#9 Finding your Speaking Sweet Spot - Audience Relationship

There's a third kind of way we can consider the audience, and that is in terms of the relationship of themselves to each other. So, for example, if you are speaking to an industry or to an association event, you may be speaking to people who are in that same industry and they have the same kinds of experiences. They may be on different stages of the value chain, but they will understand the industry because they are part of that and you are coming to share with them. Maybe you are an expert on that industry, or maybe you have some content that is really relevant and has been personalized for that particular event. On the other hand, you could be speaking at a public event where tickets have been sold to people in the public and you don't know who will be there. There will be entrepreneurs and government and corporate and independents and homemakers all at the same time. Then there's another situation where a company hires you to speak at an event, and they're saying it's for our own people. Our own people could mean our own staff, so you will be speaking internally to a company's staff. Now that company is obviously in some kind of industry, but the company itself has unique situations or experiences, and maybe you are there to teach them something or to help them through a change management process or to encourage them on the next stage of that company's growth. But those are internal staff, and it really does pay to understand what that company is going through and really be very clear. On the expectations of the client in that situation. On the other hand, a company could hire you to speak to their clients. So whatever content you are bringing to them is something that they want to share with their clients, and you are the value that they are sharing onto their, their clients. In that case, you are actually representing that company as if you were an employee because you need to be able to talk to their clients in a way that keep those clients loyal to that particular client. Other kinds of audiences could even include board members or people on the shop floor or any other department within a company. But when you're talking about board members, then they don't necessarily need you to come and do a keynote speech at the next board. They may need you to come in and share some piece of content or wisdom or insight that they will then unpack with you more in a consulting situation. So again, many different ways of looking at the relationship of the people in the audience to each other and what that means for the message that you are bringing to that client.