WIIFM: why should anyone watch your talk or video?

By Alastair Greener, presenter of Present Yourself in a Minute · Updated 5 November 2026

WIIFM stands for "what is in it for me". Every listener asks it, usually before you have finished the first sentence, and a talk that does not answer it early loses people to their phones or their next meeting. The answer comes from planning the talk around what the listener needs.

Answer it in the first minute or two

Present Yourself's advice is to show why they should watch within the first minute or two. Do that by naming the problem your audience has and saying what the talk will do about it. Keep it concrete. "This talk shows you how to finish a recording without re-recording the intro" is an answer. "This talk covers production workflows" is not.

Skip the pretext. Drop lines such as "I am going to tell you a story" or "let me start by saying". Just begin with the problem.

Three questions to answer before you write

1. Who is watching? Name one person in the audience you would most like to help.
2. What do they want from this? Use their words, not yours. A sales manager wants a sales number, not a model of the funnel.
3. Which problem can you fix in this talk? Choose one. A talk that tries to fix four problems fixes none of them.

Write one sentence answering each question, then build the opening from those three sentences.

An example

A talk on pacing for a sales team might answer the three questions like this. The person is a sales manager who runs three calls a day. They want their calls to finish on time. The problem to fix is the call that overruns because the opening takes too long. The first minute then says that the talk will show how to cut the opening and finish the call in the time booked.

Signal the pain point early

Present Yourself's advice is to signal the pain point in the first few minutes. Name it out loud. Listeners who recognise their own problem will stay to hear the answer. Those who do not recognise it are probably in the wrong room, and it is better that they know early.

Common mistakes

• Opening with your credentials. The audience wants the problem first. Your background can come in when it helps them trust the answer.
• Opening with the agenda. A list of what you will cover is a preview, and it adds little on its own.
• Promising more than the talk delivers. A broken promise costs more than a short talk.
• Answering it once and forgetting it. Come back to the answer in the middle and at the close, so the reason to watch is still there when people are tired.

For the opening lines, read fifty ways to open. For a structure that holds the answer from start to finish, use hook, message, recap and call to action, the four-part shape Present Yourself teaches as a way to build a talk around the audience's question. The writing for the ear guide covers how to say it once you have written it.

Related guides

• Hook, Message, Recap, Call to action: the HMRC structure
• Fifty ways to open (hooks that work)
• How to end: bookends, loops, last lines
• Writing for the ear: short sentences, short words
• Words that cost you credibility: fluff, superlatives, -ly words, jargon
• All guides and tools

The picture at the top of this page is an illustration, not a photograph of a client or a real job.