The Most Important Aspect of Public Speaking Is…

When you learn public speaking you generally focus on controlling nerves, body language and the voice. You want to make sure you’re doing it “right.” This fails to consider the most important aspect of any presentation: the audience. 

The audience doesn’t care about your use of alliteration or pauses. They care about themselves and how they will benefit from taking the time to listen to you. If they don’t know, they’ll just reach for their phones or stare at the clock. 

You need to make your speech what Aristotle called “audience-centred.” 

I want to break down the biggest determining factor in whether your next presentation is a success, and give you some tips as to how you can directly appeal to the needs of your audience.

Why focus on your audience's pain points?

“As a matter of fact the world does revolve around me.” (Copernicus)

What’s In It For Them?

When you speak, constantly relate back to your audience. How the issues you’re talking about affect them, or people like them. 

Legendary marketer, John Caples, said that first and foremost you must get self-interest into every headline that you write. Advertising, like public speaking, is about attention. You need to grab someone’s attention by talking to people’s own needs and emotions.

Don’t worry if your audience is not personally affected by the issues you are talking about. All that is important is that they can identify with the problems put forward. Owing to our nature as social creatures, humans do not only ask “what’s in it for me?” they also ask “what’s in it for people like me?” Additionally, because of the bias of social norms, they will also be asking “what would someone like me do?” This kind of thinking is particularly relevant for charities and nonprofits.

Pain Always Trumps Pleasure

Your speech should solve a pain point of your audience, more than it should offer perceived gain. 

Statistics show that 48% of people will share negative experiences with 10 or more people, but will share a positive experience with only half. There’s also the dreaded “Fear of Missing Out” – we just can’t bear the thought of the pain of regret if we don’t do something. 

Therefore your presentation needs to solve your audience’s problems – just like any business should. Think of Uber. No one woke up and thought “I really need an Uber.” They thought “cabs in LA are expensive and hard to get and I need to get from A to B.” Uber was the solution. 

Presenting pain and then offering your solutions will also give your presentation a satisfying narrative arc:

You start by highlighting the problem. Use rich imagery to make them feel the real pangs of pain that this creates. Help the audience understand why this problem is there, and what it is costing them.

Then you come and save the day with your idea. And can finish by offering a vision of the world without this problem.

How to talk directly to your audience.

1. Start By Working Out Who Your Audience is.

At first, use your intuition. If you’re talking to a room full of high school students, their problems are going to be very different from C-Suite Executives. Computer geniuses at a coding conference won’t think anything like people working in PR. A bit of digging here and there can go a long way in understanding who your audience is.

Furthermore, there may be just one person in the audience who you really need to impress, such as a potential investor. You need to lazer-focus your message to that person. Go on their LinkedIn profile, check out their Twitter, see what bugs them, what problems they have and tailor your message accordingly. 

The idea is to build up a profile of your audience. A position from which you can consider a world “as if” you are that person. This will be invaluable in the next stage of speech writing.

2. Consider Their Objectives and Their Goals

Brainstorm what problems they have. Write everything you can down, at least 20-30 ideas. Don’t try and think of solutions or analyse their worth as you go along.

Now you’ve got your list: cross out the ideas that do not relate to your message. Then, it’s more homework: go online and start looking for conversations on LinkedIn/ Twitter/ Forums/ Trade Magazines and work out what are the top 3 that relate to your product or idea. If you can only find one, but that fits perfectly, even better. The more simple your message and the problem that it solves, the easier it will be to get that idea to resonate. 

It’s crucial to reduce at this stage down to just 3 problems or issues which you are going to solve. Less is more!

3. Adjust Your Language To Mirror Theirs

Mirroring is a tool often used in body language as a method of bonding and building understanding. You can’t mirror an audience’s body language as a speaker, but you can try and use their language. Do your homework – what kind of jargon/ acronyms/ phraseology do they use and how can you incorporate that into your presentation or pitch. 

Familiarity also has the effect of capturing people’s attention and lowering the filters that they might have built up.

Go about this the same way as you might go about looking for keywords in SEO: use google autocomplete, or just make notes as you’re reading people’s posts and articles. What phrases can you mix into the presentation. Try and find 2-3 recurring phrases or soundbites and use them. 

4. Build Your Speech Around Your Audience’s Problem

Now it’s time to start putting your speech together. This is a basic framework which you could use as a reminder as to how you can put it together. 

Introduction: Make your audience think about this problem. Maybe it’s a story that affected you or a customer. Make sure it is vivid and triggers all of the negative emotions that you are going to be able to relieve with your solution. 

Explanation: Explain the aspects/ building blocks that make up the problem. What is causing the problem and why it is a problem that deserves their attention. 

Speech Body: Introduce the aspects of your message that resolve their problem.

You should always back up each point with one piece of data or an illustrative story or case study that will show people the validity of your message. 

You have to make it explicit. Don’t fall foul of the curse of knowledge and assume that people will understand how your idea relates to their problem – the information is completely new to them, so you need to spell it out. 

Conclusion: Remind people of your main points and offer a vision of a world where this problem no longer exists. Humans perceive contrast extremely well so this is a chance to compare a before and after and really drive home the validity of your message. Then give them a simple call to action – a first step in them overcoming their problem. 

Go for it...your audience is waiting!

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