How to interrupt your clients during a presentation to keep them engaged.

Key insights

💡 The speaker shares a technique called "pattern interrupts" that can help keep audiences engaged during presentations, even in challenging time slots.
🧠 The brain is an energy hog and will allocate its resources to what it deems important, so it's crucial to hold its attention during a sales presentation.
💤 To engage someone's attention, you need to "wake up" their brain by providing something that is important and grabs their interest.
🤔 What if, instead of trying to hold someone's attention at 100% for the entire presentation, you focus on capturing their interest at the beginning?
💡 Planning and incorporating pattern interrupts into a sales presentation can help maintain audience engagement and attention span, leading to a higher level of engagement.
📊 Utilizing various forms of media such as videos, pictures, case studies, and data can serve as effective pattern interrupts during a sales presentation, capturing and maintaining the audience's attention.
😄 Engaging the audience through humor and interaction, such as going into the crowd and asking questions, is a great way to keep them engaged during a sales presentation.

#salesinfluence #neuromarketing #presentationskills

So again, I'll wait for a few folks to jump on before I get going here.

Anytime after midday, just jump on and see what's what.

So again, I'll just wait for a couple of people to jump on before I get into the content super excited about this Leave me some feedback here on You know in terms of sales, how's it going?

It's August moving into September So again, the year's going by rather quickly.

And so I got somebody in here cool Thumbs up back at you.

Again, I'll wait for a couple of people to jump in And then I will let me see if I can track the activity here and again, leave me a comment Give me some feedback.

All that good stuff And let me see what I got here.

I got some Moving the cameras around here on my screen.

I'm messing around a lot of stuff over here.

All right, like I said, leave me some feedback.

It'll be about 15 minutes we'll get into this.

Charles, were you at the event I did in the Philippines Charles that was pretty cool I was up in I say did Manila and also went over to Cebu and did a couple of presentations there so it was a great event Manila got to try some cool food, some interesting food over there, so it was fascinating, so yeah.

All right, man, well I'm gonna do, let me just jump into this presentation.

I had this conversation on presentation styles and presentation skills.

For some of you who know this, I know Chris over at Cast Ahead knows this, I did the closing keynote for the National Speakers Association this year, 50th anniversary, did the closing presentation on the second day.

Questions I get when I do my presentations are often is like, you know, how is it that you keep audiences so engaged?

Like, how do you just hold them, especially for 45 minutes for an hour?

So if you could imagine, there's the crowd, over a thousand people are sitting there for a whole day.

I come up at 5 p.m., they're tired, 1 hour to go, they're thinking about going to get something to eat, something to drink, they just wanna leave.

Is always the toughest slot, right, to get in any presentation because the energy level is like, vroom.

And so the question then becomes is, how do you engage them?

Like, how do you keep them in the moment, so to speak?

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you what I do in my presentations.

What I want to introduce to you, and again, some of you've seen my past presentations know what I'm about to present, but it's very powerful.

Now, let me describe pattern interrupts because if you get them and you understand them and you know how to implement you will be a great presenter.

So if you think about the brain, the brain is a let me see if I can get the marker going here.

Let's go with something brighter, more chipper than red.

Right So imagine for a moment that that's your brain, okay?

And if you think about it, most people don't think about it, that's an R, your brain uses up a lot of energy, right?

Now, most people don't know that this represents about 2% of your body weight but it uses 20% of your energy.

Do you ever have those moments where you like you didn't do anything you just sat behind a desk and you didn't do anything all day.

But at the end of the day, you're mentally exhausted, right?

What happens is all that thinking, whatever's going up here, cognitively, this brain is using up a lot of energy.

Now, so step 1, your brain is an energy hog.

It loves the use of energy So what happens the brain also has a second mechanism the brain also likes to focus on what's important Right likes to focus on what's important.

So for example have you ever done a presentation and people start looking at their phones, right, or start doing something else but paid attention to you?

What's happening at the moment is that the brain is using up energy, but what it's also doing is it's allocating its resources somewhere else, in this case on the phone, because what the brain says, what I'm listening to is not important, I might as well check my email on my phone, right?

So our job is again, to hold its attention.

1, the brain uses up a lot of energy people get tired number 2 The brain is saying that that's not important in front of me I'm gonna reallocate my resources to something else and if you still don't get it, let me give you this visual Think of a computer right in Your laptop, right?

And what happens after a while when you don't use a laptop?

When it hears something or sees something that's not important to the brain, self-interest, it says, let me go do something else, or just reduce the amount of energy in other words by not paying attention to you I'll just check my email.

That's what I'll do now when the computer goes to sleep It's trying to conserve energy.

You typically what you wiggle the mouse right or tickle the pad, right?

So keep those 2 things in mind uses energy and if it's not important it reallocates its energy somewhere else having said that Here's what I've come up with in terms of pattern interrupt.

I want you to imagine that this is a presentation you have to do.

Now again, this works in 1 to a crowd, 1 to 1, doesn't matter.

Now let's say this is attention, holding their attention over time.

Now, is it possible, is it possible to hold somebody's attention, let's say we're doing a 60 minute presentation, 60 minutes, Is it possible to hold somebody's attention at 100% for a whole hour?

Could I hold your attention for a whole hour?

Apparently there is no vote of confidence

And you are so right that it's really hard.

It's hard, no matter how good you are, it's hard to hold somebody's attention 100%.

What if, because as soon as you present something, what begins to happen is the brain starts out with high interest like ah, let me listen to this new speaker, right?

But as soon as after a hundred percent, let me see if I can go to white here Let me go to white it begins to Dip, it's just naturally your attention begins to dip now.

This could be after 3 maybe 5 maybe 7 minutes, right?

So then what you have to do, going back to it, is you have to find a way, let's assume that this is 80% attention, right?

Our job then is to find a way, once it starts dipping, our job is to push it back up.

Get their attention all interested again and then it starts dipping again, push it back up.

Now this right here is called a pattern interrupt.

So we have to logically, sequentially, insert pattern interrupts throughout the presentation.

For example, I can say, let me ask you a question, right?

Or to the audience, Let me ask you a question.

And as soon as I say, let me ask you a question, you can feel the energy go up like, what's the question?

Again, you start presenting, you do the question, you get the answers, you have discussion, and then you can feel it dipping again, and then you say, well here, let's do the small exercise.

So now I insert an exercise in this as a pattern interrupt.

We continue, we finish the exercise, I start giving some more explanation, you feel it dipping in and you say, now, I got something, watch this video.

So now I insert right here another pattern interrupt, which is a video.

What happens is if you plan your 60 minute presentation, If you plan out what your pattern interrupts are, you maintain them, that attention span, within this band.

And if you're within this band, that's full engagement, right?

But they can cycle you through to this 80% band right here.

The next time you're putting together a presentation, whether it's 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45, 1 hour, And the longer you go, the more pattern interrupts you need.

For example, if you do 90 minutes or 2 hours, right?

By the way, taking a break, when you're doing a two-hour workshop, if you stop at 60 minutes, that's a pattern interrupt, right?

How do you sequence this throughout your presentation?

Now, I don't know the exact timing of when you should insert a pattern interrupt.

Maybe you can do it every 3 minutes, every 5 minutes, every 7 minutes, and then pick your slot.

So then what you do is, if you believe this to be true, then what I typically do is I plan out what are my pattern interrupts.

See if you have any other pattern interrupts you guys use.

By the way, I can also show them a picture.

I can show them a, how about a case study, right?

I can show them a case study, that's not a pattern interrupt.

I could show them some data, that's another pattern interrupt.

So again, I can really sequence a good presentation, keep them active up here in this range, full attention, if I actually plan out what pattern interrupts I'm gonna use during my presentation.

And when you can do that, you become a much more effective presenter because you simply know how to interrupt the pattern and again every time you're interrupted the pattern you're reengaging the audience and that's what I had for today any questions it's gonna be a short 1 by the way any questions like what do you guys do you know when you want to interrupt or keep somebody engaged, what do you guys typically do?

Like I said, we got pictures, did I miss something?

I got data, again, case studies, videos, pictures, exercise, questions, I'm trying to think of something else that I can't right now But I think these are the general pattern interrupts that I would typically use in a presentation by the way a story right a Story is definitely a pattern interrupt right and then it could be a humorous story a little humor a joke whatever may be that could be a pattern interrupt as well.

So again the next time you're doing a presentation whether it's logged into a general crowd maybe it's an investor right even if you're talking to investors you're pitching I don't know some angel investors some private equity company you're pitching Keep in mind that you still have to play by the rules here.

In other words, you have to keep them engaged.

You know, tell them what you're going to do, what product you're building, why they deserve to invest in your company, so forth and so on.

So, somebody says, humor, call someone, cast ahead, which is Chris says, call someone out in an audience, ask them something specifically, i.e.

So, Marcus Sheridan's a great presenter, does this exceptionally well.

He actually goes out into the audience, right?

Just he goes out into the audience and as soon as he comes out into the audience People just perk up it works all the time by the way as soon as you walk down the road You know amongst the crowd so to speak people just generally kind of you know, pay more attention because like, uh-oh, this person's coming my way.

And then what he does, he asks a question right in the crowd.

And then he kind of does this whole improvisation thing where he has conversations with people in the audience and everybody's watching and paying attention Because something is happening the speaker got off the platform came down into the audience is now asking questions Great way to engage an audience All right humor.

We talked about that anything else before I sign off And I think not on that note I'll let you guys go.

Like I said I'll try to do a couple of these a week.

I'm not gonna plan any right now As far as you know put out a schedule, but I'll just try to drop these and you can also watch these on YouTube again On my youtube channel.

So if you go to youtube.com For slash sales influence you should be able to see this stream again Or if you're on linkedin or I think Twitter right now you should be able to see the stream again if you want to see it.

Victor Antonio always reminding you, sellinate hard when you know how.


Speaker 0: To do. All right. Victoria Antonio live here. I'll wait for a few folks to jump on. Before I get into the topic of the day.

So again, I'll wait for a few folks to jump on before I get going here. Thought I'd launch sales after noon. Anytime after midday, just jump on and see what's what. So again, I'll just wait for a couple of people to jump on before I get into the content super excited about this Leave me some feedback here on You know in terms of sales, how's it going? How are we doing this year?

It's August moving into September So again, the year's going by rather quickly. So It's amazing how time flies man. And so I got somebody in here cool Thumbs up back at you. Again, I'll wait for a couple of people to jump in And then I will let me see if I can track the activity here and again, leave me a comment Give me some feedback. Just say hi.

What's up? All that good stuff And let me see what I got here. I got some Moving the cameras around here on my screen. I'm mixing them alone. I'm messing around a lot of stuff over here.

And so, let's see. All right, like I said, leave me some feedback. Just say hi. Greetings from Trinidad Tobago, man. Glad to have you on board.

This is gonna be a quick 1. It'll be about 15 minutes we'll get into this. It'll be about 15 minutes. I'm not gonna wait 15 minutes. I'll give it a couple more minutes.

It's 12.31 right now. Just give it a few more minutes. And then,

Speaker 1: let me see. Cast Ahead is here at me. There he is, Chris Stone.

Speaker 0: Sales afternoon, my man. Hi from the Philippines. Charles, were you at the event I did in the Philippines Charles that was pretty cool I was up in I say did Manila and also went over to Cebu and did a couple of presentations there so it was a great event Manila got to try some cool food, some interesting food over there, so it was fascinating, so yeah. All right, man, well I'm gonna do, let me just jump into this presentation. I had this conversation on presentation styles and presentation skills.

For some of you who know this, I know Chris over at Cast Ahead knows this, I did the closing keynote for the National Speakers Association this year, 50th anniversary, did the closing presentation on the second day. Questions I get when I do my presentations are often is like, you know, how is it that you keep audiences so engaged? Like, how do you just hold them, especially for 45 minutes for an hour? By the way, they gave me the 5 p.m. Slot.

The event was over at 6 p.m. So if you could imagine, there's the crowd, over a thousand people are sitting there for a whole day. I come up at 5 p.m., they're tired, 1 hour to go, they're thinking about going to get something to eat, something to drink, they just wanna leave. So 5 p.m. Is always the toughest slot, right, to get in any presentation because the energy level is like, vroom.

And so the question then becomes is, how do you engage them? Like, how do you keep them in the moment, so to speak? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you what I do in my presentations. And Let me do this instead. It's probably what I wanted.

What I want to introduce to you, and again, some of you've seen my past presentations know what I'm about to present, but it's very powerful. It's called pattern interrupts. Now, let me describe pattern interrupts because if you get them and you understand them and you know how to implement you will be a great presenter. So if you think about the brain, the brain is a let me see if I can get the marker going here. I don't know if I'd like red.

I don't like red here. Let's go with something brighter, more chipper than red. Right So imagine for a moment that that's your brain, okay? That's your brain. And if you think about it, most people don't think about it, that's an R, your brain uses up a lot of energy, right?

Now, most people don't know that this represents about 2% of your body weight but it uses 20% of your energy. Do you ever have those moments where you like you didn't do anything you just sat behind a desk and you didn't do anything all day. But at the end of the day, you're mentally exhausted, right? What happens is all that thinking, whatever's going up here, cognitively, this brain is using up a lot of energy. Now, so step 1, your brain is an energy hog.

It loves the use of energy So what happens the brain also has a second mechanism the brain also likes to focus on what's important Right likes to focus on what's important. So for example have you ever done a presentation and people start looking at their phones, right, or start doing something else but paid attention to you? What's happening at the moment is that the brain is using up energy, but what it's also doing is it's allocating its resources somewhere else, in this case on the phone, because what the brain says, what I'm listening to is not important, I might as well check my email on my phone, right? So our job is again, to hold its attention. So again, we're fighting 2 things.

1, the brain uses up a lot of energy people get tired number 2 The brain is saying that that's not important in front of me I'm gonna reallocate my resources to something else and if you still don't get it, let me give you this visual Think of a computer right in Your laptop, right? And what happens after a while when you don't use a laptop? It falls asleep. Why? It's trying to conserve energy.

Your brain is no different. When it hears something or sees something that's not important to the brain, self-interest, it says, let me go do something else, or just reduce the amount of energy in other words by not paying attention to you I'll just check my email. That's less energy consumption. That's what I'll happen. That's what I'll do now when the computer goes to sleep It's trying to conserve energy.

So how do you wake up a computer? You typically what you wiggle the mouse right or tickle the pad, right? So keep those 2 things in mind uses energy and if it's not important it reallocates its energy somewhere else having said that Here's what I've come up with in terms of pattern interrupt. I want you to imagine that this is a presentation you have to do. Now again, this works in 1 to a crowd, 1 to 1, doesn't matter.

You're doing a presentation, right? Now let's say this is attention, holding their attention over time. Holding their attention over time. Now, is it possible, is it possible to hold somebody's attention, let's say we're doing a 60 minute presentation, 60 minutes, Is it possible to hold somebody's attention at 100% for a whole hour? Is that possible?

Yes or no in the chat. Is that possible? Is that possible? To hold somebody's attention. Could Victor Antonio do it?

Could I hold your attention for a whole hour? Could I do it at a hundred percent? Could I do it? How much confidence? Do you have me?

Give me a yes or no? Why yes and no right? Could you do Could I do it? Could I

Speaker 1: do it? Vote. Mark Stubson says no. 0 confidence that Victor can do it. Let me see.

PWY Lil says no. Apparently there is no vote of confidence

Speaker 0: for the Victor man. And you are so right that it's really hard. You can't do it. It's hard, no matter how good you are, it's hard to hold somebody's attention 100%. So here's what you can do.

What if, because as soon as you present something, what begins to happen is the brain starts out with high interest like ah, let me listen to this new speaker, right? But as soon as after a hundred percent, let me see if I can go to white here Let me go to white it begins to Dip, it's just naturally your attention begins to dip now. This could be after 3 maybe 5 maybe 7 minutes, right? It begins to dip. So then what you have to do, going back to it, is you have to find a way, let's assume that this is 80% attention, right?

80% attention. Our job then is to find a way, once it starts dipping, our job is to push it back up. Get their attention all interested again and then it starts dipping again, push it back up. And it follows this cycle. Now this right here is called a pattern interrupt.

So we have to logically, sequentially, insert pattern interrupts throughout the presentation. For example, I can say, let me ask you a question, right? Or to the audience, Let me ask you a question. And as soon as I say, let me ask you a question, you can feel the energy go up like, what's the question? Their attention kicks back up.

Again, you start presenting, you do the question, you get the answers, you have discussion, and then you can feel it dipping again, and then you say, well here, let's do the small exercise. Okay, great. So now I insert an exercise in this as a pattern interrupt. Right? We continue, we finish the exercise, I start giving some more explanation, you feel it dipping in and you say, now, I got something, watch this video.

So now I insert right here another pattern interrupt, which is a video. You get the idea. What happens is if you plan your 60 minute presentation, If you plan out what your pattern interrupts are, you maintain them, that attention span, within this band. And if you're within this band, that's full engagement, right? Because Nobody can keep you at 100%.

Hard to do. But they can cycle you through to this 80% band right here. So, how do you use this? The next time you're putting together a presentation, whether it's 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45, 1 hour, And the longer you go, the more pattern interrupts you need. For example, if you do 90 minutes or 2 hours, right?

By the way, taking a break, when you're doing a two-hour workshop, if you stop at 60 minutes, that's a pattern interrupt, right? So again, Plan these out. What do you do? How do you sequence this throughout your presentation? Now, I don't know the exact timing of when you should insert a pattern interrupt.

You have to determine that. Every presentation is different, right? Every presentation is different. So I use the 357 rule, 357. Maybe you can do it every 3 minutes, every 5 minutes, every 7 minutes, and then pick your slot.

So then what you do is, if you believe this to be true, then what I typically do is I plan out what are my pattern interrupts. For example, there's questions. See if you have any other pattern interrupts you guys use. You have some exercises. I can show them a video.

That's another pattern interrupt. By the way, I can also show them a picture. That's another pattern interrupt. I can show them a, how about a case study, right? I can show them a case study, that's not a pattern interrupt.

I could show them some data, that's another pattern interrupt. So again, I can really sequence a good presentation, keep them active up here in this range, full attention, if I actually plan out what pattern interrupts I'm gonna use during my presentation. And when you can do that, you become a much more effective presenter because you simply know how to interrupt the pattern and again every time you're interrupted the pattern you're reengaging the audience and that's what I had for today any questions it's gonna be a short 1 by the way any questions like what do you guys do you know when you want to interrupt or keep somebody engaged, what do you guys typically do? Would love to hear your feedback. Like I said, we got pictures, did I miss something?

I got data, again, case studies, videos, pictures, exercise, questions, I'm trying to think of something else that I can't right now But I think these are the general pattern interrupts that I would typically use in a presentation by the way a story right a Story is definitely a pattern interrupt right and then it could be a humorous story a little humor a joke whatever may be that could be a pattern interrupt as well. So again the next time you're doing a presentation whether it's logged into a general crowd maybe it's an investor right even if you're talking to investors you're pitching I don't know some angel investors some private equity company you're pitching Keep in mind that you still have to play by the rules here. In other words, you have to keep them engaged. You know, tell them what you're going to do, what product you're building, why they deserve to invest in your company, so forth and so on. So, somebody says, humor, call someone, cast ahead, which is Chris says, call someone out in an audience, ask them something specifically, i.e.

Marcus Sheridan. So, Marcus Sheridan's a great presenter, does this exceptionally well. Marcus Sheridan does 2 things. 1 is what Chris already mentioned. He actually goes out into the audience, right?

Just he goes out into the audience and as soon as he comes out into the audience People just perk up it works all the time by the way as soon as you walk down the road You know amongst the crowd so to speak people just generally kind of you know, pay more attention because like, uh-oh, this person's coming my way. And then what he does, he asks a question right in the crowd. And then he kind of does this whole improvisation thing where he has conversations with people in the audience and everybody's watching and paying attention Because something is happening the speaker got off the platform came down into the audience is now asking questions Great way to engage an audience All right humor. You're absolutely right again. We talked about that anything else before I sign off And I think not on that note I'll let you guys go.

Like I said I'll try to do a couple of these a week. I'm not gonna plan any right now As far as you know put out a schedule, but I'll just try to drop these and you can also watch these on YouTube again On my youtube channel. So if you go to youtube.com For slash sales influence you should be able to see this stream again Or if you're on linkedin or I think Twitter right now you should be able to see the stream again if you want to see it. On that note, I'm out of here. Victor Antonio always reminding you, sellinate hard when you know how.

Take care.

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Sales After Noon - Sales Presentation Engagement