7 steps to decoding your audience

All good communication coaches emphasize the importance of knowing your audience in advance of coming together.

Whether a negotiation, a sales meeting, informational webinar or speech, it’s imperative we understand who we’re presenting to.

Why? For two reasons.

One, we can’t help but be influenced by our own agenda, and our agenda is not the same as our audience’s agenda. Our awareness of this is why we should know the importance of taking our audience into account.

Two, we cannot fully succeed in our communication unless we know our audience’s needs and interests.

So we do our homework. We ask ourselves pertinent questions about the audience to mine the gold out of the opportunity we’ve been given.

There are numerous questions we could ask ourselves to start decoding the audience. Seven very good ones are outlined in Nancy Duarte’s acclaimed book Slide:ology – The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations.

The seven questions Duarte recommends posing to zero-in on emotional and intellectual heart of our audience are:

1. What are they like? Demographics and psychographics are a great start, but connecting with your audience means understanding them on a personal level. Take a walk in their shoes and describe what their life looks like.
2. Why are they here? What do they think they’re going to get out of this presentation? Why did they come to hear you? Are they willing participants or mandatory attendees? This is also a bit of a situation analysis.
3. What keeps them up at night? Everyone has a fear, a pain point, a thorn in the side. Let your audience know you empathize – and offer a solution.
4. How can you solve their problems? What’s in it for the audience? How are you going to make their lives better?
5. What do you want them to do? Make sure there’s clear action for your audience to take.
6. How might they resist? What will keep them from adopting your message and carrying out your call to action?
7. How can you best reach them? People vary in how they prefer to receive information. This can include everything from the setup of the room to the availability of materials after the presentation. Give the audience what they want, how they want it.

Duarte furthers her point by writing: “Consider the kind of relationship you want to have with your audience. Do you want to be their hero? Their mentor? Their cheerleader? Like these characters, good presenters aren’t in it for themselves; they’re in it for others. Take note.”

We’ve all attended meetings where the person in charge didn’t have a clear agenda, as well as presentations where the presenter didn’t have a clear point to make, or a benefit to convey to the audience. These failures are committed by people who didn’t take their audience members into account.

It leaves audiences feeling as though their time has been wasted. It leaves presenters with an audience that won’t be coming back – at least not willingly – for an encore performance.

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