Great Speaking Coach

Public Speaking - High-Value Powerful Marketing that Can't Be Beat

Marketing is the first step towards making a sale. Customers and prospects need to know about your company in order for them to be open to receiving a sales call. How you will reach them is the single most important decision you have to make before you establish a marketing plan for the current state of the economy.

 

What choices do you have for your marketing efforts?

Direct mail

Sponsorships at major events

News and media releases

Brochures and websites

Speaking to audiences of prospects

 

• The costs associated with building a list for the direct mail campaign are significant--could be hundreds of dollars for each name and their contact information. 
• Sponsorships generate money for the sponsoring organization while it's hard to measure any return on your expenditure.
• News and media releases make you feel good but they reach many people who are not your actual prospects and you have no way to follow up.
• Brochures and websites may reach a lot of people but the majority of them will not be interested in what you have to say.

That leaves you with one obvious choice: speaking to audiences of your prospects. A room of 100 people who are highly likely to be interested in what you have to offer is going to generate more leads--warm leads--than any other group of 100 people who are exposed to your marketing material through any of the other marketing tactics.

 

Share your results from speaking versus other marketing tactics through our comment link below.

  

Public Speaking is the Perfect Marketing Tactic

Companies are closing their doors every day, however 142.1 million people are actively working across the United States. All the companies that employ those people are looking for more clients and customers, more B2B services, and more resources to help them grow their businesses.

 

I love to see business leaders speaking to audiences of their prospects--but I hate seeing how most of them waste their golden opportunity. They are typical ho-hum (or worse?) business speakers, and they never do the few simple things that would make the time and effort actually generate leads.

 

When money must be spent carefully, why spend many thousands of dollars on scattershot marketing tactics when you could spend a modest amount learning to be an extraordinary speaker and finding audiences of the people who want to hear what you have to say?

 

Business speaking as a high-value marketing tactic takes deliberate thought and an understanding of what appeals to the human beings and their human brains.

 

Take the time to learn from the best business speaking expert you know. When you compare the time, effort and cost for expert coaching to the value of the sales that will follow, you realize that expert business speaking design coaching is a very low cost investment in your long term growth.

 

Share your experiences and results using speaking as a marketing tactic. Post your thoughts through our comment link.

 

Public Speaking - The Secret to Immediately Attracting Your Audiences

What gets through the constant flow of information, images and messages in your day to grab you quickly? Whatever makes you pay attention is the same kind of thing that makes your audiences sit up and notice you. You know for sure that you don't feel attracted by routine or boring things such as the typical opening comments of a business speaker. So why do those things to your audience?

Start with something unexpected--a question that has serious undertones but also makes the audience laugh or feel puzzled. Music and a pantomime. Something that seems utterly in contrast to the topic--show the tropics when you're going to be talking about the frenzy of business challenges in today's economy. Don't be constrained by what you see other speakers do--they are not right, they are just uninspired.

How can you be sure this is a good idea? It's not just me trying to be different--the need to focus on attraction has been proven by brain science and has a long tradition in advertising.

Brain Rules author John Medina, PhD, shows how human beings crave sensory stimulation and are hard-wired to respond to things that are interesting. Of his 12 Brain rules, I think number 9 "Multisensory stimulation increases creativity and learning" provides an umbrella under which speakers can find ideas and rationale for variety in their speeches and presentations.

The idea is that when multiple senses--vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell--are stimulated, the effect multiplies. Therefore 1+1=more than 2.

When you open your speech or presentation by combining sound and visuals and going beyond that to touch deep layers of those senses, you have caused multisensory stimulation and increased the attractiveness of the content.

What layers of vision and sound can you imagine would increase the stimulation of your audience and lead to more creativity and learning? Share your ideas through our comment link.

I have delved into these two senses and discovered at least 5 layers for each one. Ask me more about them!

Public Speaking - Pull Prospects with Your Business Speeches

Advertisers and clever marketers know that they must pull prospects to their product or service in order for there to be a payoff or return on investment.

If you're not thinking about your business speech or presentation this way--you should!

Speaking to audiences filled with prospects and the friends of prospects is a high-value, low-cost way of strengthening your marketing efforts. The audience can be influenced by you to call for more information, ask for an appointment or find out more about you from satisfied customers.

How do you make this happen? Immediately start thinking about a call-to-action for your speech or presentation. I'm not recommending a shouted "call 1-800-BUYITNOW" kind of call-to-action like you hear on television. It's about knowing what you want the audience to do for themselves after hearing you speak and driving towards that from your first words.

Walt Tomme, President/CEO of Paradigm Leadership Solutions, opened his Accelerent Leadership Tip appearance with an ear-catching question:  "Who thinks $300 billion is a lot of money?" Of course the audience all chuckled and were curious about what was coming next. By then end of his short and lively speech, Walt had everyone in the room understanding the cost of the people on their payrolls who he calls "detractors." Walt's call-to-action was that everyone in the room must remove the detractors.

While there was no doubt that Walt and Paradigm have plenty of ideas about how to move the detractors out and bring supporters in, calling Paradigm was not his call-to-action. So his speech was a great marketing tactic--help the audience help themselves by making an important point in a way that is sticky.

How do you use your business speeches and presentations as a marketing tactic? Share your ideas through our comment link.

If you're new to thinking about speaking as marketing, ask me to help you design your presentation, fill it with great content and deliver it in style. I'll also help you uncover the right audiences for your specific service or product.

Leadership - 3 Tips to Using Your Voice Better in Your Business Presentations

What if you focused on how your voice sounds as you prepare for your next business presentation? Here are three tips for using your voice to attract and mobilize your audience and to make your message stick.

1) Inflection and emphasis: Try asking the simple question "How will you make a difference today?" 4 times, and each time put the emphasis on only one of the key words-- "how," "you," "difference," and "today." Hear how the meaning and impact of the question changes as you vary the emphasis.

You can choose certain words of your speech to emphasize and thereby change the importance the audience places on different parts of your message. With this question, if you emphasize the word "today" your speech would continue with steps the audience can take right now. If you emphasized "you" then you'd continue by focusing on steps each person could take.

2) Dramatic effects: Human brains crave and respond to interesting and varied stimulants. Telling a story with dramatic effects--suddenly loud or soft, faster or slower, deliberate pausing--are simple dramatic effects you should incorporate into your stories and key points. When you're practicing and rehearsing, make notes to yourself about where you're going to use a dramatic vocal effect. Just do this a handful of times and your speech or presentation will be much more memorable.

3) Conversational, not literary: Your speech or presentation is not being graded by your high-school English teacher! An audience responds with enthusiasm to a speaker who sounds as if he or she is talking just as they would in conversation. That means fits and starts, mostly short sentences in the active voice, and a few common phrases such as "so" or "well" or "would you believe it?" Please avoid the horrible "you know," "like," and "uh/um" but otherwise you can be secure that your conversational approach will be heard much more clearly than your literary text would be.

What vocal qualities do you incorporate into your speeches and presentations? Share your ideas through our comment link below.

Public Speaking - Let Superman Help Your Speaking Stick

What surprising and unexpected bits can you add to your next speech or presentation to make your ideas sticky?

During a recent appearance with Speakonomics! (TM) I demonstrated one simple example. When talking to your staff, especially now when morale is low, you could highlight special things that people are doing to keep the company going. You might describe someone as dedicated and hardworking with a surprising side that shows up to deal with a crisis--and then project a cartoon with a business man tearing open his shirt to reveal the Superman logo on his chest.

This was less than one minute of my sixty minute speech, yet it was very memorable. Dr. Lynese Lawson, DO and medical director of Proactive Wellness LLC said later "Susan gives you information that you can use to spur people to think outside the box. She shows you that by adding a piece to the presentation that is not traditional, a picture of Superman for example, it makes the audience remember you."

Dr. Lawson further said "She teaches you how to connect to the audience showing your human side, so that you are a real person, not just a presenter. I came away from her presentation with tools that I will incorporate into my speeches right away."

How are you connecting to your audiences as a human being? Whenever you answer the question "who is in my audience and what do they care about?" remember this most important fact--the audience is composed of human beings who have hard-wired impulses and needs. The better you are at meeting the needs of the human being, the better you will be able to mobilize them to take action.

Share one new and different thing you include in your speeches and presentations through our comment link below.

Leadership - The Upside of a Downturn

The smartest leaders are thinking just this--"there is an upside in the downturn and my company is going to take advantage of it."

I've been so annoyed by quotes from business figures who complain that they can't do anything because they don't know what is going to happen.

Here are some leaders who are making opportunities for their companies:

"The current economic climate requires laser-like execution of our 360 degree approach to business development...  To ensure top-line growth, we are applying relentless focus on recompetes and we are driving highly differentiated solutions that are tied to agency missions and to the new administration's priorities." — Andre D. Etherly, Vice President, Keane

"Typically, in an economic downturn, the strong get stronger.  OnPoint will leverage the current environment as an opportunity to evaluate small, strategic acquisitions and to recruit key strategic hires from our competitors."  Regina  H. Gibson, Vice President of Business Development, OnPoint Consulting

"InterImage is focusing narrowly on our core competencies and previously deployed solutions and identifying opportunities with new customers against those specific competencies/solutions." — Leslie Steele, CEO, InterImage

These executives are speaking positively about their companies and how they will serve their customers. How about you? What message are you delivering in this downturn and will your message lead to a worse situation or to an upturn?

Share you thoughts about positive messages through our comment link.

Public Speaking - High Value Low Cost Marketing

How do you let your clients and customers, your industry and your potential referral partners know you are controlling your destiny?

Your company has made smart moves--put an abundance of resources into your best service area or product line so you perform better than ever. You've undertaken critical thinking-based planning to ensure that you make it through 2009.

This is in contrast to many of your competitors who are operating out of fear these days. They slash expenses which means fewer services and the people to provide them. Don't their customers worry about whether it's safe to do business with them?

You must let people know that they can and should do business with you and your company. If you don't make it clear, everyone will assume you've succumbed to the same sorry fate.

Speaking is the single most effective, high-value, low-cost marketing tool at your fingertips. When you speak you:

• Raise your visibility

• Are the stand out name in the marketplace

• Show you have your finger on the pulse of the industry

• Are known as high profile thought leader

• Show that your company is shining above the crowd

Make overtures to meeting organizers such as industry association organizations and chapters, service groups, community non-profits, chambers of commerce, economic development agencies, business roundtables and offer to share your expertise about about a topic of interest to their members, such as critical thinking in the (name industry here) or growth strategies (for the audience) in an economic downturn or keeping workplace morale strong.

Your speech must be well-designed and focused on the specific audience, plus you must have a clear call-to-action. If you need help designing your presentation--making it about the audience, not about you--let me know.

How do you use speeches and presentations to increase your visibility? Share your ideas through our comment link below.

Public Speaking - Avoid the Tim Geithner Mistake

Big build up, lots of expectations, the guy has a strong reputation--and what happened? Tim Geithner spoke to the world and said--virtually nothing.

The stock market sank, journalists and broadcasters panned him, the voice of the opposition got louder. You do not want these kinds of results from your speeches and presentations. Granted, you are not the Secretary of the Treasury, but still--if your audience has expectations, you better meet them.

If you want to make an impact with your speech, you will do what it takes to create expectations, so that step is important. It is how you meet them that will be remembered and can help or hurt your reputation.

Geithner's biggest lapse was promoting a "plan" and then delivering only a "concept."  A plan would include the starting point and the end goal. A plan would include specific steps and details that make it clear how to get from the start tot he goal.

Washington Post staff writer Neil Irwin wrote:

"And the more novel elements of the Geithner plan -- the creation of an entity with public and private money to buy up bad assets from banks, a "stress test" of 20 or so of the nation's largest banks, and $50 billion to prevent foreclosures -- came with so few details about how they would work that it contributed to the very public anxiety and investor uncertainty that Geithner criticized. "

So Geithner got an audience response but not he one he wanted.

Follow these tips to avoid his huge mistake:

1. Know what the audience is thinking

2. Set expectations accordingly

3. Deliver on those expectations

How do you generate the response to your speech that you desire? Share your thoughts through our comment link.

Leadership - Obama is Mobilizer in Chief

Journalists are following President Obama's visits to local communities hard hit by economic troubles. They are calling him the "mobilizer-in-chief" for his well-regarded speaking abilities. When he speaks people listen and respond.

How much mobilizing do your audiences do? If you bore them with overly wordy slides and boring process diagrams and flow charts, they will not be mobilized. If you stand in the dark so your slides are front and center, they will not be mobilized. If you speak in stilted sentences, jammed packed to get everything in and stuffed to the brim with jargon, they will not be mobilized.

Obama has mobilized people to real and meaningful action because he speaks in their language. He lets his rhythms and cadences flow freely. He doesn't depend on slides or scripts to get it right--he speaks from his heart and his head, with passion. He knows it is okay to misspeak or even make mistakes. He seems real to people and he puts himself out there. That is why they respond.

When you need to mobilize your audiences--your employees, your customers, your investors and any other stakeholders-- speak to them with passion and authenticity. Dare to make a mistake or misspeak. Pause to think, use the natural rhythms and qualities of your voice. And deliver a great message that is meaningful to your audience.

They will get out of their chairs and get busy--they will be mobilized.