Great Speaking Coach

Business Networking - Be Polished and Authentic

Prepare for your business networking success by being polished and authentic. There is no contradiction in those twin goals.

Authentic means that you're clear about your values and your goals. Your values may include providing great customer service, giving clients more than they expect, and being fair in all your dealings. You desire a reputation as someone who it's a pleasure to do business with.

Your goals may focus on revenue growth, increasing your profit margin, minimizing employee turnover and being on the leading edge of your industry. These are all healthy goals that will help your business survive in the marketplace for the long term.

Being polished means that you can speak about your values and your goals in a warm way, not bragging or boasting or being arrogant. You don't belittle your competition, rather you focus on what makes you a preferred provider.

Polishing means having internalized the expression of your values and goals so thoroughly that you speak about them with the same enthusiasm as you would speak about your favorite vacation or sport or something that you're not selling. When you're stilted or boastful, you push people away. When you're warm and enthusiastic, people want to have what you're offering.

Notice that I didn't encourage you to write and memorize a 30 second commercial or elevator speech. Those are inauthentic and chilling. Who wants something that even you don't seem to like?

Focus on authenticity and polish and you'll attract more business than any 30 second commercial ever will. Share your tips for networking success through our comment link.

Business Networking - Smart Questions Help You Sell More

What questions help you develop relationships with people you meet at business networking events? Avoid the ubiquitous "What do you do?" and also tamp down your inclination for small talk about the weather or sports.

Here's a question strategy that will give you a high return on your business networking investment:

You ask: "John, I'm really curious, what's the biggest challenge in your business today?" You don't have to know what John's business is because there is always a challenge in everyone's business. Just give John an opening and he'll be happy to tell you about his.

Encourage John to keep talking for 2-3 minutes. Use conversational rewards such as "really, tell me more" or "I didn't know that!" or "I can see where that's a big one!". These comments help John develop his ideas and give you the opportunity to LISTEN carefully.

You then choose the next step between two options.

Option A: If you have a product or service that can help John address his challenge

Ask: "John, what have you tried to do to resolve this challenge?" You're looking for clues to how your product or service might be different from other things John has tried and for an opening to suggest meeting later one-on-one to see if there's a fit.

Option B: If your product or service would not help John address his challenge--then he won't care what you do. Accept this and end the conversation warmly

Say: "John, it's been great talking with you. As I meet other people here today, I'm going to be open to anyone who might have something that would help you and then I'll be sure to send that person your way." And then you're on to the next person.

No 30 second commercial or elevator speech will make an impact on someone who isn't inclined to need your product or service now. Don't waste your precious few minutes promoting yourself. Instead, find out about the other person by using this question strategy.

Share your thoughts about business networking tips through our comment link.

Business Networking 'Commercials' Don't Work!

Business networking equals more sales. That's the promise and benefit circulated by the organizers of networking events.

Has this been your experience? I'm afraid that the number of people who increase sales from attending networking activities are few and far between.

I believe there's one key reason:  everyone goes to networking events well-prepared to talk about themselves.

Wait, you say, that's what I'm supposed to do: have my 30 second commercial or elevator speech carefully written and memorized so it will trip off my tongue as soon as someone asks me "What do you do?"

I think that the vast majority of people ask the question "What do you do?" out of habit. They don't know what else to say and they also fervently hope that the other person will ask them the same question in  return. So the result is two people who have exchanged 30 second commercials or elevator speeches and think they've networked. Of course most of the time there is no follow up and these people feel disappointed--the glorious benefits of networking haven't come their way!

Networking success can come your way if you follow my two principles for public speaking: Put the Audience First and Be Yourself, Polished. Yes, business networking is a form of public speaking and it's so much easier to learn one set of principles for all public speaking than to have to learn many different ones.

I'll tell you more about this in my next post. Subscribe to this blog so you get every post. And let me know about your own business networking experiences. What works for you and what doesn't? Post your thoughts through our comment link.

Public Speaking- Use Plain Language not Jargon

Jargon brings people together, creating a sense of ownership and belonging among those who speak it. Outsiders are turned off and turned away by jargon however. Marketing and PR professionals need to steer clear of it when they must appeal to a wider audience, says David Meerman Scott in his book The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

I agree wholeheartedly and believe the same approach is valuable when you're preparing and delivering a presentation. Instead of jargon-laden slides and speaker content, use broader based language that everyone will know and understand. That way you attract the whole audience and deliver a message they can take to others.

Start with your call to action. Craft content that is vivid and in the active voice without jargon. I consulted with a director of marketing who was hosting weekly teleconferences with the sales team. She always urged them to work on getting "price improvement" from their customers. She wanted the sales team to raise their prices, which they were reluctant to do. The Marketing Director needed to speak in plain language to model how the sales team would have to speak with the customers. There was no way she could successfully encourage the sales team to raise prices as long as she didn't use plain language.

How do you avoid jargon and use colorful three-dimensional language that connects you to your audience? Post your ideas through our comment link below.

Sales Presentations-Put the Audience First

Buyer persona is the concept David Meerman Scott uses to focus marketing and PR professionals on their target market. This detailed image, in color and three dimensions, of the various groups of people your product or service should appeal to helps you articulate the outcomes they will enjoy when using your product or service.

The buyer persona concept dovetails perfectly with my first principle of public speaking: Put the Audience First. Put the Audience First means that you create content and deliver it in a style that your audience wants to hear. When you Put the Audience First you have a strong chance to mobilize them to respond to your call-to-action. Otherwise, they'll leave you without a backward glance.

How to create a buyer persona or audience profile? Start with three questions:

1. "What's the biggest challenge in your business today?"
2. "What have you already tried?"
3. "What happens if you don't fix it?"

Craft your presentation around the answers to questions 1 & 3. (Don't repeat #2, their stories of past failures.) If the biggest challenge of your prospect is how to differentiate their company in a crowded marketplace and you offer a business to business solution, put on the hat or shoes of your preferred customer groups. Describe their pain--low sales, high employee turnover, feeling forced to compete on price--then offer them something that makes the feel you get them and care to help them. It's not about you, it's about them.

Content that most quickly turns off an audience includes:

• Mission Statement: it's all about you and the listener doesn't care
• The Four P's of marketing: product, place, price, promotion. These just invite the listener to sift through their own data bank and find other products, prices, places or promotion that are better than yours.
• Corporate history: what good are 40,000 employees worldwide to a listener who only want s to do business with you in the neighborhood?

How do you create an audience profile? Share your tips and techniques through our comment link below.

Marketing and PR Rules for Public Speakers

Public speaking and marketing are two different disciplines so they must have different principles, right?

Not so fast! I've just finished reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and I see many similarities between the principles of these two critical communication methods.

David lists among the 'old rules' of marketing: 1) it's really advertising and 2) it has to appeal to the masses. Sales teams who put all their product information, their corporate image, and their spin into a deck of slides and call this a sales presentation are following these old rules. This so-called presentation is advertising to the masses. Same show to every audience, over and over.

New Marketing rules include: 1) People want authenticity, not spin and 2) People want participation--that is, they want to see themselves in the content you're conveying. Let these new rules guide your presentation and you'll get your audience to engage with you and respond to your call-to-action.

A community bank asked me to help their market managers for both deposits and loans take a giant leap forward

Public Speaking Practice - 3 Reasons You Should Record Yourself

Public speaking opportunities give you as the speaker enhanced status, a platform for your passion and career or business advancement. Take each presentation opportunity seriously and practice and rehearse as if everything depended on it. It just might be a turning point for you.

Recording your practices with audio and/or video devices offers you a chance to really polish your performance. Here are 3 tips for using these practice tools.

1) Use your time wisely: Don't watch or listen to the whole speech. Instead, recall the specific moments during your practice when you felt or recognized trouble and fast forward to those spots. Identify the specific issue (was it lack of knowledge, not remembering your outline, being uncomfortable with the content, being distracted by something or someone?) and then stand up and repeat that section a few times. Start one or two sentences before the trouble spot and continue a few sentences afterward. This will integrate the newly practiced piece into the rest of the presentation.

2) Evaluate yourself cautiously only about things you can fix: You can easily improve your clothes, your hair style or color and your delivery style. Focus on these rather than giving yourself a failing mark for qualities that can't be changed such as age (young or old) or weight (maybe in a few months, but not today). When you recognize that your clothes look ill-fitting or your hair is always in your face, you have a specific, narrowly focused task you can address. Fixing one or two specific, manageable things will work wonders for your self-esteem.

3) Use successive recordings to boost your confidence: Record a practice, quickly look or listen to it, identify two or three opportunities that are within your power to address today, then record your next practice. Focus on hearing or seeing the changes you've made, rather than finding new areas that bother you. Two or three iterations will fix most things and you'll gain confidence that you can deliver the whole presentation at the same, improved level.

What tips do you have for making the most of your practice recordings? Post them for us all through our comment link below.

Public Speaking Practice - 3 Reasons Not to Record Yourself

Great Speaking Coach reader Michael Cortes suggests that you use audio and/or video recordings to help yourself practice your presentations for public speaking opportunities.

Before I endorse the idea let me take a look at 3 three reasons why audio and/or video recordings can be counter-productive:

1) You have a poor self-image: Whether your poor self-image is around appearance (clothes, weight, height, posture, age) or around inner issues such as confidence or self-esteem, video recordings can hit you hard. You are the most critical audience member for yourself, and you must be cautious in your evaluation of viewing yourself. Your real audiences will see the whole picture and won't pick you apart the way you'll do to yourself.

2) You have limited time to practice: If your presentation takes 30 minutes to deliver, then it takes 30 minutes to watch or listen to the recording. No one has unlimited time to practice, so it may be more helpful to use your time practicing more and watching less.

3) Reinforcement of undesirable behaviors: Most of your quirks of presenting are habits--that is, they are behaviors that you do without planning to. When you spend too much time watching or listening to them, you risk reinforcing them. This is because you will say to yourself, "okay, I've got to stop doing that" and the act of naming it (such as pacing, pointing with one outstretched finger, speaking towards the screen, etc) risks reinforcing it.

Next post: 3 tips to make the most of your recordings.

Share thoughts about your experiences recording yourself through our comment link below.

Public Speaking - 2 Bad Excuses and 3 Tips for Practicing

Public speaking and presentations provide great opportunities to the person doing the speaking: status grows, promotions become possible, sales increase, you're recognized as a leader and an expert. So why don't you find the time to practice?

I'm dismayed when people tell me they have to put meetings, emails, and teleconferences ahead of practicing their presentations. None of these activities has more potential than standing up in front of an audience and making a difference in their lives or they way they do business or work. None of these activities requires the other person to spend time and energy getting to the speech and expecting it to be worth their investment.

People also tell me they're better when they wing it. They say they have more energy and passion when they're not practiced. Simply put--baloney! This is a story you tell yourself to avoid the hard work required to practice and the effort it takes to schedule in the time to practice. If you calendar in a hour a day for a week, you have to tell everyone who wants you for that hour that you're not available. Because you don't believe you need to practice, you feel guilty protecting that hour each day. So you don't do it.

Many times I find that people use these excuses not to practice because they really don't know how to make good use of their practice time.

3 Steps will make your presentations practices successful:

Build Power Point Decks Backwards

Do you want the opening of your presentation to make your audience sit up and take notice? Then start by writing the last slide of the deck!

Why the last slide? One of the biggest problems with the technology of Power Point is that it forces you to write one slide at a time in a linear or consecutive order. So you never think about the last slide until you get there. And it's really hard to get a clear picture about the flow of your whole presentation because you're looking at one slide at a time.

When you start with the last slide, you'll write down your call-to-action. This will be crystal clear and relevant to the issues of the audience you've been speaking to. (If you don't understand this concept visit What's In It For Me?)

Then work backwards, one slide at a time. Think: if my call-to-action is X, what must I say before that to have X make sense? Write a slide that reflects that leading-up-to-X idea. And keep working like that until you get to the first slide.

Use the one-slide-per-2-minutes rule as a guideline. If you're speaking for 30 minutes, you should have about 15 slides. So when you open that new deck, enter 15 blank slides, then start working on the 15th slide.

You'll shorten the time it takes you to write your deck because you've been so clear about the content for each slide. It must be related to the slide that you've just completed.

Presenters must make technology work for them, not the other way around. Start at the end and work backwards and you'll decks that are more meaningful to your audiences and you'll shorten your own preparation and practice time too.

Share your Power Point tips through our comment link below.