Welcome back once again in this lesson we're going to talk about getting our message heard by the audience. Robert Walker and Joshua Glen went out and bought 100 nondescript objects from thrift stores costing on average about $1 25 more or less per object. They then wrote stories about each of the objects purchased and then sold them on eBay. total investment $128 total proceeds get this $8,000 let me do the quick math here. That's Uh huh. 6,250% return on investment, and the only difference being, the products were sold with a story.

Storytelling is extremely powerful. And one of the techniques we're going to discuss in this lesson to make your message stick. Chip and Dan Heath, discuss six qualities of an idea that make them stick in a decision makers mind sticky in the sense that Idea is understandable, memorable and effective in changing thought or behavior. Let's discuss each of these briefly. Simplicity speaks to breaking down each idea to the essential core, creating a headline for each of your slides and stating in a way that related to your audience. summarize what we want them to understand.

Think about the headline of a newspaper and how they catch your attention and tweak your interest. Something unexpected gets attention surprises and plays to our natural curiosity. You can use a startling statistic or quote, for example, did you know that 5% of an organization's revenue is lost to fraud every year, then add context by making this startling statistic relatable by the audience. For instance, if fraud were a country, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world today. That instantly conveys to the audience that this is a really big deal. Concrete speaks to the audience need to have an ability to relate to the idea with their senses.

If you're talking about the impact of weather on same store sales, put in a few pictures of your stores in the middle of a storm to highlight the impact. In this way the audience feels the numbers. credibility speaks to the trustworthiness of the idea, which influences the belief The audience will have in your proposition. As you are conveying your message, you will use data research statistics to help support your proposition. Keep in mind that ethos is one of those three essential ingredients for persuasion. Your audience will only act if they care remember path those are the emotional appeal.

Whether you're trying to convince a board of directors to approve your project and employ a team to implement your new system or a research analyst to follow your company. A communication devoid of emotion risk losing its persuasiveness. The key is to find a way to align your own self interest with that Your audience, and stories. Stories are so powerful in conveying information and meeting and it doesn't matter what you're presenting, it lends itself to a story. When you're presenting the quarterly financials, those numbers are telling a story. When you present a new acquisition opportunity, you better believe there's a story behind why the deal makes sense beyond just the numbers.

If you're presenting a new strategic initiative, a story will help sell it to your staff. When you use stories to convey your message your audience is 22 times more likely to remember it. Some of us are natural storytellers. For others, it takes some practice, keep in mind that the story should be highly relevant to the point we're trying to make. It should support our proposition. In telling a story, Darlene price suggests that we consider the story method which triggers you to consider the five parts to a story as to remind you to set the scene including time, place and characters, keep it to the bare essence.

Lest you end up eating your 18 minutes in a hurry to remind you to describe the trouble, which could be an obstacle, a conflict or a problem, or remind you to describe the obstacle that was overcome. This is where teaching hope good news and inspiration can occur. What happened and how did it work itself out? Or remind you to reveal the reward of the story? Was it a happy or sad ending? What was the lesson learned?

What benefits were gained or lost from the experience? And finally, why remind you to make the story you focused as in what's in it for the audience, the story needs to transfer its message from you to your audience. You could ask the audience what they would do in a similar situation, or imagine if they could influence the outcome. Storytelling is one of the best ways to make your message more sticky in the minds of your audience. One of our challenges outlined in the introduction pretty tend to want information to include and how much the temptation is to try and anticipate all of our audience's needs and answer every question they might have. However, this is often not the best approach.

As you refine your presentation, which in all likelihood, is probably on the longer not shorter end of the spectrum. Keep in mind prices ACT test to help you with your editing. Consider your audience. How does this information help your audience? Does it address their needs? Is it absolutely critical to your outcome?

Next, consider editing based on content. Is the content itself interesting? does it support one of your three primary key messages? Is it supporting ethos, logos or paths? Or is it more like really nice to know type information. And finally, you've got to consider time.

This test alone will cause you to kick out many of your initial slides. When you're done, consider dividing your remaining content into three buckets. Things I must say things I should say and things out only say if I have time. This will provide you some flexibility during your presentation to speed up or slow down as time dictates. Let's transition to one last idea in this lesson about getting our message across. This one has to do with engaging our audience in your presentation.

Here we are going to look at a few findings from research studies done in the field of education. The first study looked at student retention using different methods of instruction. passive learning, where a student listens or watches instruction typically leads to the lowest levels of retention. However, when you incorporate experiential learning practices, notice how retention goes way up. experiential learning engages the student in the learning the same ways you might consider engaging your audience in the presentation. Adults like working collaboratively.

They also like hearing different perspectives, recognize and exploit the considerable knowledge and experience represented in the audience. I like this study as well by Eric missoura of Harvard, and he's strapped up a few students to a brainwave monitor and follow them around for a few days. Notice the amount of brainwave activity going on during a typical class where the student is sitting there and listening to a professor. It's basically about the same as watching TV, however, knows the brainwave activity during the lab sessions and the homework. You need to think of ways to engage your audience in your presentation. If engaging your audience through active participation helps turn on their brains.

What sort of techniques can we use? Let's discuss a few ideas, but don't feel limited. Use your imagination. My favorite story I've heard about audience engagement comes from a TED talk done by none other than Bill Gates or malaria. Let's listen in Now malaria, of course transmitted by mosquitoes, I brought some here. So you could experience this well let let those roam around the auditorium a little bit.

There is no reason only poor people should have the experience. Not those mosquitoes are not not infected but engaging the audience doesn't need to be that dramatic. You can simply ask a question and invite a response from the audience. You can pull the audience, ask for volunteers play a game, which might seem hokey, but participants love this, giveaway prizes for participation. engage the audience in an interactive discussion, incorporate props such as Bill Gates and his mosquitoes. Finally, make your presentation visual by incorporating video pictures and videos.

In fact, this last idea is so important. I'm going to dedicate the next lesson to it. So in this lesson, we covered off three really important ideas for improving audience retention of your message. First, we talked about the six elements that make a message sticky, simplicity, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories. Second, we looked at the elements of storytelling, and the challenge of distilling down the message to the bare essentials. And finally, we considered engaging the audience actively in the presentation rather than passively.

I'll leave you with this old Chinese proverb. Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll understand. Until next time, I'm Blair.