I’ve never believed in the old saw, “never ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to” unless you are in a court of law. After all, how else would you ever learn anything? But at some point, it is futile to ask questions when you know the answer is extremely negative. On a taxi cab ride today from an airport in Los Angeles I was subjected to extreme heat (90 degrees plus) with no air-conditioning in the back seat. The driver had air conditioning, but he informed me that he didn’t want to have any contact with passengers in the back to protect his safety, thus the glass protection separating the air-conditioned front seat from the sweltering back seat. To make matters worse, the cab was filled with signs asking passengers not to talk to the driver, as he did not wish to be disturbed. After nearly passing out from the heat, I rolled down the back window, even though the driver admonished me for doing so. At the end of the trip, the driver turned to me and asked,”Sir, was your trip satisfactory?”

Some questions don’t need to be asked when the answser is glaringly obvious and the questioner doesn’t seem to be sincere.

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

How can I increase my sales to the group I am speaking to?

Marketing Director: “Stress benefit, benefits, benefits!

Sales Manager: “Give them an incentive to act today!”

Your Boss: “Tease you audience and tell them they can’t get all of our insights without hiring you.”

You: “I’ve got to be really aggressive here. If I don’t ask, I won’t receive. I’d better push this audience hard.”

***

Your Audience: “The best way to sell us is to NOT sell us. Instead give us information that is so valuable to us that you leave us wanting more. Case studies can be interesting for us and will help you too. Help us so much from the content of your speech that we feel there is no risk buying your product or service because you’ve already delivered value. Give to us freely and you’ll get back in return.  Also, we tend to forget stuff very quickly, so if you have a tip sheet, free report or some other handout with valuable information for us, then we will gladly take it and we might even contact you in the future.”

Much has been written about the excellent James Surowiecki book Wisdom of the Crowds, a look at how markets, in various forms, are routinely better than experts. Zagat has built a whole publishing empire based on this single principle. Index funds routinely beat most mutual funds on Wall Street. And yet, very few people think to apply this principle when it comes to public speaking.

I contend that nearly every aspect of a presentation can and should be subjected to the wisdom of the audience—specifically the speaking audience. But how, as a practical matter, would this be done?

Let’s say you have to give a new sales presentation to 100 prospects on Thursday. Well, on Tuesday, round up five colleagues in your office and give them your presentation. By “give them” I mean stand up and deliver them; don’t give them the text. Afterward, ask questions.

1. What slides does your audience remember? Any slide your audience doesn’t remember, then listen to their wisdom. Your slide is worthless—throw it away.
2. What messages does your audience remember? These messages work, so move them up and expand them in your speech.
3. Did you audience enjoy and remember your introduction where you talked about how happy you were to be there and about the boring history of your company? If not, then get rid of it—the wisdom of the audience has spoken.
4. What details and factoids does the audience remember? Any details or factoids that were in your speech but not remembered need to be either presented in a new and better way, or they should be eliminated from the presentation.
5. Where did you bore your audience? Get rid of it.
6. Where did you confuse your audience? Go into more detail here.
7. What does your audience want more of? Add this.
8. What does your audience feel compelled to do after hearing your speech? If it’s not what you wanted them to do, then you have big trouble.
9. What information would they have needed to hear from you in order to make them take the actions you wanted them to take after hearing your speech? Then add this to the speech.
10. How can any aspect of this presentation be improved? Add accordingly.

In addition to having a small group of colleagues give you feedback on your presentation before you give your actual speech; there is nothing wrong with asking a select number of audience members from your actual speech to give you feedback on these questions too. That way, you can refine your speech to make it better and better, the more often you have to give it to different groups.

It constantly amazes me that large multi-national corporations will spend billions of dollars on marketing research based on questions asked of housewives in malls and unemployed people with nothing better to do than answer a telephone survey. And yet the most valuable form of marketing research is often right in front of an executive and is ready to present itself for free, just for the asking. Isn’t it time you tapped into the wisdom of your audience?

In America, the fastest way to look like a rank amateur is to ask a TV producer what you will be paid for being interviewed. You don’t usually get any fee unless you have been on for free as a guest and now are being promoted to the level of an official commentator or expert for that show or network. But in England, for example, the rules are different. Check out this article for how things are done there.

Let’s face it; you are an enabler—and so am I. When you and I sit through someone’s awful, boring, bullet-point filled PowerPoint Presentation and pretend to pay attention and listen, we are enabling another lousy speaker—and we are encouraging him or her to do the same thing again and again.

This has got to stop!

It’s time to take the 120-90-60 PowerPoint Pledge. Here it is:

If in the first 120 second (2 minutes) of a speech
A presenter shows slides that are 90% text based or more
And looks at his/her slides 60% of the time or more,
Then I walk out the door.

By my own accounting, this would put more than half of the business speakers in the world in front of an empty room—every time. The message would start to sink in.

For the record, I am pro-PowerPoint. I use PowerPoint 3-5 times a week in my presentations and trainings. But the way to use PowerPoint effectively is for the speaker to focus exclusively on audience members, use the slides to show visuals and not text, and to focus on one idea at a time in each slide.

Of course it’s not practical to walk out on your boss’s presentation, your weekly staff meeting, or a presentation from an important partner or client. But let’s face it; we all have opportunities to walk out on certain presentations. For example:

1. Large conferences where there are numerous presenters speaking in different rooms at the same time. Walk out on the ones who break the 120-90-60 PowerPoint Rule.
2. Vendors who are taking up your valuable time. If a vendor breaks the 120-90-60 PowerPoint rule in front of me, I simply stand up and say “thanks, I have an emergency. I would be happy to read any written materials you can leave behind.” And in fact there is an emergency; I want to stop my impulse to strangle the vendor for wasting my time with a boring PowerPoint presentation.

All of us, as frequent audience members, have the power to shape the greater business culture’s ways of speaking. If you don’t take a stand (and walk out the door) you will have nobody to blame but yourself when you become bored out of your mind when listening to future PowerPoint speeches.

If you are ready to sign the 120-90-60 PowerPoint Pledge, then please leave just your name in the comment button below.

Because of all the types of speaking, motivational speaking, in the classic sense, is the easiest to devolve into meaningless clichés and useless abstractions. Personally, whenever I hear most motivational speakers, all I hear is Chris Farley’s absurd satire of a motivational speaker in his Matt Foley skit on Saturday Night Live. If you want three minutes of pure joy and a lifetime of future chuckles at other motivational speakers, then watch this Chris Farley video on youtube here.