Small Business Presentaions
Strategies for Defining Your Audience

Strategies for Defining Your Audience

• What is the size of the group? The number of people in your audience will affect your delivery style, the way you present visuals, the number and type of handouts, and the level of audience interaction.
• What is the age distribution of the audience? This is especially important if the audience is primarily made up of the very young or the very old. And age can make a difference in terms of reference points. For example, baby boomers will identify with references to the Vietnam War or Woodstock while their parents will relate to references to the Korean War or Frank Sinatra.
• Is the audience mostly men, mostly women, or mixed? Though, in many cases, your content and delivery would be the same with either sex, there may be nuances that are more suitable for one group or the other. And you may have to work especially hard on your delivery style and your choice of words if your audience is made up entirely of the opposite sex.
• How do audience members rank within their organization? In relation to your position? This is an especially important question when addressing members of a hierarchical organization like a corporation, university, board of directors, or committee. If you are addressing a group of your superiors, you may need to work on building your confidence. But if you are speaking to people in lower ranks, you may have to guard against sounding condescending or arrogant.
• Why are people attending your presentation? Are they captives, socially or financially motivated, committed, or pragmatists?
• How familiar are audience members with your topic? If your subject is computer applications for the garden center and nursery trades, for example, it would be helpful to know what percentage of your audience uses computers already and at what level of sophistication. You would start from a different point of view for a group of novices than you would for a group in which 90 percent of the nursery managers used computers for inventory and irrigation control, pesticide applications, and invoicing.
• What is the level of education of audience members? Your delivery will be markedly different for an audience made up of MBAs or pHs than for an audience made up of artists, engineers, or people who have only completed high school.
• What kind of reaction to your message can you expect? Upon hearing your announcement of downsizing plans, an audience whose jobs are secure will have a reaction dramatically different from one whose jobs are at risk. Residents at a town meeting are likely to react more enthusiastically to a presentation on plans to build a recreation center for their children than they are to one on plans to build a quarry.

The more you know about your audience's value systems, beliefs, experiences, and needs, along with demographic factors like age, economic status, education, and age, the better able you will be to construct a successful presentation.

What's In It for Me?
It's a basic fact that audiences want and expect presenters to succeed, unless you are an ogre and they know it. Along with their expectation of your success lies another basic fact. It doesn't matter how generous, caring, giving, altruistic, or even saintly your audience members may be, chances are the question on their minds as they walk into your presentation is, "What's in it for me?" It's human nature.

The "What's in it for me?" factor is so pronounced and widespread, it has its own acronym: WIIFM. By keeping in mind your audience's WIIFM needs, especially as you answer the questions in the "define your audience" checklist, you improve your chances of making a winning presentation.

There has been much written about the psychological makeup of motivated individuals and categorizing them according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a complicated and highly academic description of levels of needs (described as basic, safety, belonging, ego-status, and self-actualization) on which a presenter might define the audience. The belief is that people must satisfy one level of need before going on to the next one.

There are drawbacks to using Maslow's descriptions, however. Because individuals are so complex, it's nearly impossible to categorize an entire audience based on rank or level of achievement, short of a personal interview for each member. And in this age of restructuring and automation, those considered to have achieved the ego-status or self-actualization levels may be striving once again to meet their safety needs. So, rather than getting bogged down in trying to determine where to categorize your audience according to Maslow's chart, it might be better to ask some basic questions, gather as much information as you can, and then go with your instincts.