Get Your Audience to Take Action with Key Points

• 00:04 Too many people think of a speech as an opportunity to get a giant wheelbarrow and
• 00:09 sort of go around their office for two months gathering facts,
• 00:13 gathering data points, gathering old PowerPoint slides from other people.
• 00:18 And then it's the day of the speech and they kind of wheel that wheelbarrow into
• 00:21 the conference room and they just start dumping.
• 00:24 And wow, look at the time, there's not much time.
• 00:26 I better speak faster because I got so much data to dump.
• 00:30 And it simply wears out the audience.
• 00:34 It numbs them.
• 00:36 You're not impressing anybody.
• 00:39 You're not making them feel you're smarter.
• 00:43 All you're doing is boring them.
• 00:46 Let's go back to our initial criteria of what we're trying to accomplish.
• 00:50 We want to look comfortable, confident, have people understand us,
• 00:53 have people remember our message so they can take the actions they want.
• 00:57 Well, if you've bored people to death in the first few minutes,
• 01:02 they're no longer understanding anything you say.
• 01:05 They're certainly not remembering it because they're not even paying attention.
• 01:10 So how in the world are they going to do what you want them to do,
• 01:15 if they checked out long ago?
• 01:17 And this is your first homework assignment.
• 01:19 You've got to come up with a topic for a speech.
• 01:23 The first thing I want you to do is write in one sentence,
• 01:28 what is it you want your audience to do?
• 01:32 Now, it's a little bit different if you're a student and
• 01:35 you're giving just a book report on a classic.
• 01:38 It may be what you want to do is to motivate your other students to think this
• 01:42 book is so fascinating that they want to go out and read it.
• 01:46 It doesn't have to be about getting more money or getting a direct sale, but
• 01:49 you should think of motivating your audience to do something.
• 01:53 So in one sentence I want to know what your goal is for this audience.
• 01:59 I don't mean your goal if I want them to think I'm smart.
• 02:02 Your goal should be something you want your audience to actually do.
• 02:07 Then I want you to write down every message point
• 02:12 that you could possibly think of.
• 02:15 And then put it in priority and narrow it down to just five.
• 02:21 That is your homework assignment.
• 02:23 Come up with just five message points.
• 02:27 A message point is not a big theme with 72 sub points.
• 02:32 A message point is just one idea.
• 02:35 It should be something with one subject, one verb, one object.
• 02:40 It's not a long run-on sentence with,
• 02:43 howevers, therefores, buts, it's just one idea.
• 02:48 Don't be greedy.
• 02:51 Focus on one idea at a time and you should have simply five.
• 02:55 I want you to type those up on your computer, write it on a piece of paper.
• 03:00 But it's critically important you have this degree of clarity.
• 03:05 Because without that, you're basically absolutely
• 03:09 destroying your ability to communicate successfully.
• 03:13 You need a road map for your presentation.
• 03:16 You can't drive from Los Angeles to New York without GPS and
• 03:20 without a roadmap typically, and just follow streets wherever they go.
• 03:25 You'll end up all sorts of nooks and crannies and
• 03:28 you'll just never get anywhere.
• 03:31 You need a roadmap for your presentation, it needs simplicity.
• 03:34 It's going to be easier for you when you're giving the presentation.
• 03:38 You know who else it's going to be easier for?
• 03:41 Your audience.
• 03:42 They need something easy for them to follow.
• 03:45 So that's your first homework assignment.
• 03:48 Five ideas, and you need to eliminate the stuff that is only important to you but
• 03:53 isn't important to your audience.
• 03:55 You need to eliminate the fluff.
• 03:57 You need to eliminate the nice-to-knows and keep the have-to-knows.
• 04:01 What is it that you absolutely positively have to have your
• 04:06 audience understanding and remembering?
• 04:09 So do that right now.

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