Innovative Presentations For Dummies

Chapter 4

Analyzing and Focusing on Your Audience

In This Chapter

Getting to know your audience

Deciding how to approach the different personality types

Presenting to a mixed group of personalities

Surely you’ve met and, unfortunately, experienced these people many times: The monologue super-talkers who seldom, if ever, listen. They know very little about you, your life, and situation, but they flood you with information about themselves as if the world revolved around them — and as if you truly cared to listen to everything they had to say. They give you all sorts of unsolicited advice, little of which is useful or appreciated by you, and they have an opinion about everything that they expect you to be interested in and agree with. They don’t care to hear your thoughts or feelings or ask questions to get to know you better, even though you have shown interest in learning about them. They talk at you, not with you. There’s no connection or relationship with them. You know the people we’re describing.

Some presenters act the same way. They give canned presentations or speeches that have little real value to an audience because they haven’t invested time to understand what that group ...