Episode #111: If You Want Your Audience To Be Enthusiastic, Act Enthusiastic Yourself

There is an old truism in sales, “sales is nothing more than the transfer of the enthusiasm of the seller for the product or service to the buyer”. What are we doing when we are speaking? We are selling! “Hang on a minute there Greg. I am a professional, I am not a car or vacuum cleaner salesman”, you might be saying to yourself. That sort of self talk is dated and dangerous. Make no mistake, we are all in sales, regardless of whether our business card has salesperson written on it or not.

When I speak with lawyers what are they complaining about? How important and how hard it is for them to gain new clients. They are out there selling themselves to clients to choose their firm rather than the rival company. The same with accountants, doctors, dentists, architects, engineers, etc. All of the professions are facing the same hurdle. How do they appeal to buyers and how do they differentiate themselves from everyone else, when they also have the same skill sets, experience and brainpower on offer.

So if we are up at the podium, out there on stage, standing up in the room to speak, we are selling. Firstly, we are selling our personal brand. Depending on how good a job we do, this will sell the company brand. We humans are a curious bunch really. If we hear a speaker and they are impressive, we carry that feeling across to the whole firm. Likewise, if they are a dud, we conclude they are all duds down there. So don’t miss it - personal and professional brands matter.

The next thing we are selling is our message, the conclusion we have reached, the insight we have gained. We have prepared our talk with some points we believe are true and important and we are there to share them with the audience. One issue though is our level of commitment to the audience and the message.

I was at a talk once being given by a senior guy who was very well known around town, a long-timer in Tokyo, a published author and an accepted authority in his field. The expectation of something really great was in the mind of everyone in the audience. The speaker did give his talk, in the allotted time, on the designated subject. However he left his enthusiasm in a parcel on the bus seat by mistake. He spoke with no passion about his subject, no enthusiasm for his area of expertise and no interest in the punters who had made the effort to hear him. It was really shocking and I have totally doubted his supposed expertise ever since.

Of course, we have to a strong base in the subject matter. In fact we should be subject matter experts if we are going to get up in front of people and talk. There is another person I know here who is trying to develop a business as a coach, has a stylish stylist and is trying to get speaking spots on an area of certain expertise. The only problem is that he is not an expert at all on the subject he has chosen to speak about. This can only end in tears, however beautifully outfitted and coiffured he may be, but still tears, because there just isn’t enough expert content there to back up what he is saying.

Given we have the expertise to speak on the subject and given that we realise we are selling ourselves, our company and our message to the audience, then we need to add the magic ingredient of enthusiasm. The way to be enthusiastic is to speak on a subject or an aspect of a subject, which lights your inner fire. Inside your profession there are bound to aspects which you feel very strongly about, so talk about those and your enthusiasm will naturally emerge.

Relive things that happened in your experience that has become a foundation of your belief in what you are telling the audience. Tell the story of what happened to you and how it impacted your views. Talk about the lessons, the trials, tribulations, the highs and the lows. Your feeling for these stages of the tale will shine through and the audience will be right there beside you. When you relive the whole journey, the good, the bad, the mediocre, the inner passion you have for what happened, will burn forth and captivate your audience.

In the retelling use all the resources at your disposal to bring that belief to the fore. Use your eye contact to engage the audience, voice modulation to add crescendos and lulls where appropriate, gestures to cut through audience distraction and grab their attention.

By combining our belief in our message, with an enthusiastic delivery, we will carry the audience with us, along the journey of belief that we have trod already based on our real world, hard won experiences. That combination is unbeatable.