- Point of View
- Audience Advocacy
- What's In It For You
- Quantify the “You”
- The “You” Rule
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
▪ Audience Advocacy ▪
In order for an audience to respond favorably to a presenter’s call to action, or Point B, the audience needs a reason, and the reason has to be theirs and not that of the presenter.
This simple concept falls under the overarching principle of Audience Advocacy: as a presenter, you must advocate as much for your audience’s interests as for your own. Learn all you can about your audience so that you can identify their needs, wants, fears, concerns, and hot buttons. Research who they are and what they know. Ask your colleagues for their input. You can even ask your colleagues to play the role of your prospective audience when you rehearse your presentation.
In coaching sessions with my clients, I play the role of their audience, whether it be potential investors, prospective customers, or would-be partners. In developing my own program material, I take the point of view of my clients. Do the same for every one of your presentations. Shift your thinking to your audience.
As you might expect, Audience Advocacy also has roots in Aristotle, whose term for it was pathos, Greek for “emotion”:
…persuasion may come through the hearers when the speech stirs their emotions.4
The best way to describe Audience Advocacy is to distinguish between Features and Benefits. A Feature is a fact about you or your company, the products or service you sell, or an idea you’re advocating. A Benefit is how that fact will help your audience. Remember that the second of the Five Cardinal Sins is lack of a benefit for the audience.
In presenting to potential investors, a CEO may go on and on about the features of the company’s leading product and then conclude, “We’ve built a better mousetrap.” But investors care more about the size of the market than they do the quality of the mousetrap. The CEO must go beyond the mousetrap and state the benefit to investors: “…and the world is beating a path to our doorstep.”
When you seek to persuade, you must translate every Feature into a Benefit.