Monthly Archives: February 2012

Out with lectures, In with Engagement

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I taped an interview at WCHL radio today (Watch social media for the interview information). When I was in university I was a broadcast communication major and spent almost all of my time in the radio station.

This was before computers. I was using a board and dials to manage sound and reel-to-reel tapes for emergency announcements.

Things are different today! Computers have made things much easier. If you make a mistake you can just delete it out of the way.

In every area of our lives things have changed. That is true for the demands of public speaking. No longer is it enough to just stand in front of a group of people and lecture for 60 minutes. Your audience wants engagement.

Think about what you are doing when you go into a meeting- you text, you check your email on a smart phone, you check your social media- granted, not the best meeting etiquette and you know it happens.

Take a look around the next time you attend a speech or presentation. How many people have their smart phone out? How many of those folks are actively doing something other than listening to the speaker?

Individuals in the 20’s and 30’s have grown up multi-tasking on the smart phones, never far from the nearest video game or some kind of electronic entertainment. You need to break through all of that noise if you want your message to get through.

I’m sure you know the basics

  • Make sure your topic is of interest to your audience
  • Tell entertaining, emotional stories
  • Start your speech/presentation off with a bang that gets everyone’s attention

What else can you do to engage your audience on an even deeper level?

Instead of thinking of your speech as a ‘speech’ think of it as an opportunity to get to know 10, 50, 500 people and for them to get to know you.

If you shift your mindset you will look at your material and your audience in an entirely new way. To get to know someone you need to engage with him or her. That is the key to today’s audience- engagement.

Engagement pulls them away from their smart phone and helps them to know, like and trust you. All of the other elements of your speech must be there and adding engagement will shift you from just a speaker to a speaker that walks away from every engagement with clients and leverages their time.

When technology fails

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I love my cell phone – from the practicality of email and a calculator to the occasional game of Plants vs. Zombies between clients.

I love my laptop-from the ability to create complex spreadsheets to the ability to have information about the most random fact in just seconds.

I love my autoresponder, shopping cart, affiliate tool- from… Wait.. What?!

I just got a message on my cell phone that clients are not getting their dial in information for a free teleseminar! Technology is failing me!

Most of us have a love affair with technology. On a daily basis it makes our lives easier. It makes a virtual world possible. It is the reason I can work from a home office and focus my time on my clients instead of on things like finding the right office space.

Technology is the instrument that can turn an expert in Podunk Texas into a global sensation. It lets me live the life I want. And when it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.

Apparently, there was a failure of one technology to properly function with another technology over the last few days (the products will remain nameless to protect the guilty). For me, that means I lost a few dozen registrations for a free teleseminar. As I was scrambling to get my virtual assistant on the problem I started thinking about the big online marketers- the folks that lose thousands of registrations when a product is down for a 24 or 48-hour period.

How do you come back from that? It’s not the end of the world, although until the issue is fixed it feels pretty rough. Most of the time if you let people know what is happening they will help you. Tell the truth- I had a technology issue, please reregister and I appreciate you willingness to take an extra step.

You can’t do anything about the root cause of the problem. You are at the mercy of the tool owner.

All you can do is recover. Most folks today understand that there really are some technology issues that just cannot be helped. We no longer have control over every aspect of what we use to run our businesses. I can’t fix my computer or my cell phone. I can control how I react to technology failures.

There are so many reasons to get stressed out- why worry about what might happen? I really do hear clients say- ‘Well, I don’t want to do X because it might…’. An asteroid might hit the world tomorrow but I’m not losing sleep over it tonight! Don’t worry about what you cannot directly control.

Do your best to set things up in a smart, forward thinking manner then adjust to what happens. You will find that people are forgiving and understanding of technology issues. Everyone has been there.

What happens if you fail?

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“I love it when a plan comes together.” (Now I’m showing my age!)

Everyone once in a while the stars align and everything seems to work out just fine- or maybe better than fine.  An opportunity came my way- only 1 thing was missing. I had the key! I just had to get him (they key) on the phone.  The guy never picks up the phone, never responds to messages.

Well… he picked up on the second ring. And he can solve the issue. Beautiful!

Perfect things happen if you just let them. Often that is where the issue lies. We don’t let them. We try to force things that just don’t want to work. You see it in relationships (personal and work) and with target markets.

The key is to know when to ‘cut the cord’ and when to move forward. For some folks moving forward is just as difficult as cutting the cord. What if I make a mistake? What if I am wrong? What if this is a colossal failure that blows up in my face?

What if it is? You pick up and you start again. Thomas Edison tried thousands of times to develop a commercially acceptable incandescent light bulb. I wonder where we would be today if he had given up?

There is much that can be learned in failure. Often, if you examine a failure you will find the beginnings of a much bigger success.

I once had a manager tell me “Fail so big you can see it from space!” She would rather have me fail that big than not do anything at all. Very little is gained without risk, even less if you never do anything.

Courage is the difference between an idea and a great idea. It doesn’t mean you have to take a huge leap at one time, it can mean small steps one at a time until you reach the goal.

It means picking up the phone to talk to the one guy that might be able to help you out- and hoping he picks up!