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Once I attended an MBA class given by my friend Professor Conor Neill from the renowned IESE Business School in Barcelona. With gravity in his voice he addressed his class:

Ladies and gentlemen, please pay good attention. You will now hear the eight words that are most important to any public speaker.

The serious tone of Conor’s voice immediately had the students grabbing their pens. Conor continued:

The eight most important words, for any public speaker, are: After listening to my speech, the audience will ___________!

Will what? What will they do? What action will they take? What action, real or symbolic, will people perform after they’ve listened to me?

Conor calls it “Point X”, that one symbolic action that turns a passive listener into a committed follower.

Knowing more about my topic is not an action. Feeling more passionate about my cause is not an action. Signing my petition to save the orangutans in Borneo — that is an action.

I was sitting in a street café in Barcelona one afternoon, when suddenly a kindly looking lady in her late 50s approached me with a petition to save the famous orangutans of Borneo. Frankly, I’m not the number one petition-signer in the world, but this particular cause meant something to me. Rose, my beloved, my special rose, comes from Sabah, in Borneo, home of the orangutan. So I signed.

Two weeks later I received a phone call:

Mr. Mueck, you have signed a petition here to help save the orangutan....

Now — what were the chances that I’d have just put the phone down? Normally, they’re about 99½%, like when a telephone solicitor calls me to sell me a better wireless connection.

But I couldn’t do that, because I’d already committed myself. That tiny little symbolic action of signing that petition had an amazing amount of persuasive power. It made me feel a sense of personal obligation.

Most of the speakers I’ve ever heard haven’t included a concrete call to action. There hasn’t been a “Point X” — which means that significant opportunities have been missed!

The first content-boosting action to take in the future is to write down these eight words, then to come up with a concrete action for your audience to take once they’ve listened to your speech or presentation.

It’s the very first step. Once you’ve defined your Point X, you’re ready to move on.

Boost your content even more by demanding a symbolic action from your audience.