7 Keys to Make Your Audience Like, Know and Trust You in Less Than 60 Seconds

Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 1:19 pm

Let’s face it.

It is really scary to meet your audience for the first time and get them to listen to you. If you are going to be selling them something at the end of it, that is pure “wet the pants” experience.

How do I know that?

Well, for a couple of months, I had been doing just that as a job! I was asked to sell training programs from the stage that I had no right to sell in the first place. It was all because the guru who was teaching the course felt that it would leverage their time to let someone else do it!

But guess what… the newspaper clearly shows their face and even writes:

“Give us 3 hours and <insert name of guru> will teach you how to <insert money making technique>”

I cut my teeth in front of an audience who feels they had been taken for a ride, expecting to listen to the guru but instead sees this young punk teaching them how to earn money!

Fortunately I spent almost $15,000 and learnt this technique that not only got the audience to know like and trust me in 60 secs, they even bought the $1500 course that I was promoting at the end of the seminar!

Haha!!!

Wanna hear the irony?

I even out-sold the guru promoting his own course… How’s that?

Let me share with you the $15k template in very easy to use bullet points

Centering
Connect
Hook
Introduce self
Appreciate
Credibility
Buy in

Let me help you remember these points yeah?

Imagine that you are now in a basketball arena, it is dark, quiet, and every step you make echoes through the entire stadium.

You walk gingerly to the CENTRE of the court and lo and behold, you see a socket.

Hmmmm…

Miraculously, you notice that in the corner of your eye, there is a shiny gleaming silver plug that just calls out to you.

Well duh…. of course the plug was meant to CONNECT to this socket.

You pull the plug towards the socket, heaving and huffing, wondering why it is soooo tight and what in the world is at the other end of it. The wire simply leads of into darkness and nothingness.

Well here goes.

You push in the plug. Chuuup. It fits nicely, like pushing your foot into your favourite shoe.

Then suddenly…

There is strange clanging sound from the end of the wire that connects to the plug. This sound comes from within the darkness that the wire leads into.

Seems to sound louder and louder though…

Swish!

A massive HOOK appears out of nowhere and drags you by your foot.

You swing like a 30m golf club in Tiger Woods hands and for that split second… suspend in mid air… right at the top of the stadium…

At this moment, the stadium lights flood the place and stings your eyes.Your eyebrows tighten as the muscles strain to accomodate the intensity of stadium strength ceiling lights.

Now you are suspended in mid air… upside down… uh oh… and you see a stadium of people staring straight at you. Unblinking. Mouth half open.

You clear your throat… Time to INTRODUCE yourself…

“Ahem…. Hi guys… I’m…..”

Loud applause fills the stadium and everyone stands and thanks you for the immense entertainment you’ve just provided them. They show all the APPRECIATION with the cheers, applause and smiles.

Then this really weird thing happened.

Each and everyone of them… all at the same time… reached into their pocket, pulled out their wallet, and took out their CREDIBILITY card.

The crowd BELLOWED in unison….

“I want to BUY him! I want to BUY him! I want to BUY him!”

That’s when you snap out from your nap…. realising that you had been struggling to listen to this droid drone on at the stage for the past 30 mins….

Cool…

Now that you have learnt the link method…lets get into the speaking techique side of things yeah?

Centering

Guess which is the most nerve wrecking segment of the presentation?

The first 10 secs!

Guess which part of the presentation is your audience most sceptical of you?

The first 10 secs!

Not a good combination huh?

Here is what you need to do:

It starts when you hear your name called out or when you know you are next to speak. There must be some form of self talk that empowers you to speak confidently. In my HighTrustSpeaking course, I teach something called it the confidence trigger. Using NLP and self hypnosis, you can create a powerful “anchor” that you can fire off to access any emotional state you want!

But in this article, let me just keep it simple for you. You can still achieve a similar level of peak performance state just with self talk alone.

After you use the empowering self talk, next comes the walk up to the front.

Don’t run up, don’t trudge up. Just walk briskly and confidently up. Your nervous energy is just waiting to burst at this point.

Control!!!

Stand at the front. Feet slightly apart. Shoulders relaxed. Hands beside you. NOT in your pocket… Not in front of you… covering the precious parts… Beside you.

Centre yourself. There you go. The more centred you feel, the more confident you get. The more confident you get, the MORE centred you feel. And just that alone, would easily get you into the peak speaking state.

Connect

This is simple.

Just look at the audience at this point. Scan from left to right, with a smile on your face please… Unless of course you are about to deliver harsh bad news… then if you wore that grin, heh… that’ll be fun huh? Imagine what they will do to the messenger.

You want them to feel that you are connecting with them. And that you feel what they are feeling. For those who did not want to be here, you understand. For those who can’t wait to hear what you have to say, you reflect the enthusiasm.

Hook

Your first line should never, never, never be…

“Good morning/ afternoon/ evening”

They really don’t give a crap actually.

Now if you are an adored guru of your field, then even starting with a lame joke makes your audience like you. And you really don’t have to read this at all.

But if you are like the majority of presenters who have to really, and I mean really buy audience over first, then digest this.

The first thing that comes out from your mouth must engage them.

You can use one of these proven to work tools:

1) Enrolling questions

These are questions that makes the audience respond with a yes or no. Usually, you need to let them know that you ask these questions to find out some information before proceeding.

Eg: “How many of you had read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell before?”

2) CSI opening

If you ever watched an episode of CSI, then you may have a clue of what I mean here. You know how the show starts, 30 seconds into the show… and you still have no clue what is happening? Then BAM! Ahh… Now you know what you are in for for the next 60 mins of the show.

Hey, to keep it simple, just start with a story. Can’t go wrong with that.

3) Dramemo

What does “Drama” plus “Demo” get you? “DRAMEMO”!

All you need is a dramatic demonstration to kick start the presentation.

Eg: Clap your hands intermittently, and at the 4^th clap onwards… say this: “Everytime I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.”

Introduce yourself

Here is where you earn the right to get people to listen to you. You need to talk about your credentials, experience, especially your hero’s journey story.

I wished I could go in depth here. But this would become a 5000 word essay and no one would finish reading this.

In High Trust Speaking workshop, I really focus on this. When you get your “earn the right” segment right, your audience would practically be eating out of your hands for the rest of the talk. If you omit this part, DOOM! Was that subtle enough?

Appreciate Others

This is something that all presenters need to learn more of. We are really sick and tired of those trainers and presenters who think they are sages on the stage.

Your audience loves to be appreciated. In fact, you can even go on to appreciate whoever you feel deserves it. The organisers, your mentor, etc. The only limit is that the person you are showing appreciation for must be present at the presentation!

Credibility

Here you need to sell the heck out of yourself without sounding like a jerk. Here’s how.

First, you tell them all your achievements.

Next you tell them it was not always like this.

Finally, you tell them the story that was the turning point for you.

Buy In

Here is the final component to the introduction segment to your entire talk/ presentation.

Your audience will want to know what is in it for them to listen to the entire duration of your talk. Here you must forecast for them the parts to your talk in a way that would entice them to pay attention.

In this segment, your ability to use emotional trigger sentences and covert hypnosis skills would be VERY useful. You can learn more about convert persuasion and hypnosis with ethics from my other 100+ articles on the subject.

Well that is it! The overview of the “7 Keys to Make Your Audience Like, Know and Trust You in Less Than 60 Seconds” is laid out here for you to digest!

My participants and attendees spent hundreds over dollars to hone and perfect each and every key to make every presentation a High Trust one.

Then, your listener/ audience/ trainees would be motivated into action, transform their beliefs or take you as their chosen leader.

Imagine what your life would be like if you knew exactly how to harness this power for good. Imagine what it would be like if people began to really listen to what you have to say. And imagine what it would feel like to have your reputation spread like an opened bottle of perfume, simply because you chose to be a High Trust Speaker. If you could, wouldn’t you?