Want to be Heard? Some important Dos & Don’ts
We all want to be heard. Yet, no matter how hard we try we still struggle far too much to make ourselves heard in a noisy world.
Why is it so difficulty to be heard?
There is not ONE simple answer to that, but there are however simple reasons why we sink into oblivion as soon as we utter a single word – or write one. Here is a brief selection of some important ‘Don’ts’ if you want to be heard.
3 Reasons Why No One Hears Us
Here are 3 mistakes most of us make that silences our voice immediately.
- We try to speak to everyone, so we end up speaking to no one
- We don’t REALLY know what we want to say, so we sound vague and repetitive. That’s an immediate turn-off
- We confuse authenticity with writing/speaking without reflecting, so we bore the audience with our longwinded rant and irrelevant content.
I could go on, but you get the basic trend! To overcome the problem of not being heard, we have to be ready to make an important shift.
Most of the problems we encounter when we communicate arise because we are over-focused on ourselves, particularly on our performance and image – how we stand, how we move our body, whether we come across as confident, whether we make enough eye contact, etc. We spend far too much time assessing ourselves from an external perspective that we are neither present in ourselves nor are we conscious of how the audience is engaging with us.
The shift comes when we stop over-focusing on ourselves. Instead, we need to focus on our audience. If we want to be heard, we need to focus on making it easier for our audience to hear us.
Make it Easier for the Audience to Hear Us
How do we make it easier for the audience to hear us?
We have to be willing to change the way we communicate – and not just reach for another glitzy gimmick. We have to see successful communication as a dialogue with the audience in which both sides are engaged in an active exchange.
Here are 3 very simple steps that will make that shift a whole lot easier and more effective!
- Be brief! The less you say, the more your audience can hear. Always be ready to condense and shorten what you think you need to say
- Simplify what you say! Once you’ve shortened it, distil your ideas into a clear, simple message. If you struggle to simplify what you say, you don’t really understand it.
- Personalise it! Communicate in your own unique voice – it makes is much easier to listen to and remember what you say
Instead of sinking into oblivion, you want to be heard. To make that shift happen you have to begin and the best time to begin is now.
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How to Pitch? The #1 Strategy for Success
How to Pitch?
The #1 strategy for success is simple and very effective. Make you Audience Care.
What’s Wrong with the Pitch?
How many pitches have you heard/read in the last six months? How many of those do you remember?
One? Two? None? Why so few, if even any? What was wrong with the pitch?
This is the question that kicked off our workshop recently on how to move beyond the standard ‘pitch’ and engage your audience.
According to the participants, here’s what was wrong with the standard pitch and needed fixing. Almost all the pitches were too long, complex, confusing, jargon-filled, boring, predictable, general, self-promotional … They all agreed that they were completely indifferent to what was being pitched because it didn’t matter to them.
How to pitch?
We could answer the question, How to Pitch?, with a quick cheat-sheet that addresses some of the above issues, e.g. boring, confusing, etc. It’s been done – hundreds of times. It’s time to stop pruning the leaves and do a root and branch job that will not only make real improvements, but will also create a pitch template. To get to that place where your audience cares, let’s start with with a simple and effective strategy to improve a ‘bad’ pitch.
To make your audience care about your pitch it has to be engaging for them. And the way to engage your audience is to make your pitch about THEM – not you, as I’ve already talked about. It’s simple and here’s how you do that.
Your Pitch Should be a Dialogue
The answer the question, How to Pitch?, is to make your pitch a dialogue between you and your audience – instead of the conventional monologue-pitch. Forget the sales pitch! It repels an audience because they’ve heard it before and they’re looking for an alternative to the sales pitch, as I pointed out here.
Here’s an example of the typical monologue-pitch. It start something like this: “Hi, I’m Jack/Jill. I’m a Business Consultant/Financial Advisor/ Life Coach … with 5/6/7/ years experience…
And the monologue continues by being way too general and supplying irrelevant details about you and your service or product.
The Golden Rule: The simplest way to create a dialogue with the people you want to reach is to talk to them about what they care about – themselves!
Start with the audience not with you. Let them know you know who they are, what they struggle with, what their goals are and how you are going to help them solve that problem/reach that goal. The rules for a successful pitch apply to all forms of audience interaction, from in- house to virtual presentations – it’s about creating a relationship, not a sales opportunity. My advice about making presentations interactive also applies to your pitch.
The #1 Strategy
The #1 strategy for a successful pitch is have them respond 3 times with “Yes!”.
The beginning of any successful conversation is to make it easy for people to know that you are talking to them. So call them by their name! Not their personal first name, but the name they use to define themselves in business. Instead of using a generic term, e.g. business owner, coaches, professionals, working women, etc. name your niche, (one niche per pitch), e.g. career coaches, working women over 40 stuck on the career ladder, service-based micro-business owners, etc.
1. Can they say, “Yes, that’s me!”? If so, you’ve got their attention and they are responding – silently.
But audience attention is a fleeting phenomenon.
You now need to move beyond grabbing their attention to engaging them.
What’s the most effective way to engage your audience?
Describe a challenge they know they have in their own words. Dump the jargon, the hype, the buzz-words. Have you listened to how they describe their problems? Use those words instead of your fancy phrases – if you want your words to resonate. How do they describe the problem of not being able to find enough customers, or the right customers, or to get their offers right, etc.
2. If they can respond to your description with “Yes, that’s my problem right now!”, you’re gaining trust.
Now take it a step further and pull them into a deeper dialogue with you and describe the consequences of these problems, i.e. where it hurts exactly. Have they cash-flow issues because they can’t find enough clients, or is their business stagnating because they don’t have a business plan, etc.?
3. Can they respond to your description with, “Yes, that’s what this problem is costing me!”? If so, you have engaged them in your pitch because they can easily recognise themselves in it.
Can you now provide them with a way forward?
Once you have elicited “Yes!” three times from your audience, it’s now time to go for the bonus “Yes!”. That will make them want to know more about you and connect with you post-pitch.
For example, you have developed a state-of-the-art data base system or a new app, etc., that you know could solve the challenges they face right now. Avoid a self-promotional monologue about your product here. No one (except you) is interested in the technical specifics right now. Tell them instead how your system/app will solve THEIR problem, e.g. increase sales, make it easier to find better clients, improve automation efficiency by 50%, etc.
If they can say, “Yes, I want to hear more about that!”, your made that post-pitch connection.
And when they follow up, remember it’s because you talked to them about what matters to them in a way that showed them tht you know their problems and you can provide them with the next step. Build on that.
Don’t ruin it now by turning the conversation into a monologue!
A Final Word on How to Pitch
Times are changing. Your pitch is also part of your message, your tagline, your website headline, your sales letter introduction, your profile text, etc. It’s on all your social media content. it’s an important work-in-progress until you get it right.
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