Information doesn't excite your audience

Photo Credit: Dan Harrelson via Compfight cc

A client told me the other day that his wife says he never knows when to shut up. And he recognizes that this is a problem when he speaks.

He told me he's afraid that if he doesn't give enough information, the audience won't be as excited as he is.

Of course, this inspired me to create a teleseminar called "How to know when to shut up," and I'll keep you posted when that's ready!

But for now, let's just address this issue of giving a ton of information so people will get excited.

Do people get excited from information? Not really.

What excites people is your own emotional engagement with the topic.

What excites people is discovering how they'll benefit from what you're saying, offering, doing, sharing.

Information has never excited an audience, I'm sorry to say.

All information does is overwhelm your audience. It makes their brain freeze up and stop accepting new information. It's called cognitive overload. (This article explains it well.)

What's the best way to make sure you're not overwhelming the audience? Leave some stuff out!

I know it's hard to do this, because we think they need to know everything we know. And that's usually a bad idea.

It's much easier to give too little information and then let the audience fill in the gaps with their own questions, than it is to give too much information and leave them overloaded and ready for a nap.

You can always ask, "What more would you like to know about this?" or "What did you feel was missing from what I covered?" Leave room at the end to address some of their answers.

And hey, they can always e-mail you, Facebook you, Tweet you or just call you. You are not going to disappear off the face of the earth once you walk out of the room. If you do your job, and the audience is engaged, intrigued and inspired, they will seek you out for more.

And isn't that better than leaving them drowning in content, filled to the brim with so much data, that their brain is no longer processing and their eyes have glazed over?

I'm guessing you'll say yes.

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