What to Do When Your Audience Just Doesn’t "Get It"

Whose fault is it when your audience just doesn’t “get it”?

“Hey, can you join our meeting this morning and give us an update on your new product upgrade? The meeting starts in 10 minutes.”

There’s nothing like a last-minute request to speak, right? No time to prepare, no time to think about what you want to say, just….one two three GO!

You’d love to say no, because you’ve got a million other things to do.

And also, because you don’t WANT to give a last-minute presentation.

But OF COURSE, you can’t say no. You’re a team player. You want to help out, and it might make you look bad if you said no. Besides, you were caught so off-guard that you didn’t even have time to come up with a reasonable excuse.

So you go into the meeting, and you share whatever you know about the project. You try to remember every single detail that they might need to know.

And then you share it ALL with them. All the facts, all the info, all the minutiae.

It's the classic "information dump." But that's OK, because they’ll retain what’s important to them -- and leave aside the rest.

Isn’t that good enough?

Then why do they look so BORED?

And why are they coming up to you after the meeting, asking all the same questions that you THOUGHT you addressed during the meeting?

Something was definitely lost in translation.

Here’s a quick video that will give you some ideas on how to speak with more focus, provide your audience with more relevant information, and create a better presentation when you’re with them -- so that when it’s all over, you have left them with something meaningful, actionable and valuable.

No information dump, not boring, and yes....they get it.

And then you can get back to work, looking like a total superstar.

You can also watch the video on YouTube here.

Video transcript:

There's a problem these days with most presentations. There is simply too much information. There is so much that we have to present, and time restrictions for how long we have to present it, so very often we cram as much information as possible into our presentations, throwing it all out at the audience and seeing what sticks. The problem is, it's not sticking.

Your audience needs to be able to process, understand or take action on what you're presenting. When we are too focused on the information we have to give, we don't pay enough attention to the audience, their experience and how they will receive this information.

Thankfully, there is a way to fix that.

You simply need to be able to answer why.

Why am I talking about this subject?

Why should they care?

Why is this message relevant and important to this audience at this time?

Get clear on the answers to these questions and then share this with your audience right from the start of the presentation, so that it's clear to them too.

When you can get clear on the why of your presentation, you will be able to connect with your audience in a meaningful way that actually makes things happen.

The message will be relevant to them, they'll get more value out of it, and they'll be more likely to trust you as a speaker in the future.

I'm Suzannah Baum. If you would like to get clear on the why of your message so that you can create higher levels of audience engagement in all of your presentations, let's get in touch.