Know Your Audience

Marketing and Sales strategists have long argued that not only do you have to know who you are talking to, you need to know how they listen.  People have distinctly different ways of dealing with presentations about strategy, David Wagner writes in Sloan Management Review, summarizing the consultants’ work. “Each audience member will emphasize one of four primary focuses — data, structure, vision and the human element — and effective speakers are those who integrate all four aspects into their presentations.”

Listeners who are primarily data driven will be evaluating your presentation to see if “it is grounded in the appropriate facts and figures.”

Audience members who look first for structure want to see how all the different aspects of your talk fit together.

“Where are all these strategy discussions going to lead us,” is what the people who are listening for vision want to know.

And, finally people who focus on human dimension want to know where they — and everyone else — fit in.

“The key to success is to always assume all four types of listeners are present in every audience. Identify your default mode and leverage those skills as much as you can, but address the needs of the other types of listeners as well.”