Do Your Homework Before Speaking to an Audience
Think of each communication with clients or potential clients as a chance to lead an audience on a decision-making journey. --Nick Morgan
In these tough economic times, communication with clients and prospects gets more difficult—and becomes more important than ever. Conversations can be fraught with emotions, resistance and suspicion...Think of each communication with clients or potential clients as a chance to lead an audience on a decision-making journey. If you do it right, you're going to take them to the place you want them to go—to stay the course, change their investment mix or to remain with your firm instead of the one down the street.
Begin by doing your homework. Has your audience lost money recently? What's going right and wrong for them? What is their current position? Of course, you may already know this. If not, the quickest way to find out is to ask. That's easy in a one-to-one conversation, but a little harder with an audience of 100. But it's hardly an impossible goal. You have a general idea, given the current economic circumstances, and you can quickly check your assumptions with a few pointed questions. Once you know something about where the audience stands, you're ready to take the audience on the journey.
-Nick Morgan, president of Public Words, a consulting firm that helps businesspeople become better speakers, in Speaking Persuasively
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