Good speakers become great speakers with the right training. Investing in professional speaker training can greatly improve your bottom line.
There is no downside to improving your speaking skills.
The key to speaking effectively comes down to one thing: the ability to tell a compelling story. I was taught years ago that effective advertising boiled down to the acronym AIDA, which stands for 1.) Attract Your ATTENTION. 2.) Stimulate their INTEREST 3.) Create DESIRE and 4.) Move them to ACTION.
Creating an effective oral presentation is not much different from those guidelines. When we speak, we are actually selling. We are trying to communicate or get someone to adopt truths, facts, inspire action, etc. How many times has someone in your life told you, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”? Most of us have heard that. We have all worked with highly trained, well-educated people who are absolutely brilliant in their field, but when they spoke, they almost put us to sleep. How many of us have listened to a person who was charismatic, compelling, and engaging, and then, when it was all over, wonder, “What did they just say?” or you don’t remember anything they said. It was all show without substance. To get on the road to more effective public speaking, you must master what you say AND how you say it. The best way is in a story type format. In my sales training over twenty years ago I was taught that “facts count, stories sell”.
The stories or narrative style bring a message to the heart and mind of the audience. One of those methods is what I call the PSOx3 speech template. It is a simple method to create compelling speeches. This means presenting a Problem, Solution and Result and doing it three times during the presentation. This humanizes the presentation and allows the listener to relate to the topic being presented. Create a mental image that makes the topic more memorable. Here is an example. Let’s use a motivational theme that goes like this; “John Smith had only twenty dollars in his pocket. He was fired with no chance of rehire. His position was outsourced overseas. He had two children in private school and a baby at home. His wife worked part time three days a week”. Weekend.
They couldn’t do it on their income alone. They only had enough financial cushion to pay their bills for about three months. She knew she had to make something happen, and do it fast. One day, after paying his bills, he had to make a decision whether to fill up the gas tank or buy groceries. This was the turning point in her life. It was either giving in to despair and depression or rising to the occasion and starting your own business. He felt that no one was going to hire a professional over 40 years old like him with the salary he had been charged. One day while he was reading the newspaper, he read a story about how a large percentage of lawyers were not getting the clientele they wanted. He detected a need. Trouble leads to profit. He had experience writing marketing materials for a large company for the last twenty years. Why couldn’t he do it for another industry, he wondered.
This led him to make his first phone call to a local attorney, who confessed that his business was slow and that he disagreed on how to get more clients and increase his referrals. John made an appointment with that attorney. He became John’s first client. That was 250 clients and three years ago. John’s now has three employees who work as independent contractors from their homes. He also works out of his house. He and his staff meet in person once a week for brainstorming sessions to give the virtual company a more human feel.”
Now when you read John’s story, in a very short period of time, you are drawn to his situation, feel his desperation, and experience the hope that he has with the advent of his new business. When this story is told, instead of just telling facts, he feels for John. When he presents with pauses, increases and decreases in speech volume, and appropriate body gestures, he is well on his way to creating a memorable speech. As in a good television script, you can clearly identify the problem, the solution and the result. John’s story is one they will remember and isn’t that why we make presentations at our work, places of worship and service organizations?