TITLE: How to be a Great Speaker AUTHOR: Sandra Schrift CONTACT: sandra@schrift.com COPYRIGHT: ©2004 by Sandra Schrift. All rights reserved

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How to be a Great Speaker

Did you know that great speakers are often nervous with butterflies in their stomach before giving a presentation? And there are many actors/actresses who can not speak to live audiences without cue cards. My 13 years as a professional speakers bureau owner allowed me to hear several thousand speakers give their presentations. Here are a few tips I learned from them.

1. You want to be nervous. Get your butterflies to fly in formation. Some tension brings about a great speech. You usually don’t look as nervous as you feel. Be prepared, be relaxed. Practice, practice, practice. Use visualization techniques. One speaker suggests that you curl your toes and get rid of your adrenalin. Get out of your head and in to your heart. Reduce nervousness with self talk.

Your mantra might be - “I am a relaxed, confident speaker.”

2. Great presentations are well organized.

Opening – You have 60seconds to get their attention. So start with a great question, quote or short story. Tell ‘em what you will tell them.

Body – Tell ‘em. This is where you tell your 3-4 points supported by your stories.

Closing –Tell ‘em what you told them. Give them a call to action. What is one idea they can use immediately? in seven days? in one month?

There are basically two kinds of presentations – Informative (to know) Persuasive (to do)

PR Essential to your Success

Whether you are a business, non-profit or association manager, your success will depend, to a large degree, on how well you positively impact behaviors of those outside audiences that most affect your operation.

You need to create external stakeholder behavior change – kind that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives.

And you do that by persuading those important outside folks to your way of thinking, then moving them to take actions that help your department, division or subsidiary succeed.

The road to that success is filled with potholes, but you’ll never feel them if you have right roadmap.

Like this one: people act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

Where can such a blueprint take you? Maybe to more qualified proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; or to big givers looking at your 501-c-3; or to interested specifying sources requesting more information; newly qualified prospects showing interest; a big jump in sales floor visits; more requests for membership applications; repeat purchases reappearing; political figures taking a closer look at your unit as a key member of business, non-profit or association communities; not to mention new contacts from community leaders.

As that business, non-profit or association manager, there are two steps you should take asap. List those outside audiences of yours whose behavior helps or hinders you in reaching your objectives. Then note how severe their impact is, and we’ll take a shot at target audience you show as number one.

Sad to say, you probably haven’t assembled information that tells you how most members of that key outside audience view your organization. So, presuming there is no sign of a large professional survey budget in your shop, you and your colleagues will have to handle job of monitoring external audience perception by asking questions yourselves.

Interrogatives such as “Have you ever met anyone from our organization? Was it a satisfactory experience? What do you know about our services or products?” Stay alert for negative statements, especially evasive or hesitant replies. And be on lookout for false assumptions, untruths, misconceptions, inaccuracies and potentially damaging rumors. Any of those must be corrected because we know they usually produce negative behaviors.