Speaking, Retention, and the Audience Experience

audience3

Your audience will only remember a small percentage of what you say. Some studies suggest it will be less than 20%.

Fact.

Other studies suggest that the average adult attention span is now about 8 seconds.

Bummer.

So what do you do about it? Focus on all three aspects of the audience experience:

1. Make sure you prepare your content so that the most important messages are clear. They won’t remember everything, so make sure you know what you want and need them to remember.

2. Make sure your slides are simple, clear, consistent, and reinforce those same key messages.

3. Make sure your delivery is easy to digest, and that you are using techniques that will help your audience focus on those same key messages.

If any aspect of the audience experience makes it hard to retain the key information, then retention will drop. Audience retention is hard to accomplish. To achieve it, you must identify what is most important and then make sure you are reinforcing those key messages in every possible way.

Sounds obvious, right? Now think about how often you listen to someone who has a crystal clear message, AND has simple and clear slides, AND has great delivery? Let me answer that for you… not that many.

It is harder than it sounds, and it takes some work.

But if you get it done, you will stand out amidst the crowd, your message will resonate and you will have competitive advantage.

Have a great day.

At The Latimer Group, our individual Coaching services are highly customized and designed to help you achieve your specific goals. Typical engagements focus on developing skill sets in Leadership Communications, Public Speaking, and Executive-Level Business Presentations. To learn more, e-mail us at info@TheLatimerGroup.com

Photo by thinkmedialabs used under the following license.

Comments

One response to “Speaking, Retention, and the Audience Experience”

  1. […] you are presenting or leading a meeting, and you are able to get to the point, and make it valuable and simple and clear, your audience is […]

Dean Brenner

A book about change

The Latimer Group’s CEO Dean Brenner is a noted keynote speaker and author on the subject of persuasive communication. He has written three books, including Persuaded, in which he details how communication can transform organizations into highly effective, creative, transparent environments that succeed at every level.