Monroe’s Motivated Sequence for Inspiring Action and Sales

Monroe’s motivated sequence is a prescribed organizational structure for persuasive speeches, public speaking, and written arguments. Alan H. Monroe, a psychologist and professor at Purdue University, created the sequence and published it in his 1943 book, Monroe's Principles of Speech. The sequence contains five basic steps—attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action—the aim of which is to inspire audience members to take action after listening or reading.

Monroe’s motivated sequence of steps is only one possible way of organizing an argument. Other organizational patterns include the problem-cause-solution sequence, the pronged argument, and the compare-and-contrast format.

Use Monroe’s motivated sequence to persuade someone to take action. The sequence has five steps, which people usually cite as attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action. Learn more about what you should try to accomplish within each step.

• Get people’s attention. For the attention step, the public speaker captures the audience’s attention using a hook or attention-getter. A good hook considers the audience’s position and suggests specific ways to make them want to continue listening or reading. To grab the attention of your audience, start a presentation with a hook that’s a strong image, rhetorical question, or an interesting fact.
• Identify the need. In the need step, the speaker describes a problem that needs a solution, often making the audience feel this must occur immediately. The need step is where the speaker describes the main point, central idea, or purpose of the presentation.
• Present a way to satisfy the need. In the satisfaction step, the speaker presents the solution (or solutions) to the problem they identified in the need step. Monroe recommends meeting objections in this step, suggesting speakers address possible counterarguments to keep the audience from diverging from the path. Use statistics and visual aids if they will help you illustrate your point.
• Visualize applying the solution. In the visualization step, the speaker paints a picture for the audience of how the solution will take care of the problem, forever change the situation, or lead to a better life. The speaker can choose to emphasize the positive effects (called “positive method”), the negative consequences if the audience doesn’t accept the solution (called “negative method”), or a combination of both (called “contrast method”).
  
• Inspire people to act. Actualization is the final step of Monroe’s motivated sequence and is important to focus on as you end a presentation. Continuing to use persuasive framing, the speaker appeals to the audience in a clear statement to take immediate action. By the conclusion of the action step, you should have made a strong case for the listener to agree with you, purchase a product or service, or make a life change.

Monroe’s motivated sequence can apply to sales. Frame each of the five steps—attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action—in terms of a product the speaker is trying to sell. For instance, the speaker can discuss the product’s need, present it as the solution to that need, and display how it will affect positive change. In sales pitches that use Monroe’s motivated sequence, the call to action will always be for people to buy or try the product or service themselves.

You can apply Monroe’s motivated sequence outline to marketing. It can be a successful technique for organizing information in general marketing campaigns. For example, the five steps can shape emails, advertisements, demonstrations, and other types of text and speech communications.

An advantage of using Monroe’s motivated sequence when writing persuasive advertising copy, a sales pitch deck, or a persuasive speech is it produces a clear call to action for the listener or potential consumer.

The sequence facilitates this by requiring you to outline or frame your pitch with the target audience or target market in mind. This makes for bullet points that are highly relatable to their needs, all leading to a conclusion that emphasizes the next step you would like them to take.

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