Do you get cold feet at the mere thought of speaking in front of a large crowd? Do you have a hard time convincing and motivating people? Have you always wanted to polish your persuasion skills?
A professor and psychologist at Purdue University Alan H. Monroe created a 5- step outline during the mid-1930s. The outline is for delivering speeches that can motivate and persuade people into taking action.
It doesn’t matter if you are a PTA member assigned to make a presentation to help raise funds, a salesperson getting ready for a pitch, or even a CEO of global company. Monroe’s Motivated Sequence will help you ensure that your audience takes the necessary action to achieve the best results.
What is Monroe’s Motivated Sequence?
In simple terms, Monroe’s Motivated Sequence is a 5-step formula, also known as the progressive persuasion method crafted by Alan H. Monroe back during mid-1930s.
The purpose of this technique is to persuade people into taking action and priming your audience into making immediate changes. You can see Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in action in numerous life situations like sales pitches and infomercials.
It is imperative to have an extemporaneous, confident, and passionate delivery when using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. Attention, need, followed by satisfaction, visualization, and call to action are the five steps involved in the sequence.
Top Reasons to Use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
Alan H. Monroe used persuasive psychology for developing an outline for his speeches to be more result-oriented. The motivated sequence with its five steps is a time-tested and well-used approach to come up with highly impactful speeches guaranteed to persuade the audience. Speakers can use it to arrange and create the different parts of a message in a variety of situations.
The motivated sequence is clearly structured, quick, and simple which makes it easier for the speakers to design and deliver the most convincing speeches that will persuade their audience into taking action. This comes in handy in making the audience more focused on the things they can do. It will also make them recognize that you, the speaker, are aware of their problems, understand them, and that you will be able to help them address these issues accordingly.
Benefits of Using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
Monroe’s Motivated Sequence can help speakers to effectively convey their messages to the audience. This can encourage speakers into motivating their audience to have a more positive response to the purpose of the speaker.
Persuasion is considered a blessing. When you have the capacity to speak well, you will be able to thoroughly sell and convey your ideas. It also allows you to put across your purpose and galvanize it in the minds of your audience through effective usage of emotive language. This also lets you instill the five steps of the sequence to have a positive influence among your audience.
It doesn’t matter if you are a team leader, a manager, or a senior executive. Your primary job is to move, inspire, and motivate people into taking action – and this method can be a helpful tool that lets you glue your speech together well – in order to create an engaging and subtle persuasive speech with a good call to action.
The 5 Steps of Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
Here are the 5 steps of Monroe’s Motivated Sequence that make it work:
Attention
The very first thing that people hear in any presentation or speech is none other than the attention-getter. This must grab their interest and attention right away and make them open their ears to what you have to say.
Statistic, engaging question, quote, fact, and story are some of the best and most effective ways of gaining attention. When determining what to include in the speech, consider your audience, what suits the occasion best, and what will capture your attention if you were a member of the audience.
As you develop your speech, you might also want to add different kinds of attention-getters and tailor them to suit your speech the most.
Need
Once you managed to get the attention of your audience, the next step you need to take is to give an explanation of the issue or problem at hand. Start by asking yourself: what is the problem? Is a change necessary? Make sure you tell the audience about the problem and explain the reason why it is a problem in the first place. Explain who the issue affects the most as well as its severity. Consider the effect of the problem on your audience.
In case you find it hard to figure out what the problem is, think of the things you believe require changing or fixing. Think of the topics you are passionate about and whether the current status quo has a problem that you wish to change.
Satisfaction
After you have finished explaining the problem to the audience, you need to offer an answer to the issue. Be sure to ask yourself about the solution for your need or problem.
How will you be able to achieve this? What necessary steps do you need to take for this solution? What are the things you should consider to get to the solution?
This particular section must be a clear and a definite plan with complete steps to reach the solution for the problem. The solution in itself might be complicated so it is important to make sure it is easy and simple to follow considering your established context when you explain the issue.
It is also important to include all the necessary details as much as possible in order to have a better understanding of the solution. This can also involve steps that might seem obvious. The best way of doing it is to presume that your audience doesn’t have any idea on how to address the need or solve the problem.
Visualization
By this time, your audience must already understand the setback, be engaged, and already knows the solution. Visualization is the fourth step. Here, you need to explain to the audience how their life will be better if these solution gets used to address the problem.
What will the world be like if the problem is not an issue anymore? See to it that you focus on all the benefits. It might mean that you need to discuss a few of the issues again to enlighten how life will improve once the problems are gone.
In case you feel that you need to address the opposing points of view, visualization is considered the perfect step to talk about these claims and refute them.
Call to Action
Call to action is the last step in Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. It comes at your conclusion’s end and will also be the very last thing your audience hears in the speech. Make sure you urge the audience into taking action immediately to fix the issue.
Once you get to this part of your speech, the audience will already be interested to learn how to make the necessary change. What are the things your audience can do at once that will support the resolution?
Are you ready to use and apply Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in your next speech and say goodbye to your stage fright once and for all?