Give Your Audience HOPE: Inspire & Make a Difference

You need to grab your audience’s attention in the first 3 seconds or you’re not going to keep it throughout your presentation.

In the first 3 seconds, your audience is going to judge you and make a decision based upon what comes out of your mouth.  They are going to decide whether or not to listen to you, whether or not you’re an expert, or whether or not they even like you. The key is to grab their attention based upon what they want and not upon what you want.

However, grabbing their attention is not everything.

You must grab their attention to start your speech, but that’s not how you will give them hope. Of course, you need to grab their attention first, before you can grab their heart, whether you are speaking 5 minutes or an hour. Always have an attention-grabbing statement to open your speech and be sure that it is always a benefit-driven statement.

So, how do you give your audience hope within your presentation? You must grab their heart.

In order to grab their hearts, you need to make them feel great. You need to make them feel good about themselves. You need to build rapport with your audience.

There are several ways to do that:

• Call them by their name. Make them feel important like they matter. Make them feel significant. These feelings are attached to their heart. The first step to grabbing their heart is to make them feel good about themselves in all those different ways.
• Tell stories. You can pull on their heartstrings by telling emotional stories. Some of the best stories are the ones about you, your personal story, and stories about what you went through.

In one speaker’s case, she shared about her financial disaster that came after a natural disaster. By sharing her story, the audience opened their hearts to her. It made them think: “If she can go through that and come out on top, I can go through anything.” “If she can do that, then I can do it, too.” “I thought I had financial trouble, but wow! She must have some special know-how.”

That’s why stories are so important to share. For some people, sharing their personal story is scary. However, it will make the difference from all the other speakers. You will be real and authentic. Don’t be afraid any longer to share your personal story. Someone else needs to hear it. Your story will give them hope.

To grab your audience’s heart, use rapport and stories.

Inspiring your audience is not just to make them feel good. You must inspire them to act. That’s what needs to be done. Inspire them to create a change, to do something differently. You might inspire them to eat better or to quit smoking — something that creates an action they take as a result of being inspired by your speech.

When you inspire them, you give them hope. You inspire them to take action. If they can’t do that, you are there to provide them with a program that will help them to get where they want to go. Hope is so important. People are so busy selling products or services, they don’t realize that if they would just turn it around, they could provide hope. That’s what people are really looking for: hope.

One of my clients was talking to me about a network marketing company. He was telling me all about the technical aspects of the product and the money to be made. When I told him that I couldn’t join his company because it would deviate me from my life purpose, he said, “Well, okay, if you don’t want to make an extra $10,000 a month, that’s okay.” After he said that, I thought if he had sold me hope — not just the potential for financial gain — of what this product can do for me, I might have considered it. Find out what people want and then sell them hope. Understand that hope looks different to different people. Find out what kind of hope your audience is looking for.

Give your audience value. Even though you are giving hope, it’s not just air. It must have value. The value is what you bring to the table.

Everything else is about your audience: a benefit-driven attention-grabbing statement, building rapport, making them feel significant–that’s all about your audience. When it comes to the meat of your talk, it’s about the value that you are giving to them.

What you give them can’t be the same old stuff that everyone else is giving them. Be different. Be innovative. Give your best stuff. Give them some of your how-tos. You don’t have to give away your trade secrets but do give them some valuable tips.

When you come to my one-day seminars, you always get some valuable how-tos. I don’t give away my 10-step speaker system because it takes four days to train people on that material. However, there are other things that have value that you can give away. Give them a glimpse of hope that they can have it too and let them know you are willing to give it to them.

Enhance their lives. If you are going to give them hope, it needs to be something that can enhance their lives, make them better off, or give them freedom. It could be financial freedom, freedom from disease, or all kinds of different freedoms. Whatever it is, you give them hope to get their life’s dream. Maybe it’s a better relationship; hope that you and your spouse can have an ideal relationship.

Hope creates the want and creates the need. Without hope, people give up. Without hope, they think there’s no answer. They give up on their marriage, on life, on their health, their finances. So many business speakers try to shove their solution down someone’s throat without positioning their talk and saying, “Hey, I’ve been there, (all done through personal story), and guess what, if I can do it, you can do it, too. I will show you how.” Now you’ve grabbed their hearts and given them hope. Now you can talk about how you can help them. Give them something that will enhance their hope.