Guides and tools
Change needs a story.
Find yours.
You attended ATD26 and explored how Duarte’s frameworks can help you diagnose audience change resistance and respond with empathy. Here’s how to put that into practice the moment you get back.
Audience Needs Map™
This free, interactive tool guides you through 8 essential steps to better grasp your audience and produces a downloadable brief to align your messaging.
Understanding Audience Needs for Successful Business Storytelling
Business storytelling is a balancing act. Staying on-message, reading the room, and advancing your vision takes poise, precision, and practiced delivery. Too often, speakers get bogged down talking about themselves, their achievements, or their vision, when they should be centering their audience.
But the key to sticking the landing during any high-stakes moment is how you prepare to meet it. For executive keynotes, kickoffs, investor calls, product launches, panels, or town halls, knowing your audience is essential for having your message resonate and advancing change when attendees hang up or head for the exit.
Ensuring you always get the intended result requires understanding your audience through deep research and speaking to their experience. This means building your talk or remarks to address:
- What constitutes ROI in their eyes?
- What keeps them up at night?
- What are their hopes?
- Fears?
For new or reluctant audiences, parsing what to center can cause even the most adroit leaders to spiral.
After all: When do you know you know enough?
Our Audience Needs Map™ is an interactive tool to stress test your knowledge before you build a single slide. This quick, self-guided exercise raises key considerations and offers strategies for moving your thinking from concept to content. Plus, you’ll walk away with a sharable asset to align your messaging.
In just 8 questions, you’re guided through comprehensive pre-write prompts to ensure you know your audience inside and out. From identifying who and why your audience is there to reflecting on what you hope to accomplish with your presentation, the Audience Needs Map™ covers every angle required to make a lasting impression.
And for areas where you’re unsure how to proceed or whether you have enough information to make an informed analysis, the map is populated with examples and pro tips to suggest next steps and nudge you in the right direction.
With the Audience Needs Map™, you’ll learn how to:
- Understand what your audience hopes to get out of your presentation, so you can deliver information that engages and satisfies
- Determine main pain points and offer effective solutions that support your vision
- Improve lives with your presentation’s content
- Deliver information via the appropriate medium that’s memorable and actionable
- Overcome obstacles that might keep listeners from wanting to adopt your ideas
Complete the form to unlock your free, replicable Audience Needs Map™ and make the most of every high-stakes presentation.
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