If you're a beginner, one of the hardest things to do when you're trying to figure out how to communicate is to think, where do I even start? Whether you're giving a PowerPoint, presentation, speech, whatever it is, there's the temptation to sort of run around the office or run around your home office gathering more information, more research, more study, getting more PowerPoint slides created or from other people gathered, gathered gather. And certainly you have to do a little of that. But that's not what your first step should be. Anytime you're trying to communicate, whether it's communicating in a job interview, a presentation to five staff members, or the most important presentation in your life to 1000, big customer prospects. You've always got to ask yourself, what is the one thing I want my audience to do after I've communicated with them That's the starting point.

And you need to be able to write this down in one sentence. Do you want them to hire you buy from you invest in you endorse a budget for your department, vote for you. What is it you literally want the audience to do? After you've communicated with them in your presentation, your talk your briefing, whatever form of communication it is, that's what you need to focus on. So that's your first assignment right here. I need you to write down in the discussion group here and you to me, what is the one thing you want your audience to do and you can make up something, but the more realistic you make it for your own particular situation at this stage in your career, the better.

It needs to be something you can summarize in one sentence. The more specific, the better.