Great Speaking Coach

Audiences Applaud When You Give Them More with Less

A CEO is listening impassively as I describe to her my Write a Speech Now system. Write a Speech Now is a clear structure upon which you build your speech. It's like a road map or a blueprint.

Her first comment in response was that she couldn't tell me her three key points right then. She had too much in her mind. That was fine because I know that you don't walk around with three key points clearly in your head.

I asked her some questions: what does the audience care about--for their organizations, for their customers, for themselves? What are the obstacles they face to achieve the things they care about? What is your own story--in other words, how did you get to the point when you're the expert people are relying on?

After ten minutes of her answers to these questions, I had identified her call-to-action and her three key points. Not because I made them up, but because I took notes of what she said and the important phrases jumped out at me.

You can do exactly the same. Work with a colleague who will ask you these questions. No discussion, just talking. Then the colleague should read back to you what you said and the key points will jump out at you.

You have now just distilled everything you know into the important message for your audience. The rest of your speech or presentation will consist of leading materials that take the audience on the road to understanding your key points and embracing your call-to-action.

Need a boost for your own speech planning efforts? Ask me for a copy of my Write a Speech Now system.

Shaking Up (Your Audience) is Hard to Do...

when you're boring them to death with slide after slide, drowning them with facts and logic, force-feeding them with all the content YOU want to tell them.

Every single business person I have coached--CEOs, key execs, marketing, sales and technical presenters, professionals, entrepreneurs--has been in audiences when they've experienced these horrible speeches and presentations. Yet, they are poised to do the same to their audiences!

The good news is that they don't want to do the same and that's why they've come to me for help. I tell them to keep these three tactics in mind:

1) Talk about what the audience wants to hear. No matter how much you want to include something, if you can't honestly say that the specific audience you'll be speaking to wants to hear that, skip it.

2) All audiences are comprised of human beings with human brains that respond to variety. All facts all the time turn them off. Get into the non-linear, creative side of the brain (the right brain) and have a bit of fun. Show a cartoon or illustration that makes people chuckle (you don't have to be funny, the cartoon will do it for you.) Pick one idea and dramatize it with your voice, pauses, and a bit of body language.

3) Give the audience something to do after they've heard you. This is what gives the audience a return on their investment--some action, some step, something specific that makes them say "I listened to so-and-so and then I did such-and-such."

Shaking up your audience isn't hard to do when you shake up your own  beliefs about speaking and presentations. A little fun and unexpectedness goes a long way towards getting a great response from your audiences.

Left Brains Need Their Right Brains

You'll be speaking to an audience of customers who are desperately searching for solutions to solve their difficult problems. Everyone is tense because the need is great. Your company has state-of-the-art technology that can help and you really want to make the sale.

I guarantee that you will go to your computer, start searching for slides you've used before and assemble them into a deck for this audience. Your slides will be dense with bullets describing every feature. You'll have process flow diagrams covering every imaginable decision-point. The visuals you have will show boxes representing the hardware and arrows and clouds showing the communication powered by software.

You'll practice delivering these slides, covering as many details as possible. Your tone of voice will be earnest and business-like. You will be thorough and detail oriented.

You will leave your audience in an eye-glazing stupor.

Technical problems cause emotional reactions--frustration, anger, disappointment, fear, humiliation--you name it, people feel it. These are commonly associated with the right-brain and often disregarded during business presentations. When you describe problems your audience is facing in right-brain terms as well as left brain terms--"technical failures cause frustration and disappointment as well as cost you money"--you help the audience pay attention.

Whey they pay attention, they remember you and your company and you stand out from all the other left-brain-only presenters they hear. You're no longer a commodity they want at the lowest possible price.

Share how you incorporate right-brain elements into your technical presentations through our comment link.

Simple Words Evoke Many Interpretations

What does customer service mean? Or leadership or business process re-engineering? Your definition may barely resemble the way your colleague defines any word.

In recent Presentation Skills workshops I've been leading I ask the group--10 colleagues who've worked together for at least several years--to write down the 10 words that come to mind when they hear a ve simple word--the word 'run'. After 30 seconds they pair up and compare lists. Of the 5 pairs in each group, not one pair had 3 or more matching words. In fact, only one pair had 2 matching words.

For a simple word like 'run' there are so many possibilities! Imagine how broad and varied the lists would be for some of the words and concepts used by speakers to business audiences.

The solution to this problem of likely confusion is to be very descriptive about your important words.

Here's an example: If you're providing supply chain management, don't define this with more jargon. Tell a story, starting with the problem (always missing deadlines and driving up operating costs), the obstacles in the way of improvements (set-in-their ways managers, employees doing 45 hours worth of work in 40 hours, etc). Then describe using adjectives and dramatic flair how your company helped overcome these obstacles and in glowing unmistakable terms the results achieved.

Great business speakers help their audiences feel and experience the problems and the results. How do you reduce misinterpretation when you speak? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Get Close to Your Customers

You're giving a speech or presentation to a roomful of prospects, clients, industry experts, other stakeholders--how can you possibly "get close" to them?

99.5% of the time, someone has asked you to speak. (The other .5% you invite the audience yourself.) First step to getting close to your cusotmers is to have an enlightening conversation with the person asking you to speak. Second step is to call some of the people who will be in the audience. This is all part of your preparation for your appearance. Do not shirk this duty!

What do you ask these people? Three specific questions--asked in a conversational tone--will help you craft your speech or presentation so that you really speak to that audience.

1. Please describe the three biggest challenges that your company/organization/audience is facing right now in reaching its business goals.
2. Please describe the three outcomes you’re most interested in bringing about as a result of your asking me to speak.
3. What do you want to see happening differently in your company/organization/audience six months from now?

Listen to the answers (don't presume you know them). Incorporate the answers to #3 into your Call-to-Action. Make the answers to #2 your key points. Use the answer to #1 to help you select your leading materials.

If you don't know what the Call-to-Action, key points or leading materials are, request a complimentary copy of my Write a Speech Now system.

Money Making Thinking Pays Off Big

Do you think successful money makers protest: "I don't have time to do one more thing" or "I can't put another thing on my plate"? How many times have you turned down an opportunity for these reasons? I'm sure you do feel overbooked. Yet don't you ever wonder what you might have missed?

Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen collaborated on a process for making large chunks of money quickly, called Cash in a Flash. In the book they tell the story of Michelle and 4 other women who create a money-focused Mastermind Group to generate large sums of money quickly.

Lei Kim protests that she can't take on another thing--and Michelle says: if you think of each activity in your life as one discrete thing, then soon you'll see all these things piling up and you'll get to a point when you don't have room for one more thing.

What if you think of your whole life as one unit that is you? You work, have friends, support the community, care for your family, nurture relationships, exercise, and make money. When a new idea comes to you it's not another thing--it's part of the whole that is you. You will find the time and energy to incorporate this new opportunity to your life because it is part of you, the whole. Best of all, your whole life has an expandable border.

This idea flies in the face of how we typically think about our lives--in chunks of time and the associated activities. Run out of spaces in your calendar and you can't do one more thing.

I like the challenge of this. When I'm tempted to turn down a request because "I can't take on one more thing," I'm going to remind myself that my life is one whole unit, with expandable borders.

How about you? What fixed borders are you going to break out of? Share your commitments through our comment link.

Expert or Just Pretending? Your Audiences Will Know

You can be sure of one trait shared by your audiences, no matter who they are or how many--they have great talent for sniffing out fakes. We learn from birth to read body language and it's nearly impossible to adjust your body language to cover up when you're faking it.

You do not have to fake it ever if you follow these 3 guidelines:

1) Speak only about topics or perspectives you really have expertise and passion about. You will exude confidence and authenticity through your body language which will attract the audience and help your message stick.

2) Practice and rehearse a lot. Professional performers (speakers, musicians, athletes, actors and others) often are guided by this ratio: one hour of practice and rehearsal for each minute of performance. If a business speaker even practices/rehearses half this amount it will make a huge difference in how your audiences perceive you.

3) Know what your audiences care about. This goes way beyond demographics. You must ask questions such as "what do the audience members talk about among themselves?" Or "If you could change one thing about your company, your work, your product/service/industry what would it be?" Or "What have you always wondered about when thinking about (topic)?"

Speak to these questions. Nothing else is more important.

Share how you prove that you're an expert when speaking through our comment link.

CEO Vision Leads to More Business

A CEO said to me recently “We win a lot of contracts but I think we can win more.” That’s a gifted person’s way of thinking. I will be working with over one third of the people in his company to help them go beyond good -- to be awesome -- when they speak to their prospective clients.

What's your thinking about the quality and effectiveness of your speaking? If you cannot imagine one single way in which you or your employees could improve their speaking, you are shortchanging your customers as well as your bottom line.

Audiences have changed over recent years and from what I see most business speakers have not kept up with their audiences. Yes, they may sit there and they may even give you a round of applause--but have you really reached them to the extent that it makes a difference to them and by extension, to your business?

Where would your business be if the technology leaders of the past decade were satisfied with 64K personal computers? Or if the first so-called mobile phones (the size of a large book) were never improved upon?

Speaking is the highest value/lowest cost marketing tool you can use--when you do it well.

How do you use speaking to grow your business? Share your ideas through our comment link.

 

Expert Wows Audience By Revealing Original Thinking

You're a leading authority or recognized expert in your field. Audiences are eager to hear what you think and how you came to your deepest levels of understanding. They also want help or guidance from you in how to develop their own thinking on the subject.

What they do not want as the bulk of your speech or presentation is one citation after another of other experts in the field.

I was in an audience recently when the speaker did just this. For every point he brought up, he cited other writers and thought leaders to prove his point. I learned that he is a good researcher and widely read. But at the end of the hour, I wondered what does he actually know and think about the topic?

True experts apply their own unique perspective and thinking style to their topic. They create something no one else has created before. Think about well-known writers such as Malcolm Gladwell or Dan Heath and Chip Heath. They took popular topics (how to be successful, how to stand out from a crowd) and made them their own. While they cited others, they delivered to you and me something entirely new and fresh. They became quotable themselves.

When you're the expert, demonstrate your thinking and originality, not your ability to do research. What you think is what will catapult you to the top of the field and help you stand out in a crowded marketplace.

My own somewhat contrarian approach to business speaking developed as I studied brain science and other human responses, not past writings on public speaking. Not everyone likes what I say, but they surely remember me.

How do you create unique expertise and stand out from the crowd? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Discriminators Push Company to the Contract Win

How many times have you made a list of win themes and discriminators--or SWOT, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats--only to see that it reads like this: faster, low risk, best value, best of breed, world class, and people, processes, tools and technology?

This list does nothing to help you win government contracts or new commercial business--what bidder is going to brag about the opposite of these things?

Step 1- know the issues that drove the customer to ask for your bid, proposal or sales presentation. These are the things that underlie their requirements. You must know them deeply in oder to win.

Step 2 - Know what their vision for the future is- near, mid and long term. See it clearly, describe it in your own words. You may take a paragraph to say what they've written in a sentence. That's good-it means you are thinking deeply.

Step 3 - identify your discriminators in terms that respond to their issues and their visions. Quantify as much as possible. If they want to be the category-killer in their industry, what does that mean in terms of sales and market share? How will your company help them in terms of magnitude and time? Be specific.

No one who speaks in generalities ever wins. Those who dare to be specific, concrete and credible have a much greater chance of winning. You show that you really understand and have done the hard work to define the problem and come up with a solution.

Give the decisions-makers confidence that you know how to do the work and you have a much greater chance to win.

What technique or strategy have you used to win an important contract? Share your ideas through our comment link.