[Video] “7 Ways to Transform a Pause into Influence Part 7″

10X Business Letter
San Diego, Ca
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Dear 10X Business Builder,

Imagine this…

You are super excited presenting your material to a group of professional adults and all of sudden you hear a couple of people chatting in the back of the room.

You pretend not to hear the noise hoping that they will eventually stop, but they don’t. They keep talking. As a matter of fact, the more they talk, the louder they get.

Eventually the noise becomes extremely distracting and the motor-mouths start annoying the people around them.

As a presenter and leader of the event, what do you do?

I have seen various presenters handle this situation in different ways.

1.) The presenter increases the pace and the volume of this delivery hoping it will “shut them down” eventually. That strategy is not very effective because the presenter loses his credibility by not handling the situation properly and the audience ends up being distracted because there is too much noise in the room.

2.) The presenter stops speaking and asks the chatter-boxes: Do you want to share anything with the group? This strategy may work getting the people to stop talking, but it can work against the presenter because you may lose rapport with the people who were chatting and some people in the audience may feel that you lose credibility by putting the talkers on the spot.

3.) The presenter stops speaking, pauses, and stares at the chatters. Noticing the “pattern interrupt” (the silence), some members of the audience keep looking at you and others automatically will turn their heads and look at the annoying talkers. This strategy may be an improvement, but still, you may break rapport with the chatterboxes by “singling them out” with your stare down.

So what is a better way to handle this situation considering you are dealing with adults, and unlike kids, they do not like to be bossed around?

Here is how I handle this situation…

Step 1: Stop speaking. I stop speaking the moment I notice the noise. I do not wait to finish a sentence or a word, I just stop right there. One time I was speaking and I was in the middle of saying: “this idea is very important.” I literally stopped at “this idea is very impor……..”

Step 2: Pause. This is the secret! Introducing a long pause here will break the speaking pattern and my silence will contrast the noise produced by the chatters.

Step 3: Break eye contact. I do not look directly at the people who were talking because I do not want to single them out. Instead I look down and wait or I look at something else and smile. But I do not look at them. That way the people who are doing the side talk and the audience do not feel that I am managing them.

Step 4: Walk. I move around, change my location in the room. I feel that it magnifies that pause.

Step 5: Restart. Once the the side talk ends (it eventually does), I re-start my sentence. 

I explain in more in depth in the video below.

Here is the video:

Roberto Monaco
The 10X Business Letter 
Co-Founder, Influenceology

P.S. If you want more delivery hacks, check out our online module “Delivery, how to Look and Sound Good” here.