TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

18 Jul 2018 · 2 min

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1:56

TJ Walker (live-stream) explains how to test whether a presentation or talk actually communicated its intended messages. He recommends asking audience members immediately after the talk what they remember and how they would describe the talk to a colleague; if the speaker’s planned messages and stories do not appear in audience responses (or the audience does not take the desired action), the presentation failed despite positive praise. The ultimate test is behavioral: did the audience do what you wanted (e.g., invest, vote).

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How can you test a presentation? How can you test a talk that you've done? Because unless you're a huge corporation, you can't be hiring focus groups and spending a lot of money. Typically. Well, the answer is right there in your audience. You ask them. What most people do is the audience comes up. If you're talking to more than 10 people, someone will say, oh, good job today. Good presentation. Don't just say, thank you. Say thank you. And can you tell me what do you remember? What sticks out? What messages do you remember? How would you describe what I talked about today to a colleague who wasn't here? And then really listen. Because if all the person does is say, oh, you were great, professional, interesting, you didn't communicate anything you need to hear. Specifically, the messages you prepared coming out of the mouth of the audience member doesn't have to be your words or your order, but the messages you care about, if they don't come out of the mouth of an audience member, if the stories you planned and delivered don't come out of the mouth of the audience member, if they don't remember your slides, then you flunked the test. You did not communicate. Even if they think that you did a good job. Our goal isn't to get a reputation as being a great speaker. Our goal is, is to actually communicate messages and to influence the audience. So that's how you test, do they remember? Of course, the ultimate test is, did the audience do what you want? If you're pitching investors and people come up to you afterwards and give you checks, you succeeded. If people come up to you afterwards and tell you you're fantastic, wonderful, great, and no one invested, you didn't succeed. You're running for office and you're asking for people's votes and you don't get any votes, you didn't succeed. If you win, you did succeed.