Considering the Audience

The example of the failed presentation due to not relating the content to the reality of the audience is only one of many instances where Edward displays deliberate efforts to consider who the audience are and what their needs and reactions might be. The size of the audience is something he evaluates carefully, and he mentioned it a total of ten times during the interview. The size of the audience will determine the venue, his body language, the length of his talk, who he invites as a guest speaker, the use of music and visuals. Edward also spends considerable time determining the needs of the audience, not just what they would like to know about him and the company, but deeper issues such as what they need to hear to elate them, make them enjoy the presentation and fill them with the hope of a better future with the company. He says:

You must research who you’re talking to. I would never talk to an audience that I don’t know who they are. Let’s just say you go into a room, and there’s a hundred people there. Who are they? Why are they there? Did they pay? Did they not? Is it a charity? Is it a … what? What is it? You must know everything, otherwise you’re dead.

Edward considers it a successful talk if he manages to touch the audience with his words, if he makes them think, feel, hope and envision a better tomorrow. He likes to engage their imagination, but not necessarily involve them in a direct conversation or dialogue. Such involvement in most of his presentations is impossible, as he is talking to large audiences in a theatre, so there is very little possibility for interaction apart from

asking them to raise their hands to a question or hoping that they will come to him after the presentation to discuss issues in depth. For less formal presentations with a small audience that take place in people’s homes or cafés, Edward opts for a more conversational style to establish a personal bond with the possible recruits which can later be turned into a working, professional relationship. In such an informal setting, the bond can be created by switching to roles, and listening to the audience, instead of presenting in the classic meaning of the word: “I really enjoyed just sitting down one-on-one in a café or in their house and having coffee or having a soup and talk about their garden or flowers, whatever they like, and after one hour conversation they say ok, they’re in the business!”

In most presentations, even the more formal ones, Edward deliberately avoids talking about the business details directly, maintaining:

People like to buy things, like to decide on things, but they don’t like to be sold and obviously those people are happy to have you for coffee and talk about things, and if you’re good company, talk about many different topics, and then obviously help them to talk, listen to them attentively … this is what I have noticed over the years, that they feel good in your company, they feel that they can talk to you and you listen, they want to meet you again and meeting me again means doing the business together (smiles) … I noticed that if they kind of like me, they get to like me, get to like my person, my style, my tone of voice, maybe they will not remember what I was actually saying, but they will say to themselves that yeah, seems good, nice guy, why not meet again.

No problem. So I didn’t want to explain to them what I was trying to sell, but talking about a topic, I was trying to sell myself.

This setting up of a personal relationship seems to be a central concern for Edward and the reason why he prefers holding what he calls motivational seminars rather than classic business presentations. He uses the seminars with large audiences to entice people into joining the network, whereas the business talks are tailored for somewhat smaller audiences and are intended to explain the financial details of setting up and developing a network of distributors.

In the business presentations, we had to give the exact numbers, that this is the way how to earn money, that they had to recruit this many people and if they buy this many products, this is how much they will earn.

Yet, even in these talks Edward says that usually he prefers to give the detailed numbers out as handouts for the audience to read at home, while at the presentation he outlines the essence of the strategy of building the network. He explains:

I would print it [the financial information] out and I would say that I have made a copy or listing of the numbers which I will give you at the end. Better than we have this much money in the bank…

This avoidance of discussing the details of earnings, and preference of motivational topics could possibly lead to insights into the communicative purpose of the presentations and will be discussed more specifically later on.

Another proof of Edward’s consideration of the audience and their needs can be seen in his efforts to make his presentations easy to copy. Since many of the members of the audience will join his network and will in turn need to recruit agents of their own through the same type of presentation, Edward makes sure that he also serves as an example of how to conduct a presentation in this situation. He makes a conscious effort to make his presentation easy for the audience to replicate. Apart from using his presentation as an example, he also uses himself as an example. One of his major aims is to show the audience that anyone can present and succeed in the company, that he is not at all different. In emphasising that he is just like them, Edward accomplishes two important goals at the same time: first, he bonds with the audience, by making them relate to him and identify with him; second, he provides them with the tools to hold successful presentations of their own.