Читать книгу PlusPlus - Florian Mueck - Страница 20

You can have the best content, the best delivery, the best slides, the best sound system, the best moderator to set the stage for you, and the friendliest audience. But if your speech is not relevant to your audience, it’s nothing but a dud.

Why should people care about your message, about what you have to say?

This question should always be in the forefront of your mind. Most public speakers write their content, present it, and hope somebody will care. That’s exactly backwards!

Instead, you should analyse your audience in advance, think about their needs, and adapt your speech content to those needs. Empathize with them; think about your audience’s perspective, about how they feel.

This will allow you to make your speech relevant to them.

A good way to boost your level of relevance is to ask rhetorical questions. Have you ever asked yourself why rhetorical questions are so powerful? Rhetorical questions make the audience confirm your point. Once they nod, indicating their agreement, you have them in the palm of your hand.

Who of you here has children? Aren’t they wonderful? Aren’t they precious? Wouldn’t you agree that we should protect our little angels?

Today, I will talk about a budget increase for private security services.

Without the rhetorical questions, the audience might think only about the cost, and switch you off right away. On the other hand, after you’ve asked these rhetorical questions, it is very difficult for your audience just to tune you out. You’ve made it relevant to them personally.

Whether you use rhetorical questions or not, you must always find an answer to this one crucial question when you’re preparing a speech:

Why should they care?

Boost your content even more by making your speech relevant to your audience.