Marc Haine explains why presenters lose audiences in the first five to ten seconds: people decide about you before you speak. Traditional sales training focuses on pitch tactics while ignoring pre-suasion, the psychological principle that judgments form before words are said.
We've done shows about having really bad meetings and how to have better meetings. But today, we're talking about something a little bit different, aren't we?
Yeah, so a lot of people lose a room in the first 5 to 10 seconds. The problem we have is that we don't know it. So, we deliver to a room. They nod politely. They say yes. They thank you for coming. And then, before you know it, It's follow-up time. And the follow-ups are met with no response or a, we're thinking about it, or the price is too high, or let me run it by my board, or turns out we tried this and it didn't work. And as presenters, as salespeople, as entrepreneurs, we just don't know why. And the answer is, it's frightfully simple, but it's something that you wouldn't ever think of. And it's all about presence and what a famous social psychologist called pre-suasion. How good are you at selling yourself and your message Before you've spoken the first word. We're never taught this. From the time we become leaders to the time we learn our first persuasive words or our first pitch that seems to work with 10 or 20% of people, we're always taught it's what you say. And if you craft your message just right, if you do 2 yeses so you get a 3rd yes, or if you get a no right away so you can get a yes later, we're taught all of that stuff. But we're never taught what happens before any of that verbiage takes place. And the scary part is, Marc, it's been proven time and time again that people make their decisions about you before you even start talking.
