Questions To Ask Your Audience To Deliver A Captivating Presentation Like Steve Jobs
16 August 2022
[Video Transcript]
What Are You Selling?
Insights from 'The Presentation Secrets Of Steve Jobs' by Carmine Gallo
One of the ways to sell your product in the most compelling way is to ask your audience engaging questions. Find out what they are and how you can become the most captivating communicator with techniques used by Steve Jobs himself.Â
Everyone is in sales.
We're all trying to sell ourselves and our ideas.
Before you ever start working on a presentation, determine what you're selling.
As 'The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs' points out, everything about your presentation is built around this concept.
What if you don't see yourself as "selling" when you present?
You can look at this idea in a few other ways.
What's your headline?
Why should people be interested in what you share?
What are the one, two, or three things you want people to take away, remember, or do because of your presentation?
Understanding what you're selling informs everything else in your presentation.
Related Content: Watch More Emeritus Insights Videos From Best-Selling Books
Stephen Covey puts it this way "Start with the end in mind."
Once you know where you want to take your audience, you need to figure out the best way to get there.
In the case of a presentation, it's determining what information to present and how to share it in the most compelling way.
One great way to engage your audience early can be with a question.
For example, I teach people about the psychology of persuasion and the importance of getting to yes.
The way I engage an audience early on is to use the following question, "Wouldn't you agree, much of your professional success and personal happiness depends on getting others to say 'yes' to you?"
It only takes a moment of reflection for the audience to realize the truthfulness of the statement.
Once they've answered that question in their head with a 'yes' response, they're more focused on what comes next.
How might you engage an audience with a question that highlights what you want to convey?
Here are a few examples to highlight what you're selling and gain buy-in.
By a show of hands, how many of you think it's important that we take care of the environment?
Wouldn't you agree that at this time in history no one should go to bed hungry?
Isn't it nice when you save money on insurance?
Most people would be hard pressed to not agree with statements like those.
Take an approach like that early in your presentation and you gain buy-in, which means more focused attention on what comes next.
Holding an audience's attention is critical so you need to do this very early in your presentation.
