How I Beat a Heckler Without Beating Him up

“Hey,” someone yelled from the back of the room. “Why don’t you just admit that you’re showing us all these facts and figures so you can sell us more of your product?” Uh oh. 

The heckler, interrupter, troublemaker. Probably your worst nightmare as a public speaker (except for that dream of standing in front of strangers in your underwear). Heckling and its sometimes violent consequences have certainly garnered some press coverage lately. Comedian Jaime Kennedy even made a movie about the topic. As I heard the above question blurted out during a presentation I gave a few years ago, time stopped. My response? Rebuttal? Retort? I could hear the audience’s silent unified thought, “This should be interesting.”

Let me pause the story here for a sec (and for some dramatic effect). There is a distinct possibility that you also have been challenged, derided or even booed during one of your own presentations. If you have, I want to be the first one to say welcome to the club. Depending on how thick your skin is something like this can derail you from doing any public speaking ever again. Find comfort in knowing that heckling in an educational setting (class, seminar, company mandated training) is far less likely compared to something like a political rally. I doubt many of you have ever had someone stand up in the middle of your class or company training, cup their hands around their mouth and yell, “Boooooo. You suck!” However, I bet most of us, professional speaker or not, have experienced heckling’s close relative: an open challenge by someone in your audience.

What to do? Options could include ignore the heckler, change the subject, call security or wither and die in front of everyone. In my case, none of these options floated my boat so here’s what I did: I simply said, “Can you repeat the question because I want to make sure that I’m understanding you correctly.” What this did is buy me time to think of my response. As I asked this question and while my troublemaker was restating it, my brain was going a hundred miles per hour shuffling through every bit of subject matter I had in order to find an answer. And zing, I got it. “Actually sir,” I said, “all of the numbers and statistics that I’m showing you have been done by third party companies with no affiliation to my organization. I’m simply using this data to confirm what’s already common knowledge throughout the industry and not just unique to me or my company.” Bam. Done. Whew. And here’s the best part. After I gave my answer a couple of the guy’s buddies piped up and said, “Jeff, don’t pay attention to him. He’s just giving you a hard time.” Everyone started laughing, the tension was gone and I then had the one thing you always want as a presenter: the crowd was on my side.

Having someone restate their question is something I’ve learned to use often when I feel stuck or put on the spot. The catch is don’t expect to get your answer unless you know your material backwards and forwards. Have faith in yourself, your knowledge and the answer will come.

What was your worst experience with a heckler, interrupter or troublemaker and how did you handle it? Comment below. ⬇️

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