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Home » Business And Finance Articles » How To Give A Great Speech

How to Give a Great Speech

As a former owner of a National Speakers Bureau, I have learned from several thousand professional speakers "How to Give a Great Speech." Here are some techniques that I share with my coaching clients who want to become paid professional speakers or business professionals who want to deliver masterful presentations.

1. Speak from the heart. Believe in what you have to say, or don't say it. If your passionate about your subject the words will come. Speak about the fundamental beliefs you have about life, the simple truths that you believe in with all your heart.

2. Write down two or three specific objectives you have for this speech. Ask yourself, 'What do you want the audience to do as a result of your speech? 'Think differently? Act differently? Do something differently?

3. Write it out. When you give a speech be sure that people need to hear what you have to say. Than you need to understand it so well that you could explain it to an eight-year-old You know, if you write it down enough times, than you will become familiar with it. Don't read your speech if necessary, just read the lead sentences that you write on a three by five card.

4. Be present. Connect with your audience in the first 60 seconds and than engage them throughout your speech. Once you get the audience rolling, be sure to embellish certain comments that you know are being well-received.

5. Know your audience. Interview the program chair in advance to know who will be sitting in your audience and what they expect to hear from you. Are they men or women? What is the theme of the meeting or conference? What is their purpose in being there? Because that then becomes your purpose. Be sure to give your audiences not just what they want, but also what they need to hear.

6. Room Setup. Be sure to check out the room where you will present your speech in advance. The worst thing that can happen to you is when they put the bright lights in your eyes and blackout the audience. If you go early to do your room check, you can tell them that you can't give a speech with the audience in darkness. As a speaker, it is important that you see the faces in your audience.

7. Is there a technique? Try to be as natural as possible just speak conversationally. Talk to your smaller audiences as if you were in their living room. Don't look over their heads or beyond them. Speak directly to them. If you are addressing a crowd of several hundred or more people, look at one person, than another, than a third. But really look at them.

8. "Ums" and "Ahs." "Ums" and "ahs" come from uncertainty. The key is to know your subject and what you want to say. And than practice, practice, practice. Use your mirror or give your speech to your friends and family. And above all, don't try to remember exactly the same words.

9. Personal Stories Be sure to share your personal stories with the audience. People will learn from your vulnerability and your mishaps and will be only a step away from their own story. We delineate our thoughts visually and so your audience needs to see what they hear. You don't have to be clever, just share your life with your audience. Remember you are looking for their trust and trying to help them. So just consider them to be your friends and inject humor wherever possible.

10. Closing your speech Develop an action plan. What do you want your audience to do now that they've heard your speech? Go around the room, and ask them to share one nugget they got. Ask them for one idea that they can use NOW. In two weeks. In one month. Be sure to summarize your speech and than give them a call to action.

To find out How to Become a Highly Paid Professional Speaker, go to http://www.schrift.com/ProfessionalSpeaker/

©2004 by Sandra Schrift. All rights reserved

Publishing Guidelines: You are welcome to publish this article in its entirety, electronically, or in print fre*e of charge, as long as you include my full signature file for ezines, and my Web site address (http://www.schrift.com) in hyperlink for other sites. Please send a courtesy link or email where you publish to sandra@schrift.com Thank you.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

High Achiever Sales Professional Tool Kit: 5 Tools To Advance Your Sales Income

To become a high achieving sales professional, you must first become an expert communicator. Ask any sales person if they would like to make $250,000 a year and they universally say "yes." But then look at the tool kit they use to pursue clients, and more than likely you will find that the sales tools are dull.

After 19 years of working with sales organizations in general, and high achieving sales professionals specifically, I've found that there are many tools that are prerequisite to advancing your income. These five that I will cover here are words and phrases that will create an environment with your prospect where they are telling you the truth. And since your most precious commodity is time, you can't afford to waste it with people who lie to you.

1. "What would you like to accomplish today?"

I get called on by many sales organizations (some of them household names) and rarely, if ever, does a sales person start a meeting with, "What would you like to accomplish today, Bill." This one question will save you hundreds of hours a year from working on things that don't matter. It's a way for the prospect to begin to share their problem with you. Just because the tool sounds simple, doesn't mean it's used.

2. "Is there any financial impact to this problem?"

I'm assuming that you're not giving away your solution for free. And that in fact, there is a price the customer pays to buy and a price the customer pays not to buy. I want to understand the difference. By asking this question, you will start to learn what the financial consequences are for "not buying." Then when you talk about your fee, the prospect will be comparing your fee to the cost of the problem. Sales amateurs will very rarely help the prospect make that connection. High achieving sales professionals deal with money more elegantly and eloquently. And this question will help you put money on the table without it just being about "your price."

3. "Let's do this."

Get advances if you can't close. "Lets do this" is a proven technique that allows you to talk about the next steps in the process while you move your prospect forward toward a final decision. Let's suppose you're an hour into the sales call and the prospect has shared with you some of the problems he has, but he's still unsure of your product or service's value. You want to go back to your office and study them prior to giving a proposal. In this case, you would say, "Let's do this. I'm going to go back and put some thought into this and then let's set a time we can come back in a week and take it a little further." The better process manager you are, the better sales person you are.

4. "Here's how we (I) typically work."

Use this on the very first call where you're laying out your process for getting them a solution. The high achiever needs to be thought of as an expert, not just in sales, but in the industry domain that you play in. Experts have processes and procedures. If you don't have a sales process, get one immediately.

5. "I have a sense that..."

The elite sales executive pays close attention to their feelings. The "gut instinct" is a powerful internal communication device for you. If something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. If something does sound right, you've got to call it.

"I have a sense that..." are words in your sales professional toolbox that you can use to begin this conversation. I encourage my clients to use this if they are thirty minutes into the first call and the prospect hasn't shared any problems or pains that he wants to fix. You might say, "In the first thirty minutes of our discussion today I haven't heard anything that's really a compelling reason for you to change from your current source. I kind of get this sense that if things just continued on it wouldn't be all that bad."

Give the prospect an opportunity react. It's a way for the prospect to come back to you and either say yes, you're right and it's over (which is OK because as I said earlier, time is your most precious commodity, so move on) or he will convince you that he does have a problem worth exploring. And then, you will have control.