Listen to any speaking coach, go to any Toastmasters, attend any presentation seminar, and you will hear a single phrase over and over. “Know your audience.”
This phrase sounds really good, too. When we hear the phrase, we think, “Well, of course. That makes sense.”
But what exactly does “know your audience mean?” Is there a formula to help a speaker know his or her audience better?
Well, yes, there is. In fact, every presenter should use this formula before creating any speech or any PowerPoint slide. The answers that you get from following this formula will greatly change what content you cover in your presentation. The answers will also allow you to change your delivery so that your audience is more likely to agree with you.
Below, I’ll show how to research your audience and identify exactly what they need to take away from your presentation and why. If you understand this, designing great presentations and reducing presentation nervousness is a piece of cake.
The Primary Purpose of Most Presentations Is to Sell Something.
Most presenters design their presentations to get their audience to do something. You may not be selling a tangible item, but you are at least selling an idea.
Earlier this week, one of my instructors said something to me that made me very sad. She said, “I don’t think I’m really good at selling.”
That phrase made me sad for two reasons. First, because selling (persuading) is, by far, the absolute most important skill to success and happiness. And second, she is one of the most persuasive people that I know. In fact, she is a natural salesperson because she focuses entirely on helping her audience get what they need. She doesn’t focus on what she wants.
Many people today misunderstand the entire concept of selling. For some reason, we see a salesperson as someone who takes from others. The opposite is true, though. A good salesperson helps their audience solve problems.
My wife and I (mostly my wife) recently hired a yard guy to take care of our lawn. It took him two simple phrases for me to hire him on the spot. He said, “Oh yeah, I can get your yard looking better than the neighbors’ in less than a couple of hours.” Then, he looked at me and said, “And you can get your Saturdays back.”
He figured out what I really wanted from the discussion and designed his presentation around showing me how I’d get those things. If you understand this simple concept, then designing better presentations gets much easier.
He probably doesn’t see himself as a professional speaker. And he probably also doesn’t see himself as being a salesperson. But because he focused on helping me, his audience, get what I wanted, he became both!
For additional details, see Persuasive Speech Outlines.
The Four Things that You Need to Know About Your Audience Before You Try to Sell or Persuade Them.
With that being said… Now that we all know that we are all salespeople, let’s use these skills to help our audiences.
The concept of “know your audience” can be confusing. When a lot of presenters hear this, they think of it in the context of what not to say versus presentation design. For instance, I shouldn’t tell the off-color joke in church. Or, this is a very technical audience, so I need to cover lots of details. Or, this audience of executives just wants an overview.
All of those alterations are superficial and miss the point of the concept. Basically, to really know your audience, there are four things that you want to uncover.
- First, Know the Primary Problem that Your Audience Is Trying to Solve.
- Next, Identify the Non-Negotiable Items that Your Audience Requires.
- Then, Try to Identify Any Additional Items the Audience May Want, But Won’t Make or Break the Agreement.
- Finally, Find Out the Emotional Motive that Would Cause the Audience to Take Action.
When we start designing a presentation, we often don’t have thorough answers to all of these questions. So often, we have to alter and adjust on the fly as we discover more about our audience. However, if you ask the right questions to the right people ahead of time, you will have fewer of these adjustments.
First, Know the Primary Problem that Your Audience Is Trying to Solve.
My very, very first presentation coach explained this concept to me this way. He said, “Last year, one million quarter-inch drill bits were sold. None of the people who bought those drill bits wanted a 1/4-inch drill bit.”
He paused dramatically. “What they all really wanted was a 1/4-inch hole.”
At the time, I remember thinking, “What’s the difference?” It wasn’t until much later that I understood the brilliance of the concept he was teaching. Most people (all people?) are pretty self-centered. We are way more concerned about our problems than yours.
So, you want to think about your presentation content from the perspective of “What problem does the audience have? Why do they need to know this content?”
For instance, let’s say that a software engineer delivers a report about a software update. The engineer can meticulously review every single item that her team updated in this software release. However, if she did that, she’d just be talking about the drill bit.
The audience member would be thinking, “I don’t care about your boring update.”
On the other hand, if the engineer first thought about the problems that her audience experiences, the presentation becomes more interesting. The engineering team didn’t just pick random items to update. They chose items that were causing problems for the people in the audience.
For example, “The old software layout caused you to have to re-enter data in places. This update does that for you, saving you time.” (This version shows them the nice, pretty 1/4 inch holes.)
So step one is to identify the primary problem that your presentation content solves for the audience.
Next, Identify the Non-Negotiable Items that Your Audience (Buyer) Requires.
Anytime a person buys something (an item, a service, or an idea), they create a list of non-negotiables. These are the things that we require from the item, service, or idea. If any of these things are missing, they won’t buy the item, the service, or the idea.
Sometimes they create a written list. But most often, though, they don’t put a lot of thought into it. Most audience members walk blindly into the presentation without thinking about what they want from the presentation.
So, if you, as the presenter, can help them figure out these non-negotiable items, you are helping the audience members. You’ll also make them less argumentative about your conclusions.
Let me give you an analogy outside of presenting to help clarify this.
Let’s say that a family needs a new sofa. Without a lot of thought or discussion, they walk into a furniture store. The salesperson could show them each of the 100 sofas in the store one by one.
Somewhere along the way, though, the dad might say, “I’m not sure if that-sized sofa is going to fit into our space.” Then, mom says, “Yeah, that last sofa doesn’t really fit the color scheme of our living room.”
This is what happens to a lot of audience members during a presentation. The presenter designs a data-driven presentation with tons of bullet points without considering the audience’s non-negotiables.
In essence, the presenter is showing the audience the entire store.
If the salesperson just asked, “How big is your space? What is your color scheme? What style do you prefer?”
The answers to all of these questions will be the non-negotiables. If the furniture is too big, we can’t buy it.
You want to play the same role with your audience.
Case Study: How a Presentation Team Got to Know the Audience Better than They Knew Themselves.
Years ago, I was helping a team create a presentation for a school board to build a new high school. Before they brought me in to help, they organized their entire presentation around how great their company was. They talked about their years of experience, their team’s qualifications, and how many high schools they had built.
The team created a pretty good presentation, but it was presenter-focused versus audience-focused.
I asked the team a simple question. “What do the members of this school board really want?” The answer I got was, “A new high school.” (The drill bit.) I asked a clarifying question, “Why do they need a new school?”
After thinking for a second, one of the team members responded with, “Because the current high school is overcrowded.” (The primary problem.)
Once we uncovered the true problem, identifying the buying criteria got easier. I asked the group for their thoughts on the criteria the board would use to make a decision.
Non-negotiable number one was unanimous — price. The city floated a bond for a specific amount. If the price of the new building exceeded this bond amount, they couldn’t buy it.
A major portion of the team agreed that the second non-negotiable was the schedule. If they couldn’t finish the building by the first of August, the district would lose an entire school year of use.
The team continued to add items to the list, including safety, maintenance costs, and environmental issues. Once they had the list of non-negotiables, they created a solid outline of the main items to cover in the presentation.
So, step one is to identify the main problem of the audience. Step two is to identify the non-negotiables.
Then, Try to Identify Any Additional Items the Audience May Want, But Won’t Make or Break the Agreement.
The audience may want certain things that aren’t a requirement. However, if the solution contains a few of these things, all the better. We call these additions “Deal Sweeteners.”
For instance, when you buy a car, your non-negotiables may be dependability, gas mileage, price, etc. However, if you get all of those things and the car has Apple CarPlay, power windows, and power seats, your decision gets much easier.
When you design your presentations, try to anticipate buying criteria that the audience may not be aware of. Then, add some of those items to your presentation as well. This shouldn’t be a major focus of your presentation design process. Instead, these are small items that you insert strategically when you can.
Going back to the software update example, something like this might be a deal sweetener. “By the way, we added something else in that is kind of cool. Now, when you log in, the software automatically pulls up the project you were last working on.”
Finally, Find Out the Emotional Motive that Would Cause the Audience to Take Action.
Audiences always have two reasons to buy something or agree with the speaker.
First, the thing being offered has to make logical sense.
The second reason, though, is more emotional. You will deliver a more persuasive speech if you uncover this reason.
For instance, reducing the double-entry of data also reduces human error. One data entry person may have been reprimanded for errors. So this update adds more job security for him. Another might be detail-oriented but slower on the data entry. The update allows her to be more efficient and as a result more promotable.
The emotional motive can be difficult to anticipate. So let’s spend a little more time on this tip.
Know Your Audience by Anticipating Their Emotional Motive.
In the 1950’s Herman Maslow wrote that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take precedence over others.
For instance, if a person is hungry or thirsty, all they will think about is food and water. Nothing else matters. A person may have food and water, but he worries about job security. If you don’t know when you will get your next paycheck, then getting that paycheck will consume you.
The point is that the people in your audience will likely be at different points on this hierarchy. Speakers who can anticipate where most of them will be will also be more persuasive.
This final step sets the professional speakers apart from the amateurs. Really good speakers make their speeches relatable to audience members at different levels of this spectrum.
By the way, you can learn how to do this very quickly. The process isn’t hard. It just takes a little more prep time.
Here is the process that I use.
Use Examples Based on Two or Three of the Most Common Emotional Needs.
When you design your presentation, mix up your types of examples and stories. Since we know that some of the audience members will be at the “security” level, choose a story they will relate to.
“Some of you may know that I am not the most detail-oriented person on the team. In fact, my boss has had to correct my data entry work on occasion. So not having to reenter the data a second and third time gets my boss off my back.
Then, you might add an additional example for the person at the “Belongingness” level.
“You guys all know that Jane is exceptional at working with customers. She gets very high survey results from people she interacts with. She gets these results because our customers love her. However, she also has the shortest call times of anyone on the team. She gets solutions for customers very quickly. This update should allow each of you to cut your call times down as well.
Each of these examples adds clarity by focusing on a different emotional need.
Paint a Picture of the Audience Member Actually Experiencing the Solution.
This last tip will move you into an elite level of speaker. Only the absolute best speakers in the world find this activity natural. However, once you learn how to do this, you will set yourself apart from the average presenter.
Somewhere in your presentation deliver an example of the problem and the solution. The analogy that I like to use is that you give your audience a shovel. Throughout most of the presentation, you allow the audience to dig a huge hole. Then, toward the end, you lower down a ladder to help them get out.
Every time you give an example about a problem the audience experiences, they think, “Yeah, that is a problem.” (They just dug the hole a little deeper.) Or perhaps you give an example of somebody other than them who had some success. They think, “That should be me next time.” (Another shovel-full of dirt.)
Eventually, you lower the ladder. All you really have to do is recap the solutions you already covered in the presentation.
Ultimately, this update reduces keystrokes. That means that you won’t have to reenter the same data over and over again. This also means that those pesky human errors are reduced. That gets our coworkers and our boss off our backs. You also get to spend more quality time doing what you do best — helping customers. By the way, you will also reduce the average call time so every customer interaction is more pleasant. Finally, the increase in survey results will also lead to higher bonuses. That is really what you all want, right?
What audience member is going to disagree with you?