Great Speaking Coach

Public Speaking: Your Words Count for Everything

We're inundated with coverage about the candidates for US President and what is being reported? Every journalist, web analyst and blogger focuses on the content--the words the candidates say and speculation about their meaning.

It is way past time to bury the myth that your words only count for 7% of your message. People want to know what you are going to do for them when you're their CEO or leader.

• How will you solve their problems?
• What will you do to make things better for them?
• What are your values?
• What's your vision?
• How will we get there?

If your content counts for everything, do you spend most of your prep time carefully crafting the content? And I don't mean on writing slides. Slides aren't content, they are props or back up or a crutch that helps you but not the audience.

Apply a systematic process for crafting your presentation. That's what my Speech Development System is--a proven step-by-step method to ensure that the audience gets what they deserve for giving you their time and attention.

What systematic approach do you use to ensure that you deliver great content? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Public Speaking: Three Tips to Reduce Fear

"Imagine the audience in their underwear" is one of the most frequently made suggestions to people who are nervous about their public speaking opportunities. This old and long-lasting myth confounds me. How can an image of people half naked help calm someone who is nervous?

Fear and nerves are the most common obstacles to confident and effective public speaking. And it's important to have ways to deal with fear and nerves. Try these three tips instead:

1. Imagine the audience as well-dressed and professional. They are eager to hear your message. They are supportive. They understand what you're going through. They are friendly to you, not hostile or reduced to a squirming mass of uncovered flesh.
2. Be extremely well-prepared. That means you have allowed yourself plenty of time to write your presentation, you've spent 60% or more of your prep time on practices, and you've done one rehearsal simulating the real setting. You know what to expect and nothing will take you by surprise.
3. Speak about your passions. When you orient your content towards your passion about the topic, you'll reduce your nerves by 50% or more. You love your topic, you have knowledge, and you'll communicate these to your audience. As soon as the audience hears your passion and your knowledge, they will be nodding and listening attentively and those audience reactions reduce your nerves quickly, making it easy to go on.

What techniques do you use to reduce your nerves? Post your ideas through our comment link.

Sales Presentations: Stay Out of the Me-First Trap

Recently I listened to a dozen sales presentations and there was one common thread that must be broken if sales professionals are to succeed. A sales presentation is not about you, the seller.

A sales presentation is about the audience of buyers

Sure, they invited you over to "show us what you've got." But what they mean by that is to show them how you can help them fix their problems, relieve their pain, give them more and better success. Period, end of story, no 'ifs', 'ands' or 'buts.'

Three simple steps will make a difference:

1. Put the word "YOU" in the first sentence you speak. Not 'Good morning, I'm Jane Smith from XYZ Corporation,thanks for inviting us to talk about our ABC solution" Instead it must be "You come to work every day to....
2. They DO NOT care about your corporate overview. Assume they know something about you or they wouldn't have made time for you. Understand that until you have shown them that you care about them, know their goals, their needs and their problems intimately, they will not care about how many people your company employs. your locations, your revenue, and your mission.
3. Describe every feature and benefit you offer, every solution you are proposing, and every person they'll be working with in terms of their needs. A simple formula is this:

(feature/benefit X) applied to (problem/need Y) = results Z

    Bonus tip: When you get to the end of your presentation, turn their mood towards the future. Help them envision their life 2 or 3 years from now. Their problem is so effectively solved by your solution that they are enjoying the benefits you promised them. Get them out of the now and into the future. 

What tips do you use to make sales presentations focus on the buyer? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Public Speaking: Learn from Michael Phelps

No, you don't have to become a gold-medal winning Olympic swimmer just to become a world-class business public speaker! You can take some of Michael Phelps' success strategies to heart to wow your own business audiences.

For example:

See Your Goals

Michaelsaw himself earning each of the gold medals. Not one or two but each and everyone of the eight he set out to win. When you're speaking, clearly see each of your goals: the positive audience responses, the eagerness to go out and do what you ask, the testimonials pouring in afterwards.

Practice until every detail is built in:

Michael practiced every second of his swims--the reach and position of his arms, the kicking of his legs, how to touch the wall and turn around--and dozens of smaller details. When he put them all together he became the invincible swimmer he is. If you think you can gloss over practices and just rely on winging it in front of your audiences, you'll never win one gold medal. much less eight.

Know your audience:

Michael's audience includes his fellow competitors. He knows what makes them tick and he swam not only for the gold but to address and overcome every competitor's goals and desires.When you examine the motivations and challenges of your audiences--each and every one, each and every time--you will then deliver a presentation that is forceful exactly because it is all about them.

What else did you learn from Michael Phelps? Post your thoughts through our comment link.

Public Speaking: How Serious Should You Be?

When you're speaking in public, how can you be appreciated for your seriousness without being labeled boring? Here is technique #3

Focus on variety in your presentation. Power point is not a synonym for the word presentation. Presentations--whether you call them presentations, briefings or speeches--are about the act of a person delivering content to an audience. Slides are simply a delivery format and must be treated as back up to the person speaking.

Variety options include:

1) Leading materials. These may be stories and audience participation as I described in the last two posts. Leading materials are also quotations, conclusions drawn from studies, discussion of trends, images, sound, and references to popular culture (using movie titles as analogies or metaphors).

Get away from what the audience 'expects' such as process diagrams and flow charts. Just because your slide software makes it easy to create them, that doesn't mean that audiences like them. They only expect them because so many business speakers include them in their slides.

2) Slide compilation. How many times do you insert a blank slide into your deck between other slides? You should--it allows you to talk from your own passion, expertise and authenticity. How many times do you incorporate an image, such as a photograph, let the audience absorb it for a few moments, then connect your meaning to it? Almost everyone processes information at least in part visually, and beautiful images powerfully attract the brain.

Your text should be only bullets and short ones at that. Limit yourself to 4-5 words and 4 bullets on a slide. Think of the bullets as triggers for you and anchors for the audience. If they need lengthy text, provide that in another format.

3) The third method of adding variety to your presentation is through your voice and delivery style. Do not attempt to change your speaking qualities completely. Simple select times throughout your presentation when you will speed up or slow down, speak more loudly or more softly, and insert pauses.

Get away from behind a lectern or podium. Allowing the audience to see you in full adds variety--you're not just another talking head. Allow yourself to use your hands as you naturally do in conversation. Movement and gestures help the audience pay attention compared to the nothingness of watching a mouth behind a podium.

When a microphone is required, be firm in requesting a lavaliere mic that you can clip onto your lapel or shirt. This is for the benefit of the audience--unlike microphones fixed onto the lectern which the sound engineer likes.

Share your techniques for adding variety to your business presentations. Click on the comment link below.

Public Speaking: How Serious Should You Be?

When you're speaking in public, how can you be appreciated for your seriousness without being labeled boring? Here is technique #2.

Get the audience involved. When you give the audience meaningful participation and involvement they start experiencing themselves as smart and interesting and appreciate you for helping them feel that way.

Audience participation ranges from the very simple (raising their hands as you do a survey on their feelings and attitudes) to real active learning. Here are ways to do that:

Handout: a few well-planned exercises in your handout will give them a way to learn on the spot.

• Ask a question as part of your speech, then give them a minute to write down their own answers.
• Provide a simple game such as a cross word puzzle, jumble, or word search on your key words.
• Provide the initials of your acronym and give them space to write down what the letters stand for.

Interactive exercises: provide short and simple instructions that each person can do with their neighbor. What's their answer to a provocative question? How would they solve a problem? Be sure to time them carefully, tell them which person speaks first and when to switch, and ask for a show of hands afterwards.

What techniques have you used to get the audience to experience the learning you're delivering to them? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Public Speaking: How Serious Should You Be?

You're a CEO or a leading authority on your area of expertise, or a spokesperson for your company or industry: positions that everyone would agree require a substantial level of gravitas and seriousness.

Yet how do you avoid being so serious that your audiences create a message of their own about you:  "boring!"

Showing your passion and authenticity to your audience is much more important than demonstrating yet again your expertise and deep knowledge of details.

I'm going to describe three techniques to help you be appreciated for your seriousness without being labeled boring. Technique #1 is in this post. Techniques #2 and 3 will be in the following posts.

Technique #1:Turn your expertise into stories. Rather than telling the three steps for this or two factors for that or describing the elements of a process, demonstrate the validity and importance of these through a true story from your own experience. 

• What crisis occurred that required the application of your steps or process?
• How did these steps or this process make a difference for you and the people you work with?
• How can the audience use these steps or process themselves?

In your story, be sure to use attractive language: touch on emotion (were people worried, scared, resentful, desperate, etc?) Tell the story in the active voice as if it is happening right then. Make sure the story has a happy ending or an outcome that the audience will appreciate.

What have you done to come across as serious without being labeled boring? Share your techniques on through comment link.