Quick: Who’s the most important person in the room, in any business presentation? If you think like most speakers, you’ll answer that the speaker is most important. If you think like an audience member, you’ll answer that the listener is most important.

It gets hard-wired into us from primary school that the important person is the one in the front of the room. It's reinforced in church, in college, in most business presentations you see: the important person is the one in the spotlight.

But the best speakers we see – and we have seen thousands – flip that perspective on its head. They know that the only reason to give any presentation, whether the audience is one or 1,000, is to get the audience to do, know and feel something they wouldn’t have done, known or felt otherwise. They know that putting the Audience First is the most powerful thing they can do. It changes everything.

This may seem like a simple shift. But stop and think about the last presentation you saw…and maybe even the last presentation you delivered. Most presentations you see come from the perspective of the speaker:“I want you to like me, and believe me and think I’m credible. Here’s everything I love about this topic. See how prepared I am? Aren’t my slides good? I may act like it’s no big deal but I really want you to think I’m good at this.”

To be fair, that’s a gross simplification of the thought process behind most presentations. But there’s a true thread of that running through most of what we see when we first meet clients. And it's why so many business presentations fall flat: they put the speaker's needs ahead of the audience.

The best speakers we see and work with are able to make a subtle but powerful shift in their perspective. The understand that the only reason to give a presentation, to any audience of any size, is to change the audience in some specific way. They understand that the audience walks in at Point A – that is, they already do, know and feel something – and that they need to be changed in some way so they leave knowing and feeling something different, and willing to do something new as a result. Call that Point C. The message and delivery you create are the vehicle that moves them from Point A to Point C. That’s the Change Equation. It’s how you put the Audience First perspective into play.

Sample Change Equation.
Dan is asked to speak to the Area Business Managers (ABMs) of his biotech company’s sales force, and roll out the marketing materials for the next season. This speech is a preview of the 30 minute speech he’ll give direct to the reps at the upcoming National Sales Meeting. Most people in Dan’s shoes would start building slides that show how the market research proves these materials really will work, how much thought was put into them, how they really did do their homework, how they really did take the suggestions of the sales force into account but they also had to meet certain legal requirements…and on and on and on. He’ll have complex slides and plenty of handouts, and he’ll have to talk really fast, because he has so much to say.

But Dan owns the Audience First perspective. So he builds his Change Equation: The ABMs walk in at Point A, willing to:

• DO: listen politely to another marketing pitch so they can figure out how to tell their reps that, yeah, the materials really might be better this year.
• KNOW: the materials change every year and it never makes much difference .
• FEEL: slightly curious, slightly like nobody understands their reps like they do .

Dan knows that he needs the ABMs to be excited about how the materials can help drive sales AND make their own lives easier., if they are going to sell the Reps on the materials. So here is the Point C he targets:

• DO: Teach their reps three specific ways these materials can connect them to their customers .
• KNOW: Customer and rep feedback on these materials has driven every aspect of them, so we know they work.
• FEEL: Confident that my reps will be more successful if they use these materials.

Now Dan crafts a set of messages that deliver on the needs of his audience, so it moves from A to C. THEN he begins creating slides to support the messages that get him there. He is using the Change Equation to deliver on the Audience First Perspective.

Audience First Action Step

• Change the way you use time in meetings. Make meeting time action focused. If you’re just reporting data, send it ahead of time. Where there’s no discussion needed, there’s no meeting time needed, except for political “face time” purposes. We recommend: Boost your personal brand by NOT taking valuable meeting time with a data dump. Feel free to message that you sent the data so meeting time could be devoted to action…THAT would be a one-sentence presentation, in itself, which certainly meets the Audience First test.

• Instead of thinking about everything you want to tell them so they’ll think something good about you, stop and switch gears. Think about what they need to know in order to do something useful for themselves. We guarantee you that when you give them something they can use in support of their success, they will automatically see you as effective and useful. We recommend: trust that the more you focus on US in the audience, by giving us things to do and think and feel, the smarter you seem to us. The more you tell us how smart you are, the more we believe the opposite.
  

• Create a Change Equation. It works for every presentation type. Even if all you’re doing is introducing a speaker, you can create a resourceful Point C with messages that tell the audience what to listen for (do), and why this person is someone to listen to (know). We recommend: Listen to the next speaker introduction speech you hear with this in mind. Notice how much better that toss-away few minutes could set up the speaker?

• Create your messages based on that Change Equation. Your message and your delivery are the vehicle that delivers the audience from Point A to Point C. We recommend: If it doesn’t move the audience down the road toward Point C, it doesn’t belong in your presentation

• When you look for stories to tell in your presentation, make sure they serve the Change Equation rather than your own reputation. We’ve heard so many long-winded stories from the podium that entertain the speaker and leave the audience in the dust. And so have you. Don’t be one of Those Speakers.

• Have the courage to adopt the Audience First perspective, even if yours is a culture where self-promotion is common. The surest way to bore an audience is to show and tell them how smart you are. The surest way to reach an audience is to show them how they can be even more smart. Do that, and yYou won’t have to hope that audiences like you. They just will. Guaranteed.