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  How much do you think your clients know about you? How much do you know about them?   Do you know if they have families? Where they live? Where they went to school? What other products they buy?   If your answer is no, then the real question is: WHY NOT!?   True communication means putting the attention on the audience. Yet so many of us worry solely about ourselves. ie: How do I sound? What words should I use? Where do I look? How’s my inflection?   These are all important points to focus on, but in order to truly communicate with substance, you need to also put attention and focus on the other person.   How can you do that when you don’t even really know who you’re addressing?   That’s why you need to do research on your audience! Find out what they care about, what’s going to resonate with them, and what they need.     Knowing your audience better helps you figure out what content and messages people care about and gives you clues to the appropriate tone and voice for your …

What if I told you the sky was green? Would you believe me?  Well according to a Yale study,  if you heard that the sky was green over and over again, you’d start to believe it. That’s because of something called the “Illusory truth effect.” It’s a glitch in our brain that equates repetition and familiarity, with truth. The more we hear the same words and ideas repeated, the more we’ll remember them and believe them to be fact. Think of these claims:   Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis Napoleon Bonaparte was short The Great Wall of China is visible from space Being out in the rain will make you catch a cold None of those are actually true! However we’ve heard many of them so often that our brains interpret the familiarity of the statements, as truth. No matter what we hear repeated multiple times, our brain says “Yep that must be a fact!” That’s great when it comes to repeating your message, but a disaster when it comes to repeating anything negative! Let’s take the …

It’s a big fear for most people and most likely will happen to you at one point. You’ll be giving a presentation in front of a large crowd, or speaking to an important client, or in a meeting with your boss, and you’ll get asked a question where you don’t know the answer. What do you do?  Do you try to come up with a credible sounding sentence? Honestly and simply say “I don’t know”?  Great communicators do neither. Instead an expert communicator: Understands it’s OK to not have all the answers Knows the importance of bringing in their message Sees questions as opportunities Most of us fear we’ll look inexperienced and weak if we don’t have all the answers. In fact, the opposite can be true! Admitting you don’t know everything can make you more trustworthy, open up conversations, and allow for collaboration.  But great communicators know, simply saying “I don’t know” isn’t an option.  Instead here’s how an expert communicator handles a question they don’t know the answer to: They …

Would you rather face an easy question or a tough question? Let me guess which one you’d choose.  However, as a Media Trainer and Presentation Coach, I’d choose the tough question. Every time. That’s because an easy question can often get you into trouble fast. Here’s why. Imagine you’re about to be hit with some questions from a client. You’re a little nervous and you’re not sure what you’re going to be asked. Then the first question is a breeze. It’s a topic you know about and a question you can easily answer. What happens? Your brain says, “Hey I’ve got this! I know this! Now …. let me show you how much I know!” And there-in lies the problem. When you’re faced with questions on a topic you truly know … it’s human nature to try to prove your knowledge. Plus if it’s a topic you enjoy talking about, you’re more likely to expound and lose track of your answer in the moment. Think about it, if you’re asked to talk about a subject you really know a lot about, like your family, where do …

A television news director once gave me a valuable piece of advice. He said, “Viewers are like cats. You have to dangle something in front of them to keep them focused.” What he meant was, you always need to work to keep your audience ’s attention. Unfortunately you can’t dangle shiny keys in front of clients to get them to focus. Instead, you can do this one crucial trick: Jolt so they don’t bolt. That means as attention starts to wane, you “ jolt ” the audience, in regular intervals, as you speak. A jolt can mean:  Telling a story  Ask a question  Change the tone of your voice  Remind the audience why what you’re saying should matter to them  Switch Speakers Imagine audience attention is like a balloon you want to keep up in the air. If you leave the balloon alone it will silently fall to the ground. But if you focus on keeping the balloon in the air, as it starts to fall you can bump it back up again. Don’t wait until you see that your audience has figuratively fallen to the ground …