Business Communication

Question # 5: Describe the techniques of motivating your audience.

There is no questioning that the old saying "You do not get a second chance to make that first impression" is very true here. From the very first moment you step out in front of your audience to begin your presentation, you have, on the average, between one and two minutes at the most to set the tone of your presentation.  Many say you have even less time to capture their attention, motivate and hold it. R1

No matter your communication objective may be, having your audience to buy a product, pay bill , approve your plan or promote you, it involves motivating someone to respond you in such a way that help your needs and desire. To accomplish this all one must have audience as a focus center. Rhetorical theory refers to his ability as becoming a reader or listener. The theory emphasizes and to being persuasive by aiming your message toward your audience’s needs and desires. The most important strategy one must have, the ability to analyze and motive audience in such a way that leads to the success of your business.

Communication is complete only when the receiver understands the message in the same sense and spirit that sender intends to convey. However, communication does not take place completely because of the illusion that it has been accomplished. The great cause of illusion is sender's inability to understand the audience. Without analysing audience, the chances of effectiveness of the communication decrease.

Before going to the techniques of motivating audience one must be aware of following then he can only have a strong motivating push for his audience.

Analyze your Audience:

Audience analysis is the process of learning who your audience is, what they are thinking, and how you can best reach them.

Thoughtful audience analysis is one of the best habits you can develop as a speaker. It will help you understand your audience’s perspective and provide maximum value for them. If done well, your audience analysis will provide insights that will help you focus your message, select the most effective content and visuals, and tailor your delivery to suit this particular target audience.

Audience analysis studies your audience along three primary dimensions:

1. Who is in your audience? What are their individual and group characteristics?2. What does your audience know? What do they believe? What do they think about your

topic?3. When and where are you presenting? Why is this audience listening to you? R2

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WHO ARE YOUR AUDIENCE?

Understanding the audience is fundamental to the success of any message. The sender needs to analyze the audience and then adapt the message to their goals, interests and needs. Audience likes to listen the message that suits their interests, familiar with their level of knowledge and understanding, and seems true and credible. R3

Types of Audience:

1. Primary Audience 2. Secondary Audience3. Initial Audience4. Key Decision Maker

Primary Audience:  The primary audience is the audience who has to decide whether to accept the sender's message and his recommendations and to act on the basis of that message. For example - in case of advertisement campaign of interior decoration, the primary audience is prospective customers.

Secondary Audience: The secondary audience consists of people who may be asked to comment on the message after it has been approved. For example - in case of advertisement campaign of interior decoration, the existing users are the secondary audience as the potential buyers ask them about their opinion.

Initial Audience: is the audience that receives the message first and routs it to other audiences. Sometimes, the initial audience guides the sender regarding designing of the message.

Key Decision Maker: Besides having a primary audience and secondary audience one cannot neglect the key decision makers those also influence the communication and they can influence the result of message.

Importance of audience analysis:

An audience analysis is essential before designing the message. Communication can take place only when the message is received in the same sense and spirit that sender intends to carry. Therefore, the sender has to devise some common ground between him and the audience. He has to choose the information that audience needs and finds interesting. He should encode the message in words and other symbols that audience will understand easily

"Understanding your audience is fundamental to the success of any message. You need to adapt your message to fit the audience's goals, interests and needs." ~ Kitty O. Locker and Stephen Kyo Kaczmark R4

In order to communicate effectively the communicator should have information about the audience:

1. How much the audience knows about the topic, i.e., their knowledge?

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Business Communication

2. Demographic factors, i.e. age, income, number of children, etc.3. Personality.4. Values and beliefs.5. Past behavior.

Knowledge: The Communicator should be very tactful and careful about the knowledge of the audience.

Demographic Factors: 

Demographic factors should be measured objectively before approaching the audience. Demographic factors are measurable features that can be counted objectively i.e., age, sex, race, religion, educational level, income and so on.

Personality:  Personality of the dominating individual(s) of the audience should be properly

judged. Values and benefits:

Past Behavior: R5

Motivating your Audience

Communication is the use of language to inform, to persuade, or to change someone.

Using an intelligent audience strategy is the key to successful communication, whether in job-search documents, in academic papers, or on-the-job writing and professional presentations.

Howard Gardner, author of Leading Minds, says that effective communication is the key to leadership.

According to the book, The Guru Guide, CEOs overwhelming say that in managing change “you can never do enough to get your message across to your people.” R6

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE LISTEN?

Paying attention is a gift from the audience to the speaker, a momentary surrender of control. An audience will respond, either purposely or unconsciously: 1. if the message is in their self-interest 2. if they trust and believe the person delivering the message 3. if they like the message itself. Understanding and addressing audience motivations is the first step in making your connection.

HOW CAN YOU GET THIS ATTENTION?

The next step in grabbing the audience’s attention is to manage intentionally the audience perceptions of you, as well as their expectations: literally, you must explain your relationship to your audience and establish your professional identity.

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As after getting your audience inventory, you need to figure out how best to motivate the people you have just analyzed. One must try to increase credibility and also try to structure message persuasively.

Understanding psychological theories of motivation is very important for the success of business communication. Without the basic neither one can keep things running nor can fix when they break down.

1. Punish or reward them2. Appeal to their growth needs3. Use peoples need for balance4. Perform a cost benefit analysis5. Be sensitive to character traits.

Punish or Reward them

Business communication especially to your subordinates requires specific dimension, you cannot drive any one to a specific direction unless you know the better. You cannot punish any one or threat any one e.g.

One of your employee spend too much time talking on phone and you call him and threat him to stop doing this otherwise he will lose his job.

1. Threat will only work when you have eye on them.2. Threat can only effects one side of picture but the desired outcome, that is expected from

it is still zero.3. Threat can produce to the working environment and lead to tension and distress. 4. Threat lead to make people dislike you5. Threat can also lead to counter aggressive reply.

Consider a reward a way to change behavior, as the rewards are considered as effective way to shape behavior. Rewarding certain behaviors is an extremely powerful tool to get desired results. Reward must be important for the person who is going to get it. Different people react differently, some like to have recognition of achievement, some to money.

Appeal to their growth needs:

In most of the cases you cannot reward your audience with tangible things or prizes. Here you have to reward the effectively by appealing to their growth.

1. Personal growth; let them to work independently2. Self-esteem; have their advancement motive and encouragement3. Group affiliation; build their working relations4. Safety; secure their working conditions

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5. Survival; build them to survive on their own.

Use people need for balance:

Most of the people prefer psychological balance, when they have some conflicting situation t their ideas and beliefs they lose the state of balance. The anxiety helps them to restore their balance. As you should consider that they can deny to new ideas as they are living in their own way and scheme of thought. Second there can be a complete denial to your ideas.

Perform a cost/benefit Analysis:

Another way to thinking about what motivates people is to apply economical ides, e.g. money goods and services can be offered for exchange. Both parties should take into account the cost and the benefit of the behavior, a strong benefit you encourages someone and on the other hand a high cost can have an opposite effect. So one must have a cost/benefit analysis.

For example you have a great plan for new advertising brochure. The benefit seems obvious to you and your company will sell of its products. However the cost and the time for printing and the waste of throwing old brochure can hurt the feeling of the person who designed the old one. And addition al time and bother to your boss to consider this new idea when the old one has seemed to work well.

Using this approach you can try following

1. Analyze cost and benefit of the idea itself; as many of us only have a view on ony advantages not on disadvantages.

2. Analyze cost and benefit in favor of audience; advantages we only look to the potential reward that result for us only without thinking about the acceptance of our audience.

3. Specify the benefit that audience is going to have with your idea.

Naturally, people are not like the numbers and figure of any financial cost/ benefit analysis. So one should assume audience the same way, when confronted by the same situation.

Be Sensitive to character Traits:

Generalization about ourselves or other peoples can be dangerous. Perceiving the behavior is a character trait and we may perceive incorrectly, and it can be worst when the categorized people based on incorrect inference. So everyone’s character is more complex than on simple trait.

Taking these into mind, that the effective communication can only be possible by considering what will motivate and persuade your audience. E.g. one has a differenet conversation method and motive with sales manager than to an accountant.

Different people are convinced by different things. Just as engineers use electrical theory to predict how machines work, communicators must use psychological theory to predict how

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people work. Effective communicators analyze what will motivate the people with whom they are communicating

There are so many way that can be devised to have an analysis, instead f discuss the personality theories.

In summary there are as many possible means and ways that one can use to motivate the audience, analyzing who they are, how they feel, and the cost/benefit and one can use different techniques by keep these things in mind and achieve the desired results.

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Reference 1. R1= http://www.tlcsem.com/pmotivate.htm2. R2= http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/audience-analysis/3. R3= http://debo10199businesscommunication.blogspot.com/2012/02/audience-

analysis-part.html4. R4= http://debo10199businesscommunication.blogspot.com/2012/02/audience-

analysis-part.html5. R5= http://debo10199businesscommunication.blogspot.com/2012/02/audience-

analysis-part-b.html6. R6= mgt.ncsu.edu/pdfs/career_resources/Audience%20Strategy.pdf

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