Techniques for Overcoming Presentation Objections

Should you address objections people have to your arguments in your presentation, or should you just ignore it? Well, there's a real danger if you don't surface what people are thinking. If you don't deal with their objections to your argument, they might not pay attention to you. You're going to have a lot more credibility with your audience if you acknowledge what they're thinking. If you're trying to convince them to do something and they think, well, if I do that, it will create financial ruin, you need to tell them why they're wrong. You need to say, I understand your thinking this will create financial ruin, but. And then counter their argument. If you don't do that, chances are they've tuned out right away. I deal with this all the time when I'm giving presentations, trying to convince people to become better presenters. I always, always say, please. The number one thing you can do is practice your presentation in advance and record it on video and watch it and listen to it and keep doing that until you love what you see. But I know that the big thought bubble over everyone's head is, ah, tj, that's a horrible idea. I hate recording myself. I hate the sound of my own voice. It's too painful. I'm not going to do it. So I'll actually say all that. I'll say, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, tj, I don't want to record myself. I hate it. I don't like the sound of my own voice. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button right now. Therefore, they can't accuse me of ignoring their thoughts. And they know, well, he gets me. He sort of understands me. He understands why I don't want to do it. And they. Then I try to answer those objections. If you don't like recording yourself on video, it just means you're normal. Nobody likes it. Okay? So I've addressed that first part of the objection, and I've made people feel a little better because I make them realize everyone's like them. They're not weird, they're not strange, they're not losers. They are, in fact, normal. Next thing I do is I try to make myself more relatable to them so they're more open to my ideas. And I'll say, look, I get it if you don't like looking at video of yourself. I can look at a video myself and say, oh, gosh, where'd my hair go? What are all these chins doing? Here. So if you don't like something about how you look on camera, join the club. I'm the same way. So I'm still addressing their concerns, their objections, but trying to do it in a way that's more relatable. But then I try to spin it around to my point again. But here's the thing. If I don't see how I look, the audience still does. They're going to see my hair. They don't really care. They're going to see my chin. They don't really care. What my audience cares about is, am I giving them some ideas that are useful to them, interesting to them, helpful to them, and am I doing it in a way that doesn't detract because I look too scared or nervous? Typically, the answer is yes. But I don't know if I don't look scared or nervous or anything else unless I watch myself on video. Now, next, I'll try to give examples from other formats that people can relate to. I'll say, imagine this. You don't like to write, but if you had to submit an essay when you were in fifth grade, would you just dictate it once and hope that you got everything right? You wouldn't say to yourself, well, I don't want to look at my first draft. I don't like seeing typos and misspelling. I'll just send it off to the teacher. No, you wouldn't do that. Because if you just sent your rough draft or handed in your rough draft, or emailed your rough draft to the teacher without having looked at it once, it doesn't matter that you didn't see the spelling errors, mistakes, grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes. They would still be there. Your teacher would see it. There'd still be a negative reflection on you. So you get over it. You say, well, I'm going to look at my essay so I can correct it. Well, guess what? It is exactly the same when it comes to your presentation. It's not that a teacher is judging every presentation you get, but your audience is. You need to know how you come across in advance so you can correct things. Maybe you're speaking so softly and you didn't realize it. If you're speaking too softly, nobody can hear you. You've accomplished nothing. But if you practice in advance on video, it's going to be pretty awesome. Note to editor, cut that last sentence out. But if you practice on video and you can't hear yourself, it's going to be pretty obvious to you that you didn't speak loud enough, do it again, Practice again and again. So that's an example of what I think you have to do when you're communicating something. Because when you're communicating, you're trying to communicate, convince somebody to do something. Quite often, practice speaking in a new way. Invest in you, vote for you. If you don't handle the objections up front, they're not going to listen to the rest of your argument. So, yes, you do in fact, need to address people's objections, their counter arguments in every presentation you give.