Take The Stairs IMPACT

During graduate school at the University of Denver I learned about an orchestra conductor who could actually influence the audience’s experience by changing the pacing of the bass instruments during the performance.

For example, if he wanted the audience to feel excited he would speed up the bass line and increase the volume of the whole orchestra. This mechanical change in the delivery would actually cause a physiological change in the audience members such as increased heart rates, inching forward in their seats, and sweating palms. Likewise, if he wanted the audience to feel anxiety he would keep the bass line fast but would lower the volume of the other instruments.

Contrarily, a slow rate and low volume would be used to generate soft feelings such as sadness or empathy.

In this way the conductor was able to make it so the attendees were not only spectators, but he empowered them to be actual participants in the performance!

Why is this so important? It’s important because selling is simply transference of feelings. And master presenters who learn to influence their audience’s feelings will have a better chance of getting them to understand a product or message.

As a speaker or a salesperson, think for a moment about just how valuable would it be to actually be able to influence and direct people’s emotions. It’s an encouraging thought.

What’s also encouraging is that with the ever shrinking attention span of the average adult, most of us are losing sales because of our inability to deliver a presentation that creates substantial feeling.

The diagram shown here is what I like to call “The Attention E.K.G.” It functions much like a regular E.K.G. but the only difference is that the x-axis is time and the y-axis is attention.

For most presenters the height of your audience’s attention is during the moment you start talking and then as time goes on the attention naturally declines. Be careful not to confuse attention with interest, which is their “willingness to buy from you or accept the ideas you are presenting.” But people are most attentive at the very first moment you open your mouth and then after that it’s your job to find ways to keep their attention.

What great presenters do is find a way to vary the mechanics of their delivery in order to recall the attention of their audience at regular intervals whereas a graphic depiction of their presentation would look more like an E.K.G. as shown below.

Do you keep people awake, alert, and emotionally attached during your whole presentation or are there times when you feel like you are starting to lose them? As the presenter it’s your job to find ways to keep your prospects engaged.

How do we do that? What does it mean to change the pattern of our delivery? And which delivery generates which feelings? The answer to all of these questions lies in our acronym and metaphor A.L.I.V.E. Stay tuned for each of the 5 ground breaking techniques that master presenters use to generate emotional bonds that move people to action.

Become a Master Presenter:
Influencing an audience of 1 or 1000 (CD set)

Learn to be funny:
How to be funny to make more money (book)

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See you in the stairwell,

Rory Vaden
Take the stairs – Success means doing what others won’t.