99% Of Presenters Don’t Use This – But You Can’t Get Action Without It

Want to get inside your audiences’ brains?

Cracking the cerebral code is your golden ticket to influence skills. Whether you’re pitching a ground-breaking idea, captivating an audience with your public speaking skills, or simply aiming to sway others, tapping into their grey matter is a start but it’s not just about hijacking their synapses; you’re also aiming for the heartstrings.

Winning your audience over is a critical factor in presenting skills, public-speaking skills, influencing skills and communication skills. it’s a mind-and-emotion combo that seals the deal!

Enter ‘The WIIFM’. This is your key message where you cite the benefits to the audience from their point of view.

This vital aspect – that’s rarely included in presentations – helps whether you’re seeking to increase your departmental budget, win new business, ask your colleagues to change their behaviour or have clients buy your services.

It’s the one component in presenting that will make you stand out substantially from everyone else, making you both exceptional and memorable.

It’s All In The Mind

When you talk about ‘whats’ and ‘hows’, you’re triggering the ‘new’ brain, the neocortex, the part that sorts and analyses facts and figures. However, the neocortex doesn’t drive behaviour.

It’s your ‘old’ brain, the limbic brain, driving behaviour, responding to the vested interest – the WIIFM. This part of the brain is related to triggering emotions such as trust, loyalty and happiness.

The fact that self-interest is consistent with behaviours is also based on extensive research. For example, you’re more likely to vote for a political party that acts in your interest

How To Win Them Over

How many times have you sat in a presentation and thought to yourself:

“Why am I listening to this?  What do I get out of it?” Even if the content was interesting, you were probably left wondering:

“What’s in it for Me?” [WIIFM, also referred to as ‘the key message’ and ‘audience benefit’]

Nearly EVERY single presentation I’ve ever seen lacks this essential element to win people over. If an audience can’t see how something benefits them, it’s highly unlikely they’ll buy into it.

Finding the essence of what motivates them is the axis of your entire talk or communication strategy. Here’s a list of key messages for ANY audience and situation.

Examples WIIFMs For Your Audience

In 1943, Abraham Maslow, a social psychologist, promoted the Hierarchy of Needs, a theory of motivation that is as relevant today as it was nearly 80 years ago.

You can pull needs from any one of those stages shown here.

To save you the time and energy, I’ve already done it with a list of my top 10, below.  In fact, I have 15 more that I show in training but these are the most common:

…and the top ten

1. To make money
2. To save money
3. To save time
4. To avoid effort
5. To gain comfort
6. To improve health
7. To escape pain
8. To protect our reputation
9. To gain control over aspects of your life
10. To increase our enjoyment

How WIIFMs Work

I was lucky enough to see Margaret Thatcher’s ex-wingman, Michael Portillo, speak at an event at which I was also giving a keynote talk.

His task was to talk to his audience about leadership. However, most of his audience were uninterested with leading organisations or departments. They were hairdressers and salon owners. He took the title of ‘leadership’ and twisted it as deftly as any hair stylist, recounting that in the face of political turmoil and the expectations of his peers, he had to find his own way through a career that led him from the highest echelons of politics to making documentaries about single parents on the breadline.

His message was strong:

“You never know what’s going to happen. Despite the wishes of your bosses, your siblings, parents and community, life can take you along unexpected paths. It’s in the ability to trust yourself, to lead yourself through these unplanned trials and tribulations, that you will surely rise to your potential.”

Anyone can relate to the idea that “you never know what’s going to happen”. His core message that personal leadership skills were vital to cope with unpredictability landed with everyone in the room. That talk was over 10 years ago, but members of that audience remember it as if it was yesterday.

That’s the power of expressing the WIIFM – the right motivator to inspire your audience.

“Can you have more than one WIIFM?”

Different audiences are motivated by different benefits.

When I was training a British Aerospace Legal Team, they were having problems driving their message through to Business Development. They’d be emphasising all the problems Business Development could run into with their clients.

Since Business Development is about seeking opportunities, they saw Legal as killjoys, putting a damper on catching clients.

The message only landed by emphasising the ability for Business Development to make the most of opportunities by avoiding trouble. For Legal eagles in the audience, the message was pared down to ‘avoiding trouble‘.

To ensure that you keep everyone hooked, you may need to state a couple of benefits.

“What if my presentation subject matter has no WIIFM?”

Even if it’s simply ‘giving information’ the general theme is probably about helping your audience to decide the right strategy for profit or efficiency.

To help you locate WIIFM, use the seek, twist and scrap technique. Let’s say you’ve been told to present 25 slides to your audience, filled with content. You’ll do your listeners the biggest favour if you:

• Seek: the over-arching WIIFM. That will be articulated throughout your pitch or talk.  All your content feeds into that. Then dump the slides that are irrelevant to the at need.
• Twist: sometimes you’re given a talk that doesn’t seem to match the needs of your audience, as in my Michael Portillo story. Twist the theme so that it’s pertinent to your audience.
• Scrap: dispose of information that doesn’t meet the WIIFM. They don’t need to know what doesn’t serve their needs.  If your content doesn’t fit that WIIFM, cut it out. Scrapping is the essential element of all presentations, especially when you have so much detail at hand. I help my clients define what to keep and what to throw using this method here.

Ignore What Your Customers Say

“What?  You’ve just told me to hone in on the customers’ needs and now you’re saying this!” you exclaim.

As Simon Sinek points out in his book ‘Start with Why’, your customer will often focus on the features they want. For example, they may ask for a car with leather seats, low petrol consumption or electric options. This tells you what your audience wants.

Most pitches and presentations cover the what and how but not the WHY.

This completely misses the point.

Apple is Sinek’s famous example of a company that is technically no different from its competitors but emphasises the ‘Why’ constantly.  You want to challenge the status quo with creativity and style?  Buy Apple.

Apple is one of the most successful companies on the planet because of a consistent, inspiring message that resonates through every single presentation and marketing campaign. By the way, Apple seem to have forgotten their audience in their 2024 advertising campaign. They show art and musical instruments being crushed as they’re now apparently irrelevant, having been replaced by the new thinner I-Pad.  This caused a backlash with creators, their market, showing the importance of a consistent WIIFM if you’re in Tech Marketing.

How To Discover The WIIFM – Even If You Don’t Know Your Audience

In this article is a list of questions to ask and suggested tactics for your use.  These will help you to dig up the audience motivators. If you’re able to trigger your audience’s needs you’ll win their emotions. The facts and figures will add validity to your argument but it’s the ‘why’ that creates the change.

What To Do With Content Unrelated To Your WIIFM

Bin it. Your job when you present is to have your message land and, very possibly, to have others do something. That won’t happen if you stuff it like a peak hour underground train. You’ll just have people begging for air. So anything that’s not related to your WIIFM can be dropped: put it in the handout you’ll send afterwards or leave it for a memo but do not include it in your presentation. It’s stuffing and stuffing doesn’t stick.

Repeat Your WIIFM

Once you’ve axed material unrelated to the key message, you need to bang that message home through repetition. The audience won’t recall the key message if you only say it once, are unlikely on the second utterance but on the third, it’s more likely to be absorbed. Here are ways to rephrase your WIIFM without sounding like a broken record.

Your Action

1. When you’re given a presentation, you’ll naturally determine the subject, then find out who you’re talking to…
2. This may mean a call to the organiser or looking up attendees.  What you can do is in more detail here.
3. You only include in the presentation what links to the WIIFM. If nothing does and you try the twist technique but it sounds too contrived, then scrap it.

WIIFM Filter Checklist – Noise Removal For Your Presentations

If you want to step up your presentation skills or your influencing skills,  – either one-to-one or for your teams – have a look at my pitching and presenting skills courses here and contact me, Frankie Kemp to discuss all my communication skills courses.

This article was originally written in 2019 and was completely updated in September 2025

Photo by George Becker at pexels.com