Life is a quest, and so is a good speech.  Quests are something we understand; they are deeply imbedded in us from an early age from movies, books, games and stories our elders tell us, if you were lucky enough to have an elder who told stories.

Because we understand the genre, it’s a great advantage when we’re working our way through a speech.  It’s hard to retain information aurally; we need all the help we can get.  If we have generic expectations, then we can match the information coming in with our expectations.  That’s an easier way to retain things than if all the material coming at us is a complete surprise. 

So take your audience on a quest.  How do you do that?  A quest has a hero, an initial challenge or problem to get things rolling, and a journey in search of something — a cure, a magic bean, a lover, a kingdom — almost anything is possible — and a final goal.  Quests work well in business presentations when you’re trying to take a division somewhere, launch a new product, or business, enter a new marketplace, achieve a quarterly, yearly, or any kind of goal, and so on.  And doesn’t that describe most of business activity?

Cast your audience as the hero, not yourself.  The challenge is whatever you’re hoping to achieve, overcome, put an end to, or begin.  And the journey involves lots of sacrifices — all the sacrifices the audience will have to make in order to reach the goal.  But they’ll expect — even demand — to have sacrifices, because that’s what heroes on quests do. 

An audience on a quest is a happy audience.  Don’t let them down.  Challenge them and they will not disappoint you.