He reads his email daily and is on Twitter (@davidcmolina) throughout the day. Contact him anytime.