How to make people actually listen to you using the HIVE framework

Ever feel overwhelmed by all the information that is constantly around us?

Research says that every single day over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created. Quintillion. That is 18 zeros!

As you can imagine there is no chance for us to take in all the information we are exposed to. To save ourselves, our brain has a built-in filter, called Thalamus, that prevents it from being overloaded with all the external stimuli and just shutting down.

While this is great for self-preservation, it has a little unpleasant side effect on our social interaction with others. Namely, it makes it a lot harder to make people listen to you and make your messages heard since there are so many other sources of information that you are competing with. Ever caught yourself checking your phone during a meeting at work, a lecture at university, or a talk at a conference, and just mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook before giving your attention back to the speaker? Me too.

To make matters worse, in combination with the growing amounts of information we are exposed to our attention span is also becoming shorter, especially in the digital space, making it even harder to make people listen.

Now, if things are looking this grim, is there anything you can we do about it? How can we make people listen to us and our ideas, whether that is during our next sales pitch, workshop, conference talk, YouTube video, blog post, or podcast episode?

Enter the Hook, Intro, Value, End Sales Pitch, i.e., HIVE framework to help you win back the attention of others and sell them your ideas in four steps.

Hook

The first step to making someone listen is to really grab their attention, to hook them. Three very effective ways of achieving this are to:

1. Ask a question (like I did in this blog post)
2. Refer to a daily situation or familiar problem, like "Who doesn't know that moment when you are washing your hands and all of a sudden your sleeves starts riding down"
3. Highlight an interesting, funny, or impressive fact, like that McDonald’s once made bubblegum-flavored broccoli.

The key is to keep your hook as short and easily understandable as possible to make sure it fits into our short attention span and is understood immediately.

Also, to really increase your chances of grabbing people's attention, do research on your audience and tailor your hook accordingly.

For instance, if you are giving a talk about the benefits of a balanced diet to a bunch of teenage boys, you will be far more likely to attract their attention by asking "Want to finally grow that biceps to impress the girls?" rather than highlighting the fact that eating too much salt can increase your blood pressure and therefore raise the chances of heart disease or a stroke.

Intro

After you have hooked your audience, the next step to making people listen is to introduce yourself. Tell them who you are and why they should care about what you have got to say.

This is your chance to build a first connection with the people listening to you and establish your credibility to gain their trust and ensure that you keep your audience's attention after you grabbed it.

The most effective way to achieving this by empathizing with your audience. Find a commonality between you and them that shows that you are or have been in their situation before, that you know how they feel. This will create sympathy towards you and increase the chances of the others really listening to you.

Here again, it is vital to do sufficient research ahead of speaking to your audience to find that commonality that you can build on.

Value

So now that we have grabbed our audience's attention, shown that we empathize with them, and established a connection, it is finally time to communicate your ideas and provide value to our audience.

This is going to be longest part of your pitch, youtube video, or talk and your time to shine.

Explain how your ideas add value to your audience's life, how do they solve the problems that they face or how does it help them achieve their goals, how does it improve the quality of their everyday life?

The important thing when communicating your ideas is to make sure you relate it back to the hook you used to grab attention and the reasons you mentioned in your intro regarding why your audience should care since these are ultimately the aspects that resonated with your audience and the reasons they are listening to you now.

End Sales Pitch

Once you reached the end of your workshop, Youtube video, or podcast, after you empathized with your audience on a problem they face or ambition they want to achieve and provided value in the form of helping them overcome this issue or outlined the steps for your audience to take to achieve their goals, you will have hopefully created a very positive attitude towards you within the people listening.

This is something you can use to your advantage.

In the last part of your presentation, Youtube video, etc. give your audience an End Sales Pitch in wherein you summarise your main points, reiterate and emphasize how your ideas are valuable to your audience, and then point them to the next video they should watch, the next blog they should read, your online class they should take, or your book they should buy.

Ultimately, the end sales pitch is your chance to create a win-win situation. If part of your audience proceeds to engage with more of your content, they can harvest more value from you for themselves and you get more chances to communicate your ideas.

However, don't try to tie them down and try to direct them to any of your content just so you can get those extra views or that extra sale, this will ruin the positive image you just worked so hard on to create of yourself. Only ever point them to related relevant content that would genuinely add value.

Summary & Conclusions

• On a daily basis we are exposed to huge amounts of data and sources of information which all compete for our attention → To save ourselves from that information overload our brain has a built-in filter that screens out all the unnecessary bits → Makes it a lot harder to make people listen.
• Use the Hook, Intro, Value, End Sales Pitch (HIVE) framework to overcome this issue
  • Hook: Grab the attention of people with a bite-sized, tailored question, familiar problem or interesting fact → Do your research!
  • Intro: Build a connection with the audience and explain why they should care about you and what you have got to say
  • Value: Provide your audience with solutions to their problems or show them paths that lead them to achieve their goals → relate it back to your hook and intro!
  • End Sales Pitch: Point your audience to related content to offer them more chances to pick up the value nuggets that you mined for them