Taking a Poll of Your Audience

Many times, as I am speaking to entrepreneurs all over the world, I will “poll” the audience for answers to some questions. It is a simple tactic that gives me a ton of great information. Asking questions of my audience gives me stats that can be very useful. For example, I’ve found that almost 90 percent of the entrepreneurs I’ve talked to love their work, but only about 15 percent enjoy doing the marketing it takes to get that work.

This type of information can be very powerful when I use it in my presentations. In fact, I was speaking with Dawn Lyons (a director with BNI and a Referral Institute franchisee), recently, and she described a poll she did at a  Behavior Styles training event in Wisconsin. A participant was telling her how his boss always receives referrals “on the spot” from brand new clients, and how that strategy has never worked for him. He was actually wondering whether something was wrong with him.

Lyons decided to poll the audience. She asked, “How many of you have been taught that you should meet with a client, close the deal and then on the spot ask them for additional referrals?” The answer was a resounding yes from the crowd. Then she broke it down to this: “How many of you have been incredibly successful with this approach?” Not one hand was raised in the audience. Her next question was, “How many of you have been moderately successful with this approach?” Again no hands were raised. “How many of you have had a decent amount of success?” No hands again! “OK, how many of you have had at least one person give you referrals on the spot?” Finally one gentleman, a sales consultant, raised his hand out of the entire group.

Dawn turned to the original gentleman who asked her the question and simply stated, “It’s not you. See, many times we are taught techniques that simply don’t work for the majority. Maybe your boss is fantastic at it because he has 25 years of experience. Maybe it is because he works from 100 percent referrals.”

So you see, polling your audience is a great way to collect information instantly and even be able to give a great lesson from it. Try using it in your next presentation.