Choosing gifts

When you give a talk, you’re giving a gift, not a performance. But how do you know what gift would suit your audience best? You wouldn’t want to give a dozen steak knives to a vegetarian.

My favorite method for understanding your audience and what they might need/want most is the Who/What/What Table.

Let’s make one now! Get a piece of paper. (I’ll wait.) Turn it sideways (landscape view). Draw three large vertical columns. Your first column heading is: Audience. The second column heading: What now. The third column heading: What after.

Now draw several horizontal rows across the columns – one for each audience segment you are trying to reach. Be detailed. “Employees” as a category doesn’t work – your engineering team thinks differently than your sales team. Customers in verticals buy from you for different reasons and have different market pressures, so refine that section too. Add influencers, partners, competitors, etc. Every audience on your radar screen goes on the list.

The tricky parts come next. For each audience, identify what they think, feel, do, fear and hope for now - before your talk. What are their biggest concerns, pressures at work, dilemmas? Are they satisfied? Skeptical? Miserable? How do they manage their businesses now? How do they currently address the problem you’re purporting to solve? What keeps them from embracing change? What do they hope for - in their careers, for their companies, in their lives? Remember - it’s not what they think/feel/do about YOUR product. If your product doesn’t address their biggest business concerns, why should they listen to you?

Doing a really great Who/What/What table is hard work, but do not make this part up. Gather evidence - demographics, psychographics, anecdotal information about people you’ve met. You are building context, spelunking into the minds of your audiences. It’s worth it. When you dig deep to understand your audiences, you are mining for gold.

The third column is more creative. What do you want each of your audiences to think, feel, do and hope for after your talk? What fears of theirs will you have allayed? What new fears will you have planted in their heads?

If you want extra credit, you can add a fourth column to your chart – How. Ask yourself: Based on what I know about each audience – how will I persuade them to think what I want them to think? Will it take data? A logical argument? An inspiring story? Validation from experts?

When you understand your audience, you can speak to their needs and aspirations. You can give them the perfect gift. And, as we know, a great talk is always a gift, not a performance!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!