Every person in every audience you speak to shares one thing in common: Each has a certain “radio station” playing in the back of his or her mind while listening to your presentation. You know what they’re tuned into: the famous WIIFM—What’s In It For Me?
One of the most important elements of any presentation, WIIFM represents more than just background noise. It’s the elephant in the room: You can’t NOT address it. Why should people invest their limited time listening to you? If you don’t deal with WIIFM ASAP, they’ll start side conversations with their neighbors or check their e-mail.
You must emphasize the audience’s needs over your own:
- Do your homework. Know your audience as thoroughly as possible, including their level of knowledge and challenges about your topic. Know why they’ve come to your presentation, and what they expect to receive—so you can give them exactly that and a little more. Put it front and center, and they’ll pay much closer attention to you than they might otherwise.
- Minimize your own interests. While you may have certain aims for your presentation, they should remain secondary to the audience’s. Tell them specifically how your content will benefit them, not what they can do for you. While I’m sure they like you, they care far more about how you can help them.
- Check your excuses at the door. Your audience members don’t want to hear about your technology problems, your cold, or anything that’s gone wrong. They want results, period. Don’t seek sympathy for yourself, and don’t over-apologize for things that happen outside of your control. Remember: The audience members are thinking of themselves, not you.
- Answer the “so what?” up front. Immediately provide a compelling reason for the entire audience to listen. If they don’t know what’s in it for them, they won’t listen to what you have to say for long. Ask yourself: What do you want them to take away from your presentation? What makes it relevant to them? What will they find interesting about your presentation? Make your core message clean and clear. Never make them guess at what you’re trying to get across. If they can’t perceive the benefit early on, you’ll lose them.
- Give them reasons to change. Changes can be difficult and painful—even small, incremental changes. So before you push the audience gently toward your point of view or the behavior you want them to model, do your utmost to win their hearts and minds first. Make your arguments for change clear, cogent, and compelling. Use active rather than passive voice, give specific examples, and be clear about what they must do to improve. Answer that key question: Why change at all?
Don’t let WIIFM block out or overwhelm your message; instead, take it into account and use it as a competitive advantage. All the chips should sit on their side of the table…or at least, they should think they do. While your competitors are explaining what they do and what the audience can do for them, you’ll be letting your audience know what you can do for them. That’s all they want to know.
Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, is an expert in productivity. For more than 20 years, Stack has worked with business leaders to execute more efficiently, boost performance, and accelerate results in the workplace. Her company, The Productivity Pro, Inc., provides productivity workshops around the globe to help attendees achieve Maximum Results in Minimum Time. Stack is the bestselling author of six books, with more than 20 foreign editions, published by Random House, Wiley, and Berrett-Koehler, including her newest work, “Execution IS the Strategy” (March 2014). An expert in the field of performance and workplace issues, Stack has been featured on the CBS Early Show, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Connect via her website, Facebook, or Twitter.
