Test Your Messages In Advance

Let's say you have a very important business meeting coming up. It's on Thursday. You're speaking to 30 prospects or clients. How do you know if the messages you picked and the way you're presenting it is effective? Well, that's easy. Don't guess, don't take my word for it. Test, test in a real world environment, if you're speaking to 30 Prospects clients on Thursday, find three colleagues who maybe work in a different department and don't know everything about what you do, but have a similar mindset to your target audience and ask them to pop by at lunchtime Tuesday. Give them a sandwich if you need to, then give them your presentation, give them your speed. If it's a PowerPoint, deliver the PowerPoint. If it's a speech, a talk, an informal talk, sitting, standing, whatever it is, just do what it is you plan on doing Thursday to this small group of three colleagues. When you are done, ask them every message they remember. Any message they throw back in your and don't tell them you're going to do this in advance or they'll write it down. And that's essentially cheating. Ask them what messages they remember. If they remember your messages, any message they remember, that's great. You now have independent confirmation that the way you communicated that message worked. Keep doing it that way in the real presentation on Thursday. But if all they can do is tell you, well, you know, T.J. you came across really professional, really smooth. Good job. I'm sure you'll do a great job on Thursday. If that's what someone tells me, then I know I was a complete utter failure. I didn't communicate anything. People had to be throwing back in your face specific messages. They remember if you use slides exactly what the slides were and what the message was. If they can't tell you what your messages were, you failed. It's never the audience's fault. It's always the speaker's fault. So test in advance.