Audience Analysis -- Corporate Presentations

Audience Analysis -- Corporate Presentations

Being called in to present business facts and issues, such as the in the case that I will be using in this article, (i.e. A presentation of quarterly sales information at an in-person meeting with a group of stockholders including managers, sales people, and customers) require much preparation. It is even said that corporate presentations are usually hard to get right as it need to be delivered in different settings, to different audiences and at different levels ("Corporate Presentation Tips," 2009). It is in this light that I am writing several themes by which the key issues highlighted can be addressed.

Audience Characteristic

According to the "Message Learning" approach to persuasion, "…persuasion is communication intended to influence choice. The basic theory suggests that persuasion is a function of attention, comprehension, yielding (degree of agreement with the presenter's position) and retention which culminates in action. These immediate factors in turn, are a function of the characteristics of the audience, support used by the presenter, and factors fixed in the environment." (Vogel, Dickson, and Lehman, 1986, p.2).

At this point, I wish to focus more on the characteristics of the audience. The above citation suggests that to be able to effectively communicate one's message, and even be able to persuade people into a particular position, the presenter must be knowledgeable of his audience characteristics. In our case, having to present with a group of stockholders as well as customers would lead us look at their educational attainment and knowledge level. As such, the business language to be used should be comprehensible for them. Although simplicity and brevity in presentations are important, there are some instances when we find some need to give meaningful, detailed, and sometimes sophisticated points to call attention, to impress the audience, or simply to match their level of thinking. Given the case in point, the customers we're presenting to, our market to be exact, is on the rather high end of the consumer pyramid anyway so we can expect that their level of education and knowledge can match our business language. The group of stockholders audience would not have any problem on this respect. It is in this light that Hoffman (n.d.) stresses the need to balance brevity with useful detail and illustrations.

Demographic factors, apart from education and occupation that we have already mentioned above, that need to be given special considerations as well are age, ethnicity or cultural background, gender, and socio-economic status (HP Learning Center, n.d.). Devising an audience analysis sheet can be of great help to the presenter (FKA, n.d.).

Capturing audience attention and its relation to the presentation's subject matter should come easy in this case as quarterly sales information are very much of great interest to the stockholders audience especially because they are in need of such information. The thrust of work now is focused on sustaining their interest to listen to the presentation -- this is also known as audience retention.

Addressing Audience Diversity

Although in our case, the subject matter is already interesting for the audience, there still remains to be points of disjunction among them. The importance of quarterly sales information may not be as important for the customer as it is for the group of stockholders such as the managers and sales people. At the onset, there may be diversities with the objective and degree of utility of information among the audience. Moreover, there still exists also, several inherent demographic differences that need to be accounted for as well

The very way we can address the issue of audience diversity is simply to manage it as there would be no way to control demographic differences. Central to the task of managing audience diversity is none other than knowing your audience. By acknowledging that the audience in our case may have different objectives in participating in the presentation, we are able to craft the presentation material in ways that are relevant to their varying needs. Ivey (n.d.) furthers that, "By analyzing audience data we can establish the framework for strong and relevant presentation content. We should now have a good idea of the particular interests of our audience, their requisite needs, their dislikes, and their primary drivers. With this information we can incorporate topical elements into the presentation's content" (par. 5).

Communication Channels: Channeling Your Way to Audience Retention

Visual Aids. Results of an empirical study conducted by the researchers from Management Information Systems Research Center at the University of Minnesota showed that presentations employing visual aids are 43% more persuasive than unaided presentations (Vogel, Dickson, and Lehman, 1986). Indeed visual aids are important in presentations but one needs to be extra careful in using them. Remember that visual aids should only aid the presentation, not become the presentation itself as some visual aids tend to become a distraction that overshadows the presenter and bury the message. When used well, visual aids actually increase the presenter's sensory contact to the audience (HP Learning Center, n.d.).

In our case, visual aids such as hand-outs and projections are of great utility. Powerpoint presentation that includes charts, data tables, and graphs can be used to better communicate the data of quarterly sales. Through these techniques, we may be able to track quarterly trends in sales, the highs and the lows, and other related in formation in a quick glance.

Presentation Delivery. One should be able to demonstrate effective verbal and non-verbal behavior. Effective eye contact is also important. One can also effectively deliver a presentation if s/he first lays the outline of the presentation so the audience will be able to know what to expect out of the presentation. Ideas should also be presented with enough substantiation. And to hold interest, the presentation should be interactive as well. Summarizing main points is always a good way to close the report (ibid).