Learn how to get the attention you want and deserve

What do you do when you need to be noticed? Do you yell and make loud noises, hop, run, or wave eagerly crying Come on, look at me! Im right here!

Well, it should work with taxi drivers, but not with your professional or personal life.

All people fight for the spotlight on the modern rapidly-evolving pressure-inducing market at the workplaces, meetings, interviews, conferences, gatherings, or projects. So, if you want to attract the attention of the most important individuals, youll need a better plan than screaming and running.

This article will provide you with advice on attracting attention, which would help you in succeeding in your professional life, being different from your coworkers, or making sure your start-up project seems amazing to the right people.

To keep your audience hanging on every word, pique their curiosity and fuel their imagination

Modern society lacks patience. Before you even start talking, your audience will have already formed their opinion about your personality and your potential usefulness.

If you dont have anything to surprise them with, they will lose their interest and think about the next person, the next project, and so on.

You ask how I do not end up like that.

The answer is by making your listeners interested in your ideas and proposals.

So-called Did you know? questions prove to be of immense help in this case. Tell three facts that your audience doesnt know but would like to.

Simply put together three short Did you know? questions to begin your speech. These questions may concern the issue you want to highlight, the work youre doing, unprecedented changes in some sphere, or the surprising demand on the market you are addressing now.

For example, if you speak about a guide on how to get a job in the modern competitive world, you may want to ask the following:

Did you know that... in 2012, three-quarters of 4 million positions were never publicized?

Did you know that... only the fifth of job applicants usually proceed to the interview stage?

Did you know that... about a half of American college graduates aged 25 and younger didnt have a job or enough work in 2012?

However, evoking curiosity is only half of the plan. You will need to give them a solution, so that it would stimulate their imagination and keep up their interest in what youre talking about.

Take the previous example. Here, you will need the following type of solution:

Imagine that...this guide would allow you to find twice more vacancies of your dream and increase your odds of being invited to an interview by 30%!

This strategy helps your audience to listen to what youre telling them because you put into words possible positive results.

Act out the problem you plan to solve by showing and asking. Your audience will do the rest

There is a saying, When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire?

It helps to realize that people are usually unaware of what they desire until you demonstrate it.

For instance, Cari Carter knows why opening with the fire is essential. Her idea was a hook for purses in a car, and she presented it by dragging a real side car seat into the auditorium before greeting everyone, which obviously attracted attention immediately.

Having done that, she started to act as if shes driving a car and then asked the following:

Have you ever been driving along and had to stop suddenly, only to see your purse and cell phone fly off the passenger seat? Imagine a hook that...

Suddenly, before she even finished, a man in the audience cried out, Ill take two! One for my wife and one for my daughter!

Carters achievement is clear: she wasnt just talking about the issue she showed the demand or the fire, thus attracting investors right away.

However, not everyone can drag car seats round and about! Show and ask is a very helpful method of highlighting an issue instead of explaining all about it. Showing and telling about your solution may result in a puzzled audience asking What? What is that?, especially if its some kind of unknown device, like receipt aggregator.

So, it usually better to show and ask in such situations.

Dont describe your device, just push your audience in the direction of the problem by asking them, for instance, Have you ever got back home from a business trip and had to track down your receipts?

In this way, you stimulate the imagination of your listeners, who would try to solve this problem in their heads. They might come up with an idea of a little box for keeping receipts.

In fact, this technique saves your time and effort because your audience doesnt require your detailed explanation of the issue and solution anymore: all of them are already picturing it!

Share whats rare to place yourself in the spotlight and apart from the pack

Modesty deserves respect, but its excess might become your biggest flaw, particularly when attempting to make your boss or other important people notice you.

Actually, being successful in making others notice you is about demonstrating your strong points.

If you wish to receive a position, you will have to demonstrate your superiority over other job applicants. In fact, when you list your achievements, its not boasting: your successes and victories make you unique and help you get interviews.

Nevertheless, how do you show youre better than others most effectively?

You will require actual examples, something to testify to your skills of a great decision maker. In order to show your potential employer that you can save their money or resolve conflicts, add real-life examples of your previous experiences to your claims.

However, what do you do if your strong suits are apparent?

Merely stress on the ones less showing. If you dont, who will?

Its especially helpful if your rivals focus on the same strong points as you. In such cases, managing to highlight a unique advantage might be simpler than competing with others directly.

Imagine you want to get an interview at NASA, and your competition has just as high GPAs as you. And like you, they graduated from top universities.

Instead of displaying all of that, you offer something special: youve won an international contest to launch a mission to Mars. Thus, you separate yourself from the majority and get a job!

Before making a proposition, first ask yourself why your subject would say no. Then work for the yes

Have you ever noticed when a person doesnt listen to you even though you havent begun talking?

Usually, thats the reaction of biased interlocutors, who say no to you in their head before you even start.

Is it possible for you to avoid it?

Ask yourself what have made them effuse you and make sure that the first thing you say is a counter-argument.

Thus, when such people listen at first to your counter-arguments, they might change their mind and pay attention afterward.

At the Business Innovation Factory conference Cassandra Lin, aged 13, presented her idea. Smiling, she addressed the audience, I know what youre thinking. Whats a 13-year-old going to teach me about innovation?

Knowing that the people in front of her would be prejudiced against her because of her age, this girl managed to convince them to agree with her in a matter of seconds.

Yet, what do you do when its far too late, and they have made up their minds?

In this case, provide new facts that would make those people reconsider and change their mind. For example, the owner of a bookshop always refused to become a sponsor of a local boys lacrosse team due to his belief that his shops logo on the jerseys wouldnt be helpful to his business.

So, one of the boys parents said to the owner, I imagine you get asked for donations all the time, but our coach could sign your bestselling book on a day of your choice. Not just that, but one of the parents is a social media genius who could blog and tweet about the sponsorship to generate publicity around the signing event.

The argument won over the shops owner to the parents side demonstrating the perks of the teams sponsor!

Pay quality attention to others and theyll do the same for you

Has it ever happened to you when a really great idea that you wanted to share with your friend wasnt met with the same amount of enthusiasm as you expected?

So you tried to find out what was wrong. Was it the wording of your proposal? Its crucial to speak the same language as your audience whom youre attempting to convince.

Sometimes, it helps to research the website content and marketing of the people youre trying to win over in order to get an idea of the language they speak.

For example, once, an author went to a National Press Club event where the founder of Space X, Elon Musk was answering questions.

The son of that author inquired how he could join Space X as an employee. Musk answered with one sentence, Dont tell me about the positions youve held; tell me about the problems youve solved.

The son and his fellow applicants changed their CVs in accordance with Musks advice emphasizing particular issues they solved. It significantly improved their chances of getting interviews at Space X since they had the hiring factor of its founder, consequently using his language and vision.

However, there is more to it than just the correct wording. Demonstrating your listeners that you get the idea is just as important! Listening is another instrumental side of connecting.

The U.S. Department of Labor Statistics stated in their research that 46% of workers who left their jobs didnt feel heard and appreciated, which prompted them to quit.

Therefore, you need to hear yourself if you want others to hear you. It presupposes avoiding interrupting other speakers or completing their sentences as well as looking at your interlocutor and not paying attention to some distractions.

The latter should be stressed since your thoughts follow your eyes.

Keep current if you want your information to be interesting. Please dont quote Aristotle!

Probably, it happened to most of us when a senior person goes on and on about some past long forgotten stuff. An old movie or a book thats not available anymore it can be dull.

Sometimes, the audience stops listening if its something before they were born, and its not because they are impolite, they merely arent able to understand.

Imagine a conference of young business people, where a speaker begins talking about Eddie Arcaro, a famous jockey-winner of two Triple Crowns in the 40s. He continues with World War II stories and examples, but no one is listening obviously.

What went wrong you may ask?

The examples that the speaker used to illustrate his speech were just irrelevant for the listeners. Had he learned at least something about them, he would have known they were mostly in their 20s. Therefore, the stories about World War II bored them despite the presenter being a famous figure in advertising.

All in all, same stories arent popular with people at all. So, examples from the past are likely old news to the majority. Your audience would yawn, get distracted, and worst of all concludes you are dull.

Imagine you are a famous CEO who wrote a book about leadership, each chapter of which begins with a quote of the so-called dead white guys. Thats what modern youth calls remarkable historical figures, including Einstein, Washington, Plato, or Hemingway. Even though their quotes are exceptional, they have become obsolete.

Using Jobs words or the quotes of Branson or Blanchard would definitely make the speech or book interesting to the young who want to learn about leadership.

Make your speech relevant. Find that thread so you can pull your audience together

Lets picture a situation when somebody prepared the findings of their study. They are presenting all of the necessary data and figures, but the audience is half-asleep. What went wrong?

Establishing a connection with people takes more than mere data. The majority needs to see a practical side of your presentation and not only your theories and assumptions, which are difficult to imagine incorporated in real life.

Curemarks CEO, Dr. Joan Fallon spoke about autism on TED Talks. She was aware of the issues worsening and applied a practical approach addressing the audience to learn how many of them knew autistic people and how many realized what the families of autistic children had to overcome and deal with.

Thus, the audience realized how bug the issue really was. That was when Joan Fallon finally started speaking and informed that over the last decade, the rate of autism augmented by almost 80%.

It took Fallon few seconds to convince her audience that the problem she presented was a truly burning issue.

Topicality is instrumental, but no one will care if you dont have an answer to the problem. For example, at a public meeting, one candidate spent all of his speech time on discussing the horrible situation of American education and tiny salaries of teachers.

Sure, people couldnt disagree, but it was a known fact that the speaker even if elected did not have the necessary power to increase the funding.

So, the public was becoming more and more annoyed with the guy, who went on about the issue he could do nothing to curb. It would have been more prudent for him to say something like, You may be curious what I can do about it. Well, Ive just presented my strategy to some of the board of education members

So, presenting a possible answer to a relevant problem, you manage to hold your audiences attention!

Illustrate your ideas with an example of an individual who experienced what youre talking about

Sometimes, its nearly impossible to imagine how others feel in an extremely difficult situation; sympathy may prove to be even more complex. It is difficult enough to connect with one individual, and trying the same with many at once is almost unachievable.

While one person dying from hunger is a tragedy, an entire nation suffering the same may suppress our ability to share the same feelings. It is termed the empathy telescope in psychology: you can relate to one person better than to several; it is easier.

For example, there was a fire on an oil tanker near Hawaii, in the course of which the tankers captain lost his dog. He was thankful for his crew escaping alive, yet mourned his dog that was lost at sea.

Soon, the public learned about this personal tragedy and raised funds to save the captains pet. As a result, the U.S. Navy spent about $250,000 of donations on a rescue mission! This telescopic empathy of people was the reason behind such deep care of the public for the captain and subsequent money collection.

However, to address your audiences emotions and intellect effectively, you need legit experiences from life to enhance your explanation. Those will make your words more believable. Why?

Decision makers usually think that stories is the domain of Disney and DreamWorks and so on while fairy tales are only for getting kids to sleep. They believe the stories are something you come up with.

In order to oppose them, present facts and real-life examples that concern your subject. Moreover, it would also be better if you limit your examples to one minute. Thus, truthful concise stories would provide your audience with evidence giving your presentation more credibility.

Final summary

The main idea:

People extremely lack patience nowadays. They arent able to pay attention and have a difficult time even noticing anyone. Consequently, its hard to connect with people. Yet, there is an answer to this problem: in order to catch peoples attention, let them know you care about them and show them that you can offer something relevant.

A piece of advice:

A confident posture goes far when it comes to attracting attention.

The way youre standing does indeed influence the extent, to which people would listen to you. There are 3 easy steps to have a necessary posture. First of all, lift your chin and head and keep your eyes focused ahead. Second, set your feet apart at the width of your shoulders, stay grounded, and maintain stability. The last step includes pretending you are holding a ball in front of you. In other words, lift your hands in front of you a bit apart. There you go!! Its you attention-grabbing posture.