ClickWebinar makes it easy to broadcast your message to audiences throughout the world. But there are two types of listeners, and your message may be falling on deaf ears for at least half of them. Is there a surefire way to appeal to both types of listeners? The answer may surprise you.
Where did you learn to organize your thoughts? If you’re like most of us, you learned in school, writing essays and term papers.
But unless you had a very unusual teacher, you learned only one way to think about your subject. And even though you may have gotten A-plus on your term paper, your webinar participants may be giving you F-minus.
Table of Contents
Linear Thinking
Remember the last time you got stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for the train to pass: boxcars creeping past, one after the other, each carrying important cargo, but with little variety in the containers.
That’s how many of us were taught to organize our thoughts: from notes written on a stack of index cards.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s important to organize your webinar content. The left side of the human brain — the side that helps you balance your checkbook (or not) and remember phone numbers — needs to understand the logic of your message.
So give your high school teacher a hug for teaching you how to organize your thoughts logically.
Visual Thinking
But if there’s nothing but logic in your webinar, your participants may take a snooze. Those boxcars plodding past can be a little boring.
So think about how you can engage the right side of the brain — the one that daydreams about your last vacation on a sandy beach, with palm trees waving and a coconut drink with a tiny umbrella in it. Hey! Come back here. It’s not time to head for the beach yet 😉
And that’s the problem. Even people who tell you they do most of their thinking in a totally logical way . . . well, they have a visual side to their thinking too.
So while they may seem to be listening, they’re really kicking back in that beach chair, thinking about the gentle waves lapping on the shore. I told you . . . stay with me. And take off those sunglasses 😎
Whole Brain Thinking
The solution is to engage both sides of the brain.
Give them the logic, of course — people need facts and details. And by all means make it easy to follow. After all, it’s not the listener’s job to make the connections; it’s your job as a presenter to help them think things through.
But give them something to stimulate their imagination too, because it you don’t, they’ll look to their own imagination to amuse themselves, and we don’t want that. Do we? Now where did you wander off to?
Presenting to the Whole Brain
The right side of the brain likes to think in pictures. Luckily, you’ve got ClickWebinar — a tool made for visual presentations.
Your webcam lets your audience see and hear you. The ClickWebinar presentation function lets you pre-load and display Powerpoint slides. You can even go on Youtube and Flickr to show fascinating videos and images.
Visual Language
And don’t forget about the words you use. They can stimulate the audience’s imagination too.
So choose descriptive language; (make them feel the sand between their toes.) Think of metaphors and similes; (your product or service is as easy as a stroll down the beach.)
And the right-brain loves sound too, so maybe some music: (is that Bob Marley and the Wailers I hear in the background? 😉
Why It Works
Visual thinking is much faster — no annoying logical steps to slow you down. People use visual thinking to make decisions quickly.
Then that annoying left brain pops up and wants to make sure you reached the right decision. So it uses logic.
But no one is completely logical or completely visual. In some people, one side may dominate: visual for artists and jewelry designers; logical for accountants and chess masters.
But both types get pretty good at switching back and forth between the left and right side of the brain. So it’s smart is to help them make those switches — from logical to visual and back again.
That Reminds Me
Enough logic. To keep you reading, I need to switch back to visual mode. So imagine your customers and prospects at your next webinar, smiling as they enjoy the visual elements of your webinar and nodding thoughtfully as they understand your logic.
Got the picture?
OK, pop into the comments below and let us know how you’re going to make it happen. Then let’s head for the beach 🙂
Loading...
