How To Wake Up Your Audience At Your Next Networking Session.

Article contributed by Sean DSouza.

Have you ever pondered about this question when standing up at your BNI networking session?
What causes your fellow networkers to listen to what you have to say? Do they sit up with rapt attention or do they simply keep eating their breakfast and sipping their now rapidly cooling coffees? The difference between them paying attention and continuing to be lost in their own dreamland totally depends on you. And how you understand the brain.

And the brain works best in two direct situations.
Situation 1: Change.
Situation 2: Problem.

On a normal day, you’d stand up and give your one minute speech. But what if you decided to squat on the floor instead? What if you decided to tape your mouth instead? What if you decided to use a bunch of cue cards like the famous Bob Dylan video? Instantly you’ve got the audience’s attention. It doesn’t matter what they were doing when you stood up, the ‘change’ in the routine got their attention.

So yeah, think about it for a second. How do you create change?

Now you’ve got their attention, it’s time to keep their attention.
Anyone can get attention by doing something different. But you sure as heck can’t keep their attention for too long if all you’ve got is a gimmick. What does keep the attention going is reverting to the “problem’. If all you do is simply tell them about how your company does this and that, then the audience quickly reverts back to their coffee and breakfast. And because you’re so keen on whatever it is you’re saying, you don’t notice that they’ve zoned off.

But if you bring up a problem, you’ve created continuous attention.
e.g. If you fix computers. And you talk about how a virus attacks the system, you’ll get and keep their attention.
e.g. If you sell houses, and you talk about how to spot a crappy house from a mile off, you’ll get and keep their attention.
e.g. If you sell time management, and you talk about the biggest reason why time management fails…then ditto.

The point is not to be lazy
Laziness is when you simply stand up, and rattle off what you do, and what you do, and what you do. And blah, blah, blah. That’s just boring. That ‘what you do’ commentary that you’re so used to giving is just putting your audience to sleep. Instead see if you can bring in the two factors, namely ‘change’ and ‘problems’. And then watch as your audience’s eyes grow wide.

Now you’ve got their attention.
And you’re keeping their attention.
And that’s what your networking one-minuter should be all about.

Waking up an audience is easy. Try it. It works.

First put in a factor of change. Then a factor of the problem. And then end with your company name and the referral you’d like to receive. And watch the difference in the response. 🙂

Sean D’Souza is the author of The Brain Audit. You can read more about him (and read the first chapter free) at http://www.sevenredbags.com

P.S. The winner of last week’s “The Brain Audit” giveaway is Angela Murray. Angela, please get in touch to get your copy.