Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

1. Monroe’sMotivated Sequence In the mid-1930s, Alan H. Monroe developed a pattern for persuasive messages that has become something of a standard because of its effectiveness. It is both logically and psychologically sound. It is known as the motivated sequence. I highly recommend it for your next speech, since it is explicitly designed to move an audience to action.

2. Attention(Intro) • This step is designed to gain the interest of the listeners. One of the biggest problems here is assuming you have the audience's attention. In fact, assuming the step as given causes problems throughout the entire speech. You cannot persuade someone unless you have his or her attention.  This step is very similar to the traditional introduction.

3. Need/Problem(pt 1) • The need step is used for developing or describing some problem or for demonstrating that the audience has a need for the speech you are giving. You want them to say to themselves, "I need to hear this," or "Something needs to be done about this!" Again, don't assume the need is obvious. Remember that this step involves need from the standpoint of the audience member. The door-to-door salesperson who says "I need one more sale so I can go to Hawaii" is being ineffective; he should address the prospect's need.

4. Satisfaction/Solution(pt 2) • Next, present a solution to the problem you presented in the Need step. Show how to satisfy the need. Scratch the itch. The Need step and the Satisfaction step appeal primarily to left-brained, logical thinking (although you always need some appeal to the right-brain thinking as well, especially in terms of clarifying information). In this step, you want the audience to think, "That will work!"

5. Visualization(advantages) pt 3 • This is where we get into true persuasion. The purpose of this step is to develop within your audience an image of the consequences of their choices. If you want them to do something, you have to help them create in their minds an image of the good things that will happen if they do what you want them to do. Or, help them imagine the bad consequences of not adopting the policy.

6. Visualization (cont) •  In this step you are appealing more to right-brain thinking; you want to get them emotionally as well as logically involved, and you want them to feel those consequences on a gut level. In the Satisfaction step, you wanted them to think, "That will work." In the Visualization step, you want them to think, "That will work for me. I can do that. I can see myself doing that."

7. Action(conclusion) • The action step should move your audience to actually do something about your speech. To do this, you need to have some clear and specific action for them to take. "Somebody should do something" only frustrates them, because they have no direction. Even "give some money to this cause" lacks motivation. Tell them, "I want each of you to give just $10 to this. If you can do more, fine. But don't you agree that $10 is within reach of all of us?" Or whatever it is you want them to do. You should know from the beginning of your speech what exact action you are going to ask them to take.

8. Action (cont) • A traditional conclusion is woven together with the action step. • Recap of main ideas/summary • Reference to Hook