Know your audience
Bob Keiller
Doing Core Values | Business Storytelling | Practical Leadership | Inspiring Entrepreneurship | Growing Businesses
Post 4: Presenting Skills series
The best way to start a talk or pitch is to work out who the audience are and what they want. (If you don't know this, then how do you decide what you should talk about?)
It’s good to know how many people will be there and whether they’re all there because they want to be.
In 2008, I was asked to do a talk for “30 or 40” inmates in a prison in Louisiana. On the day, we had about 500 inmates in the chapel and another 6,000 watching it live by TV pictures relayed around the accommodation dormitories! I got it totally wrong!
Mixed audiences can be tricky.
Consider an end-of-year talk at a school – part of a prize-giving ceremony perhaps. You’d be talking in front of parents, teaching staff and students, so who is your audience?
I’d always focus on the students but think about the parents and teachers during rehearsals. If it is a mixed audience – who are your specific target audience?
When you’re pitching to a customer, it's vital to know who the individuals you’ll be presenting to are, what their roles are and who the key decision maker is. Phone ahead to check and ask if you don’t know.
It’s even better if you know the personality of the key decision maker, so you can tailor your talk for them. There are many variants of a four-quadrant model on personality styles available online and they can help you to optimise how you present.
So, if you expect the decision maker to be quite analytical, you need to know everything about what you’re working with. Think about the smallest details. Show them that you have lots of data and solid processes (without having to show them all the data in detail of course).
Conversely, if the key person is people-centric, you better explain how your proposal impacts on everyone and how it will be received.
The ‘expressive’ person will want to know about the bigger picture and ‘drivers’ will want you to quickly get to the bottom line. These are approximations but they do help.
You can gather useful intelligence online too. Take a look at someone’s LinkedIn profile - what they post, what articles they have written and what they say about others in recommendations.
There are tools readily available to synthesise a personality profile based on their LinkedIn footprint.
If you’re asked to talk at a conference, ask the organisers to give you details of the audience – if it’s a regular event they should have historic information.
If you’re still unsure, find out if you can talk with one or two people who are likely to be there, so you can ask some basic questions:
- What do they already know about you and your topic?
- What do they need to know from you?
- What do they feel about your subject area?
- Will your target audience support or resist your main arguments, and why?
- Why would they care about your presentation?
- What main themes would they want you to cover?
In 2013, I was asked to talk at a lunch with the Royal Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS). I was cautious because it isn’t a sector I have any real knowledge of.
So, I talked to two people who I knew would be there and they convinced me that they wanted to hear different perspectives from outside their sector.
This helped me shape the talk and make observations on the sector as an outsider, which were well received.
In 2015, I was asked to talk at a conference in Dubai. I quickly realised that my relevance to the audience would be limited so, after some basic investigation, I declined the opportunity.
Do your research - it’s always worth the effort!
This is the fourth post on the subject of presenting skills. It follows:
Oil & Energy Professional
7 年Hi Bob Great insight as always. May I add something based on my own experience.? As you say research into your audience is vital but you should also prepare for the unexpected. Many years ago I met with a Chinese NOC who were preparing a tendering exercise. I did my research and prepared my presentation to explain why my organisation would not only be in a position to bid for the work but were the best to do it. As I s was setting up to begin my presentation the customer’s key decision maker (the chief engineer) said ‘We don’t want a presentation, tell us about your company’ With the work I had put in to it I was able to effectively go through it in my head when talking. We not only got that contract but eight others afterwards. A couple of years later the Chief Engineer said to me ‘ We gave you the contracts because you proved you listen to your customer that day and talked about your company rather than insist on giving a presentation.’ To me a small but important lesson. Greg
Yes can relate... the tip I got many years ago which is effectively the same as Bob’s message ...’know your subject, and the words will follow’. Subject being the audience!
Commissioning and Assurance Consultant
7 年As a great public speaker it’s interesting to see how you tackle the balance between speaking and communicating with your audience . I have also had the pleasure of listening to a few speeches and you have the skill to introduce personal experience and humour to engage people.
Digital and data specialist. Speaks about #Equality #DEI #Data ??
7 年Great points there. I've done a couple of presentations recently were I changed my approach, not thinking about what information I want to give, but what is the best information to keep my audience interested. People are seldom going to enjoy reading data from a Powerpoint slide - far better to have something very brief on a slide (where it's practical) and shift the attention back onto you. Audience is key.
President at P3 Cost Analysts
7 年So right Bob, I'll have to show this to my friend! We were just having a discussion about this.