joisea.info

Through your talk, you’ll provide information. However, you really want your audience to do something with that information. Even if it’s only that they think about what you’ve said and then smile. So many great presentations go off the rails because the speaker concentrates on what they’ll say, without having spent sufficient time on why. It’s vital that you know what you want your audience to do. Answer that question before anything else. Then build everything in your presentation from that base. For instance, you might want your audience to:

1. Know more about health and safety in the workplace, (you inform) so that they create a better environment for everyone working there (they act);

2. Understand Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) better (you inform) so that they can support their family or friend who has recently been diagnosed (they act);

3. Gain a better understanding of the wonderful work done by your charity (you inform), so that they donate to your organisation (they act);

4. Understand a film better (you inform) so that they can better answer questions about it on an exam (they act);

5. Be very clear about your political Party’s policy platform on Aged healthcare, (you inform) so that your audience of elderly people vote for you or your Party in the next election (they act).

For All Speeches and Short Talks, Answer These Questions

(1) Is your role to inform, persuade or entertain – or all three?

(2) What is the key objective of your talk? Write it out in a few words. For example, you might write: I’m giving this talk about _________ to _________ because I want them to:___________________.

In that last, very important, part of the sentence you must know what it is you want people to do. Two examples are:

1. I’m giving this talk about AIDS to the local Rotary Club because I want to raise money for a new hospice program.

2. I’m giving this talk about the new Occupational Health and Safety legislation to senior hospital administrators because I want them to develop appropriate programs to protect Nurses’ safety, state-wide.

Once you know what you want people to do, and why, it will be much easier for you to brainstorm the content of your talk. Your next step is to spell out clearly what you want the audience to do, how, and in what timeframe.

For example, if you’re keen to recruit more volunteers to help your organisation, instead of saying: “we desperately need more volunteers”, provide information about a definite task, a time and a place where they can help with that task. That can be much more motivating to your audience than a vague claim that you need volunteers. Why? People can easily see themselves cleaning up one beach on one Sunday morning with lots of other people. So spell it out.

If you want their money. Say so. Tell people about your amazing achievements, all done with minimal government help. Then spell out very clearly that the new building renovations will cost $120,800 because you’ve secured a special in-kind donation from Company X – valued at $Y. Then be even more explicit. You need to raise that amount in three months. Ideally, you and your group will have organized raffle tickets or some tangible means to raise money. If not, it might be that you’re looking for sponsors whose names will be placed on a special plaque.

If your talk has been about passing on knowledge – eg how to set up a small business – you need to be very clear and specific about how your listeners can learn more. Have some hand-out material for them as a follow up guide to more study, books (preferably yours) and multi media resources. Apply what you’ve told them in your talk: if you gave people an outline of the planning process, you could tell them to “start this very day with the first part of my plan.”

Then, because you’re a lovely person, you’ll tell them again what the first three steps were. Finally, let people know that you are available by e-mail or at a particular organisation to work with them through any point that wasn’t clear. Not everything in life is about marketing. Please don’t finish your presentation by blatantly ‘selling’ your advanced courses and your books and so on. By all means, include that sort of information as part of your introduction, and as part of hand-out material.

Promotional products are an ingenious way to promote a brand, boost business, and increase market share, customer trust and employee satisfaction. The best and rightly selected promotional product has a greater impact on the customers when compared to other modes of advertisements through television and print media.
Promotional products have various crucial roles in boosting sales of your business.

• Increases ROI
• Sales Promotion
• Customer acquisition
• Customer retention
• Customer Satisfaction
• Gains customer Loyalty
• Increasing Brand Awareness

Increases Return on Investment

The cost of advertisements in TV and newspapers are much large compared to promotional product marketing. Moreover, promotional items bring about higher CPI (Cost per Impression) when compared to other media advertisements. Promotional products are the only inexpensive yet effective means that generates better ROI. Higher ROI is achieved through less money, repeated exposure, new customers, and repeated purchase.

Customer Acquisition and retention

In a competitive scenario, to stay ahead of all other competitors, it is important to build up a brand opinion, trust, and persuade customers to choose our products over others. While using such items, the customers see or use them repeatedly and refer others to use the brand for the sake of mere usability. As per PPAI 2009, 60% of customers used the promotional items several times. 7.6% of them made others to use the product and 4.4% of them gave the products to others. This process brings in new customers. This way of repeated impression eventually increases sales.

Customer satisfaction

The main advantages of products over advertisements through newspapers and magazines are that they are only one way. The customer is not benefited materialistically in other media advertisements. This satisfies the customers in terms of materialistic possession.

Customer Loyalty

A high quality promotional product with a great visibility, usage, and durability reminds the brand or the product well ahead of all other medium. These type of products also help recall the message sent through them. The usefulness of the product grows to become a long-term remainder of the product. Promotional products increase:

• Advertisement’s honesty
• Concept towards the product or brand
• Attitude towards the sales product or brand
• Objective to purchase
• Recommendation to try or purchase the brand or product

Brand Awareness

According to the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), out of the customers who received promotional products, about 76% of them could recollect the name of the brand or the product even after several years. This higher recognition of the brand is achieved only in case of these products. This statistic clearly states that promotional items are the best cost effective means of increasing sales and brand awareness.

Sales Promotion

Brand recognition, loyalty and trust, attraction, repeat purchase, new customers, and ultimately, increased traffic in business boosts the sales of your products. To make a customer purchase a item and then make repeat purchases is more achievable using promotional items. About 20.9% of people purchase a product after using the promotional items, whereas only 13.4%, 7.1%, and 4.6% of people purchased the product after viewing advertisements in print media, TV and online advertisements respectively. In fact, according to the PPAI, about 84% of the people believe that promotional items are very effective in boosting sales.

An employee negotiating his/her salary may often feel a complete lack of bargaining power. If the employee lacks alternative jobs, and thus cannot make a credible threat to quit or take another job, it is easy to feel that the offer made by the employer is a take it or leave it offer which the employee cannot influence at all.

The employee or job seeker can however take advantage of the laws of human nature to increase his/her leverage when negotiating the salary. One of these laws says that every human being has an interest in being recognized as a worthy member of society. The only chance to be recognized as such a member is to show that one is willing to comply with the basic norms of society. Not to comply with these basic norms is to put oneself outside society, a condition that is unbearable to most people.

The most fundamental norm of society is the norm of reciprocity. According to Wikipedia, the norm of reciprocity is “the social expectation that people will respond to each other in kind — returning benefits for benefits, and responding with either indifference or hostility to harm.”

The power of this norm can be felt in most bargaining situations. Assume a buyer and a seller are haggling over the price of a car. The seller starts out with a bid at $24,000. The buyer finds this offer unacceptable and makes a counter bid at $15,000. Now, the seller lowers his bid to $20,000, i.e. he makes a concession. In this case, the buyer will most often feel inclined to increase his bid, maybe to $17,000. The reason why the buyer will feel this inclination is because of the presence of the norm of reciprocity. This norm now demands that the buyer responds to the seller’s concession with another concession.

The norm of reciprocity is so powerful that it can be taken advantage of in almost any bargaining situation, even by a party that otherwise completely lacks leverage. This norm is a most powerful ally to the employee or job seeker negotiating his salary – if correctly appealed to.

The norm of reciprocity will only work if it is very clear that the employee makes a concession or gives something away to the employer. This can be made in several ways. If, for example, the employer has worked over time for months without any compensation, he can say “I really do like this work. That is the reason why I have spent hours and hours of overtime here. I think it is only fair that I get some kind of compensation for my efforts for this company.” Another way is to start out the salary negotiation by making a high but reasoned salary claim, from which a concession can be made in the next round.

With the norm of reciprocity in his toolbox, the employee or job seeker negotiating his salary will have dramatically increased his leverage.