If you don’t connect, you’re wasting your time

If you want good results from your presentation, connecting with your audience needs to be a primary goal. For sure you want to be clear on what point you want to make. But connecting is equally important. If you don’t connect, they won’t listen–which means you’re wasting your time.

Here are the 2 avenues to connecting:
1. Connecting as fellow human beings and
2. Being sure your content is relevant and conversational.

I’ll repeat, if all you have is a clear vision of what you want to tell them, without the connecting aspect, you’re wasting your time.

1. Connecting as a fellow human means just talking to them, looking at them as you talk–just as you would one-on-one, and being conversational. It’s hard to connect when you’re mentally glued to your notes or to a screen. Be there and care about sharing this information and you’ll be connecting. Talk with them not at them.

And to help you get started on the right foot, don’t start talking just because you think they expect it. Don’t start until you are ready–which will help you feel in control

2. To make sure your content is also connecting you to them learn as much about them as you can – their jobs and their lives – so you can incorporate that into your content.  It will help guide your choice of examples and analogies, so you can tie those to what matters to them. Clearly you think they should know this information; it’s your job to help them feel that way too by making all your info relevant to them.

Connecting with your audience is your best shot at having them listen, get their buy-in, and follow through. And it’s way more fun for you, too.