When we discuss the topic of presentation or workshop preparation the first statement that comes to mind is “everything matters”. That may seem like a broad statement but it’s true. We must take a lot of things into consideration, especially who we're talking to.
Know Your Audience
Let’s start with the basics. Who is your audience or the target of this presentation? Too many times we overlook vital details of the target audience profile. Demographics are important. Age, income, geographic location, and marital status is a good base line to begin with but does not include all of the data we need.
Importance of Age
Age of course can be a very compelling factor. We know that a 55-year-old is going to have a different take on any given topic than a 21-year-old, merely by the fact that they have more life experience. But also their needs and wants can be diametrically different as well. One is just beginning the journey to life’s end and the other is most likely about half way.
Wealth Changes Strategies
Income or socioeconomic profiles can be a factor as well. There is a statement that rings true when we start to profile a target audience by this data point: "You can’t take wall street to main street and you can’t take main street to wall street." Income, asset base, lifestyle is all a factor. You will want to connect with them in a way that makes sense and is logical. You wouldn’t want to talk about lump sum investment concepts with individuals that may be entirely dependent on government benefits like social security.
By comparison, discussing social security maximization with an individual that has a high net worth or has a surplus of disposable income will not be of significant interest. They probably aren’t as concerned since they will most likely not be in the position where they are entirely dependent on those benefits. It can be a side topic or an ad-in, but it wouldn’t make sense to make it the headliner for that audience.
Psychographics
Preparing prospecting presentations for workshops and seminars should have a basis of demographic data, but if we don’t consider other vital details such as psychographic data, we could potentially be appealing to only a small selection of the interest points of these individuals. Psychographics are not just human statistics like demographics, instead they are lifestyle data. Psychographics are the activities, interests, and opinions of individuals.
Why would this matter? An individual's interests might be family, community, etc... or it might not. Their opinions about the future are very important. For example, if they don’t have the opinion that taxes will be higher in the future, do you think the topic “tax free retirement” would have much appeal? Probably not. In that context, if they have the opinion that the stock market is going to just continue to climb and make huge gains, do you think the topic of risk avoidance or safety of principal would have much appeal? Probably not. So by this example we see that knowing your target audience is a major part of presentation preparation.
Present for All in Attendance
To put this in simple terms, we must have a presentation that has many topics, positioned in various ways as to appeal to as many members of the audience as possible. You must speak to everyone and not just a few. This is sometimes referred to as having as many hooks in the water as possible. This will prevent us from boxing ourselves in on a specific topic and making it a hit or miss effort.
Each person is going to have concerns, fears and anxiety about various topics or issues, but human statistics and lifestyle data tells us that they may be similar, but they will not be the same. We don’t always know what the hot button topic is or if it will be for every member of our audience. Therefore, we must cover a variety of topics positioned in unique ways based on demographic and psychographic data in order to speak to everyone. Otherwise, we only connect with a few and limit our opportunity due to the limited range of information and limited audience connection.
Not everyone at your prospecting events will immediately set an appointment, so what happens to those attendees? Do you have an automatic system like Prospecting 365 that nurtures workshop attendees until they are ready to make financial decisions? Learn how Prospecting 365 can help grow your business.
