Here's How You Get People To Pay Attention
The world is noisy. There are almost 8 billion people on this planet, all of them with opinions. What’s more, a good chunk of the population has the means to share those opinions whenever anytime and anywhere. Each day — each minute — worthy ideas get lost in the din.
If you want your voice to stand out, you need to know something that most of those 8 billion people don’t.
Here it is: people pay attention to things they can feel and things they can spend.
When you have an idea, product or service, its value is obvious to you. You know how it could make people’s lives better. But to people who don’t have your knowledge and perspective, it’s just more noise.
That’s why you need to make it easy for your audience to understand your message, and easy for them to say yes. Break it down. Show them how you can give them what they they really want for themselves - how you can contribute to their Bottom Line.
Think about what you have to offer. Ask yourself, “why does it matter to my audience?” Keep asking this question until you get to either (a) something they can feel or (b) something they can spend.
Something they can feel
You may have heard the saying “People don’t buy products, they buy feelings.” That’s why marketing is a trillion-dollar industry. Things don’t speak for themselves.
So if you want people to pay attention, show them how you can make them feel.
People run marathons because they crave the runner’s high and the pride of a huge accomplishment. They keep their grandmother’s gaudy china dishes because they want to feel connected to the past. They attend protest rallies in the freezing rain because it gives them a sense of control in the face of injustice. The Emotional Bottom Line is a force to be reckoned with. Powerful enough to drive plenty of irrational decisions, but also a potent trigger for making positive change. Ignore it at your peril.
Something they can spend
You don’t always have to drill right down to the Emotional Bottom Line. Sometimes there’s a shortcut: the Economic Bottom Line. In other words, things you can spend.
You can spend money, and you can spend time - and almost everyone feels like they don’t have enough of either. If you can show your audience how you help them have more of either one, they’ll be lining up for you.
Unlike feelings, money and time aren’t ends in themselves. Money, for example, is just a means to greater feelings of security, status or comfort. It helps you have rewarding experiences and gives you hope for your children’s future. Likewise, time gives you the space for fun, relaxation and love. But both of these ideas are so powerful in our culture that they serve as a substitute for feelings. Different people have different relationships with time and money, but in just about every case the emotional connection is strong.
What does this mean for you? It means that if you can show people how you help them have more money or more time (or both), they’ll make their own emotional connections. It’s easy to say yes to time and money.
Make this work for you
Any time you’re creating a speech, a presentation or an elevator pitch, keep asking yourself “why does that matter?” until you get down to your audience’s bottom line. Better yet, get someone else to pose the question, hold you accountable and give you feedback. We tend to get lazy about this question and to assume that the audience will make the same connections that we do. Do the work. Then, notice the change in how others respond to you.
One final note: you may have noticed that I say “show them” and not “tell them.” Is that intentional? %$&# yes, it is. The difference between “showing” and “telling” (and why it matters so much) will be part of an upcoming blog post. Subscribe to the Stage Light Communications newsletter if you want it delivered to your inbox!
Need a little help figuring out your audience’s Bottom Line? That’s why we’re here! Talk to us about whether our Perfect Pitch program (or another Stage Light program) would be a good fit.
Photo Credit: Analia Baggiano