Grabbing your audience's attention and putting it on your message

The psychologist, M. Scott Peck, in his inspirational bestseller, “The Road Less Traveled”, tells the story of a neighbor who was a mechanical whiz. When Peck lamented the fact that he, himself had no mechanical aptitude, the neighbor shot back, “That’s because you don’t take the time.”

Most speakers don’t take the time either. They don’t take the time to work out exactly what it is that they are trying to say. They may prepare diligently, spend hours writing their speech, polishing the text till it positively glows. They may spend hours practicing alone in front of the mirror or in front of colleagues. And in the end, they might give a smooth and professional delivery that looks to all like a satisfactory performance.

You can’t fault their effort, but too often it was all for nothing, because they didn’t sit down, before they fired up the word processor, and think about what they were trying to achieve. It’s the most neglected part of most presentations, and often the most difficult and painful.

Take the time to think about what, specifically, you want to happen as a result of this presentation or speech. What do you want your audience to hear and remember? What do you want them to think or feel? What do you want them to do, as a result of listening to you?

Then, start thinking about how you are going to achieve it.

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A couple of years ago, I went to what was billed as an elevator speech contest sponsored by Tokyo’s Mobile Monday (MoMo), a cell phone industry networking group. It was actually a venture capital pitch contest, as each entrant was allowed three minutes with a PowerPoint slide show to make their case. That would be the longest and strangest elevator ride I’ve ever taken.

Each of the dozen small cell phone software and online service developers were vying for an opportunity to pitch their company or idea. They had the opportunity to not only make the case for their companies to their local peers and the financial backers among the couple of hundred people in the audience, but to convince the judges that they should be chosen to proceed to the next level of competition in Malaysia, and then from there have a chance to reach the international championships.

It was a great opportunity for a small, obscure company struggling for recognition and funding. Yet, after spending presumably thousands of hours developing and testing their product or service, not one of them seemed to have spent more than an hour or so preparing for their pitch.

I didn’t expect them to entertain and enthrall the audience with their showmanship, but I would have thought that they would at least address the main issues that a potential financial backer might be interested in. Yet one after another, each of the contestants presented the technical capabilities of their software, as if the backers would be as fascinated as they were by the arcane details of cross platform compatibility and packet streaming.

Of course, any savvy investor will eventually need to know the technical details, but first they need to see the vision. They need to see how this technology and your company are going to fit into the market landscape. They need to hear your story.

That’s where the money is.

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