Do you lose your audience when you speak?
Do you get a polite but insincere
"Oh, that's interesting" response when
you talk about what you do but no one
ever seems to want to take the next step
with you?
This month on the Smart Networking Shift, our topic was
How to fascinate and engage your listener in 30 seconds or less.
Being able to talk about what you do in
a way that grabs the attention and
interest of your ideal clients and
partners
is so important in promoting your
business.
Within the three-step Relationships to
Revenues system,
what you learn on this call are insights
that will help you with Step One
and that's all about
relevance. You may do excellent work but
how do you get your target audience to
care? They'll only care if your message is
relevant to them.
You don't want to be known as just
another consultant or CPA firm or
head hunting company:
there are thousands of those around. Part
of how you're going to stand out instead
of blending into the background is by
how effectively you talk about your
business.
Now, most service professionals don't do
these things, so you'll be miles ahead when
you put them into practice.
Our guest on this call was Ann Convery
She's a marketing expert, but she was
also a media trainer for a PR firm for
fifteen years which is an important
distinction.
She knows exactly what it takes to make
a memorable point and grab a listener's
attention in a very short amount of time.
You can reach her at her website at
Ann Convery dot com and her Twitter
handle is @speakyourbiz.
There were so many gems that she shared,
and I pulled out five to get you started
but you should definitely listen to the
whole call.
And I'll tell you at the end of this video where you can get access to the
full interview so stay tuned.
Takeaway number one.
Talk to the limbic brain.
We have different areas of our brain that
help us with the different things we do
and the part that triggers decision is
the part that also responds to emotion.
So if we want to capture someone's
attention and have them decide to keep
listening to us and engaging with us,
not just because they want to be polite but
because they are genuinely interested,
and if we want to have a chance of
getting hired down the road, then we have to
speak to that part of the brain.
Even if you don't believe you work in
the field that is not very emotional at all,
like accounting or strategy consulting.
You know, we think it's all about the numbers
right?
But there is an emotional component to
that for the person making the decision
and we have to learn to tap into that.
Takeaway number two. Start with a story.
When people ask you what you do, you go
into a typical spiel, right? Well, Ann gives
a terrific example of how not to do that
and how one of her clients
who used to say, I help women achieve
six-figure incomes
and that sounded so generic. It did
engage people and even though they all
wanted that result
but when she led with a story instead
that illustrated the point
everyone wanted to learn more and find
out how
she could do that for them. It really
brought what she did to life.
Takeaway number three.
Big gap equals big decision.
One of the things you want to include in your
story is a big gap that shows where
someone started to where they were able
to go after working with you.
You want to see a big positive arc
because that helps them make a big
decision. In professional services, if
what you're offering are small incremental
improvements, then your clients are going to expect to pay small dollars for them.
But if you want them to move on a hundred
thousand dollar, five hundred thousand dollar
project, for example,
especially if that's not pocket change
for them,
then you have to show them much greater
possibilities.
Takeaway number four.
Fight your desire to tell
everything.
When you use some of these techniques
and you finally get someone in front of
you who is showing a lot of interest, you
could still lose them by saying too much
too soon.
Ann talks about the Zeigarnik effect  in
psychology, which states that if people
do not have all the answers, or all of
the information they're looking for, or are
expecting,
they are three times more likely to
remember you.
I found this part of the interview extremely fascinating because Ann
tells a great story about a client
of hers in Germany
who sold two hundred thousand euros of
business because he fought the reflex to
dive into his full sales presentation
and give his audience everything at once.
Takeaway number five.
Get them out of their comfort zone.
By not giving them all the information,
you're putting people on edge because
it's not what they're expecting. You know,
we all walk around in a very
comfortable state most of the time and
even though your target audience may 
really need what you have to offer
you still have to get them to listen.
And finding ways to pull them out of
their comfort zone to hear something
different to feel emotions they normally
keep buried ...
it's a very powerful approach. You know
there's so much more to my call with Ann
especially on this topic of telling
stories,
which ties into the takeaways we just
talked about. You can get the full
interview by going to Smart Networking
dot com forward slash Ann
and we will email a link to you so be
sure you put in your primary email
address, the one you check the most, and
you can get this interview for free.
I want you listen especially closely to Ann's
simple but powerful point on how to
structure your stories
and specifically what to leave out 
that will make them even more
compelling. So enjoy the audio and be sure
to drop by my Facebook page if you have
any questions. Just go to Facebook dot com forward slash Network with Liz
Share your
breakthroughs and your insights
that you have about your own business
after you've listened. We'd love to hear
from you.
