How to get an audience to play ball when you know that they should

I was just reading this great post on audience participation and it made me remember this wee trick - in 5 years of speaking and 11 years of presentation coaching it has pretty much never failed me - and it’s so stupidly simple.

Let’s say to prove a point you wanted to ask a group of small business owners if they are feeling the impact of the credit crunch - it should be a homerun - everyone is feeling it. There’s two ways you could ask the audience:

The first, and most commonly used technique is to say, “By a show of hands, how many of you are feeling the impact of the credit crunch?”.

You’ll get a scattering of hands raised which kinda takes the wind out of your sail. I see this frustrate presenters all the time.

Our method is to ask , “Hands up those of you that don’t feel the credit crunch.” If you get one hand raised I’ll be surprised.

Basically, if people can avoid stepping out they will, and it’s amazing how often audiences lie by not raising their hands to obvious questions.

Avoid this by always asking questions where the answer you’re looking for relies on keeping their hands down.

I told you it was simple, but don’t take my word for it, ask your audience…!

(More preso tips on twitter)