The following excerpt is from Jill Schiefelbein’s book Dynamic Communication. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes
If the goal of your presentation is persuasion, let me introduce you to my favorite organizational structure for any presentation given for the purpose of driving action: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. This isn’t just an organizational sequence for large public speeches or presentations; it can also be used as an organizational framework for any business conversation.
There are five steps in the sequence. You need them all to be maximally effective.
Step one: attention
The goal of this first step is to make sure everyone in the room — physical or virtual — or taking part in the discussion is on the same page. When people are tasked with giving a public speech or presentation in a business setting, we often revert back to basic public-speaking training we may have received, thinking we need to start out with a joke or some other attention-getting tactic.
But in business, clarity tends to be more important. That’s not to say you can’t use humor and make your presentation fun, but you don’t need to overthink it. Sometimes in business this step is built in, and calling a meeting to order is enough. Keeping their attention is the challenge, and we’ll delve into that in the next step.
Step two: establish the need
The second step in the sequence is to establish the need for your communication (the message, the presentation, why people are gathered, etc.). This is a critical step, and it’s not always communicated clearly. Establishing the need means you’re being crystal clear about why everyone is in the room and needs to listen in the first place. It’s also about what you need your audience to contribute to the conversation and how you want them to behave. This is where you have a chance to unite your audience and put everyone on the same playing field. How you phrase and position the need will vary based on the situation.
An example of a simple statement establishing the need and the expectations for a problem-solving meeting could be: “We’re all here today to solve the problem of our declining sales. Each department brings a different way of approaching sales that’s valuable, and your unique perspectives and experiences will help create the solution.”
Establishing the need in a sales presentation might look like this: “We’re all here to learn about ways to more effectively manage our organization’s social media efforts. With the growing number of platforms and channels, keeping up with all of them to make sure customer comments don’t fall through the cracks is increasingly difficult. And, unless you’re a superhero –…