Tag Archive for: speech writing

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” ~ Coachfucious

The first and foremost thing you need to do is be ready and ably to sell your product or service in a snapshot. In order to get the clients you are looking for you absolutely need to be prepared to meet with your clients wherever they are and whatever they do. What will set you apart from all the rest of the people in your business is the MANTRA that you will sing to enchant your clients and get them close to you.

This mantra identifies who you are, what you do and why your client will choose you over all the others on the market and is most commonly known as elevator speech.

Before we create one, we will go though the brainstorming process.

There are a couple of tough questions that can be answered before we roll up our sleeves and start creating our client magnet.

1. Who am I? In what capacity I want to serve you?

2. What business I am in? What results do my business promise to you as a client?

3. Who is my client? How does he look like?

4. What makes me different from the competition? Why should the client do business with me?

5. What are the benefits of my customer when buying my product / services?

Those questions, when systemized, don’t look as if they will come out of the page and bite you but when you think about it 90% of the time to come up with ideas is very difficult. Usually this uneasiness to decide on the right answers for you and your business springs from the fact that most of us consciously or not are employees in their business and being an owner of a business is just that – being employed by yourself to perform the job task- owner.

The way to go out of this trap where you end up employing yourself and go into the thinking hat that is only concerned with how to elevate your business the answers will start flowing to you.

Whenever you are ready with our own answers to the clarification questions, you can start writing your elevator speech. This speech you will be able to say wherever you go whatever you do and you will be able to sell your product or service in 30 seconds. And I will show example with my own elevator speech.

1. For whom are you offering your product / service? Who is your client?

Your sentence will start with “for” as in: “For unstoppably determined people”

2. What is it that your customer wants / needs and you are offering?

Your sentence will start with “who” as in: “Who want to live with passion and be financially independent”

3. What product or service you are offering?

Your sentence will start with “the” as in: “The Life & Money Coaching of Tsvetanka (Sue) Petrova”

4. What category does your product or service satisfy?

Your sentence will start with “is a” as in: “Is a walk through into the world of achieving your goals”

5. What is the benefit that your client will receive when buying your product / service?

Your sentence will start with “that” as in: “That is low cost and at the same time high in value because”

6. Who are your competitors and why you are better than them?

Your sentence will start with “unlike” as in: “Unlike others I walk the walk, and talk the talk.”

7. What is the single most important thing that sets you apart form the competition?

Your sentence will start with “our” as in: “Our coaching re-frames circumstances and life situations into possibilities and I help my clients turn those possibilities into opportunities.”

The most important step is as soon as you have your MANTRA ready, chant it as much as possible to as many people as possible and then just happily receive all the goodness the powerful mantra that you just created can bring into your business life.

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Get your clients all over the world using THE 3 ESSENTIAL Ingredients to Success at http://www.aheartsdesires.com/        This article was originally published here

 

This is a blog about public speaking ... and yet ...

Right now, under the banner of a business called Pivotal Public Speaking, I am teaching small business owners about story - story for speakers? ... not altogether ...

If you are speaking to grow your business, then story is vital. It gives you credibility. It creates a deep engagement with your audience of potential clients. Most powerfully, though, it allows you to take a potential client into your business with you so that they feel, and hear, just what it is like to work with you, just what exactly it is that you do for them.

That is "if you are speaking ..."

The stories that you choose and tell, about your business, though, can then be used and re-used elsewhere with exactly the same power.

1. You can use them on the "About" page of your website/blog/web presence. They give that same level of engagement, credibility and awareness, that will have your web visitors clicking through to find out more.

2. You can use them on your sales pages. Let your prospective buyers know that you understand their pain and problems. Let them see your product in action. This is word of mouth marketing - online!

3. You can use them in conversations. You connect at a networking event. What more natural and yet powerful way of deepening that connection is there, than story? People arrive at your product display. Conversation, and story, will give them the human face of your business, your product, your service. And people do tend to buy people first. We know that, though often instictively.

4. You can use your story/stories in your social media marketing. On the surface this means sharing stories about your business - regularly. Facebook loves stories. Distill them down for twitter into tiny conversational pieces. Give them "corporate" style, if you need to, for LinkedIn. Under the surface, though, your brand story drives all that you do in social media. Confine all that you do, say and share to that defined specific story and you establish a strong brand presence.

5. Finally, you can use your stories when you are teaching. Many speaking engagements revolve around teaching about something in your business. Many businesses revolve around teaching something. Here the power of story is perfect for you because it creates engagement, it helps overcome objections to new ideas and it is a vital tool in the integration of brain function so necessary to successful learning.

So in "teaching" story, I am excited to be giving people far more than just a speaking tool, though it is certainly that.

If you are interested in learning more about story, either simply as a speaking tool, or as a tool to grow your business, why don't you join me?

You will learn

How to use stories for different outcomes.

How to draw an audience into your world or your business using story.

4 of the basic types of business story and where to find the ones in your business/life that will be more effective when you speak.

Story structure - the elements and processes of story and how to apply them and which ones work best in different situations.

How to integrate story into your speaking - how it fits into the structure of your presentation, how to use your voice, stage and stage presence to greatest effect and how to remember it.

Integrated into the program is a thread of how you use story to propel your personal growth, the growth of your business and your vision for the future/blockquote>

This is small group workshop format. In all of my workshops I find people learn much from each other, as they are learning from me, and I intend to maintain that.

storytelling_sales_workshopstorytelling_sales_onlinestorytelling_sales_coachingstorytelling_sales_30storytellingtips

Your speech flows along.

It makes sense.

Your audience is listening, watching, presumably absorbed.

Keep them that way. A speech that flows along like that will get boring before long unless you introduce something that brings your audience's comfort up short.

switch_words

Today's quick tip is one little device that will interrupt the normal communication process and rather than following the flow of ideas, the listener focuses on the words instead. Using this effect, you can have your audience stop, and really listen – to all that you want them to understand, engage with and remember.

This effect is to do with the sounds within words.

One way to create this effect with sounds is to use alliteration. Alliteration is one of the most powerful ways. Here, each word begins with the same sound. So I might have a “particularly powerful proposition” or an idea may be “Revolutionary and radical.” Can you feel the device working, drawing your attention to the words and all that they mean?

Another technique using sound is rhyme. Like all devices, it can evoke emotion which is one of the best ways to resonate and engage with your audience. It can also be used very effectively to create humour… Ogden Nash wrote: “Candy is dandy. But liquor is quicker.” How much meaning there is in those few words … and he draws attention to them using rhyme.

These are also the words that will create what I call a "bright spot" in a speech - a place you can call back to. Use it to identify a point in your speech, or a moment in the presentation as a whole.

So start getting into the habit of incorporating alliteration and rhyme into your speeches – at times when you want to slow things down and make a major point. They will be a powerful ally for you.

catchy_content

So you have a subject for your speech. One word, maybe. What now?

You know what you want to achieve with this presentation but you’re stuck, trying to find powerful ideas and material that will give your subject life. Yes?

Where will you find the stimulus to develop your ideas?

The answers could just be right under your nose, right there in your daily life.

Here are five ordinary places that will yield up gems to make you and your presentation remembered, repeated and getting results. That’s why I used the word “easy” in the title of this article - the material is all around you.

Things that you do and see and say and think every day will provide that material. It’s just a case of articulating what you want to achieve and then of deliberately looking in these places with that aim in mind.

The thing that makes this not so easy is knowing what to look for.

The first is the information. This involves ideas, stories, facts, case studies, statistics – all of the items you will use to present the main parts of your speech.

The second is themes within those facts and ideas – commonalities, recurring nuggets of information that fit into a theme. These themes may be the main pints of your presentation, or one of them may be the source of your single message.

The third is opinions. And it may be, with this in mind, that you find the things that will give your speech something extra special, that will make it “catchy” - remembered, repeated and getting results.

They may provide humor.

They may help you articulate your passionate view point on the topic.

They may give you something that will stir up opinions or discussion in your audience.

They may also uncover trends in your subject area – places where people are fighting the status quo.

Keep these three areas – information, themes and opinions - in the back of your mind as you open that mind to what is going on around you.

1. On the internet. Obviously! Enjoy your surfing, but let it wander along the lines of the main aim of your speech. You may, in fact, be taken into different directions, to discover even better ideas and themes. Follow links that look interesting or promising. Use search engines, and include databases and blogs in your searches and surfing. Search TED talks and YouTube. These will give you the themes and information you need. They will also give you opinions and ideas about trends, and the links will lead you to other opinions, and sources of support material.

2. In Books. You are reading already. Just look at the books in the light of your speech. Think about books you have read in the past, and how they might relate to your themes and points. Allow yourself to be drawn to the books on your subject. Search online suppliers like Amazon. Scour the local library – reference books, fiction and non-fiction. When you are browsing the bookshops and second-hand book suppliers, again, keep you speech ideas in the front of your mind and books will leap out of the piles to lead you to things you can use.

3. In Magazines. Again, you are reading these already. Look at them from the slant of your speech. And look with new eyes at the racks in the newsagents, the library and the train stations. If you are speaking regularly, you will develop the habit of collecting material on your subject areas – articles from magazines or the internet, quotes, sayings and anecdotes. Keep a paper file of notes and save useful websites in your favourites file, Evernote or a tagging system like del.icio.us.

4. From People. Talk with them about the subject of your speech in your ordinary conversation and you will get all sorts of opinions and information. You cannot interview a website or book for clarification or for a quirky perspective that just might give you the winning angle on a topic.

5. From Your own experiences. Using your own life and its stories is one of the most powerful tools of public speaking. Use humorous or poignant anecdotes. Find experiences that have affected you or your friends to support points in your presentation. Again, you can look back to the past for examples. But looking at your life and the lives of the people you know and see and interact with through the lens of your speech will bring out all sorts of relevant and thought-provoking material.

There are so many places that will yield up brilliant ideas for a speech. It’s just a case of looking – while you are surfing the net, while you are in the library or reading magazines, while you are chatting, and at life in general, and being open to ideas and themes and opinions on the subject. Create a strong picture of where you might go with the speech and let it lead you on. You natural creativity will use all of these sources to put together a great presentation.

You have ideas for your speech. You know what you want to achieve with your presentation, but you’re stuck, trying to find a powerful slant ... and material that will give your points life? Where will you find the stimulus to develop your ideas?

Look ...

Magazines. Again, you are reading these already. Look at them from the slant of your speech. And look with new eyes at the racks in the newsagents, the library and the train stations.

Look at Facebook. Go beyond the ordinary and let your mind and the ideas you have already interact with what you see.

Look at Pinterest. Why did the person upload these pictures and/or text? How would you have dealt with that material?

Slide your eyes around your world. Catch the corners and edges of life and look at what happens, why it happens and what might have happened instead, all with your particular speech topic in mind.

Somewhere, a idea will develop, a crystallisation of your thoughts and attitudes, something that will hook your audience with its simplicity, its originality and its relevance to their worlds.

Many tools can be implemented for success in delivering your speech, whether you are giving a speech to a public audience, talking with members of a company board meeting, or simply offering a sales presentation. Such tools comprise explaining detailed examples, designing statistical charts, in addition to providing influencing testimony. Below, we will add another public speaking skill to the list and explain four special tips for using “evidence” in a influential speech. => http://bit.ly/xIEIsj

In public speaking, there are times when the best way to support the points you are making is by using data or quotations. Well-chosen quotations are certainly powerful, adding backup to our own opinions. Data comes in many forms - dates, figures and statistics, as well as visuals using graphs, diagrams, tables and more, and it can also be a powerful support for the ideas or opinions you want to sell.

Most of the time, these quotations and data are not our own. Often we are quoting other people's work - or using other people's work.

Imagine what would happen if we did use other prople's work - not crediting the source of our quotations and data? We might very well get away with it, just as we might get away with all sorts of indiscretions, on-stage and off. But sooner or later it will be obvious to someone if not the entire audience that you are not crediting your sources. Your credibility will drop to zero, or maybe even into the negative. It's plain good manners to quote the source. Not doing so, really, amounts to theft. And audiences know that, they feel that.

Always quote your sources. Your originality should be evident in the propositions you put; and the power of your speech or presentation comes from that originality, that uniqueness. There is no weakness in quoting the sources of your facts and figures or of your quotations. In fact you gain even further credibility, because it is obvious you are familiar with the information out there on your subject. You are knowlegeable or you have researched or both.

The process is easy, really - to be able to quote sources. When you are researching, you need to start at the beginning of every book, webpage, or report. Before you start to take notes or store the content, note the details of the resource and its author. Then take the notes you need, and when the time comes to use them, if you are using them, you will have the details of the source ready at hand to quote... and another reason to keep your audience engaged.

The Magic of Three

The number three is a magical number in the English language. We see it in movie titles as in "The Three Stooges, The Three Musketeers and The Three Amigos," we see it as far back as being the most famous phrase in the Unites States declaration of independence - "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and we see it by speakers and comedians all across America.

I don't know why this is so. We can theorize the reason for this phenomenon from today till tomorrow, and in fact some people have, but my philosophy is, "if something works - just go with it!" Why spend your energy trying to figure out the "why" of it when you can just be in the "now" and just go with it. If it is good for our founding forefathers, if it is good for Hollywood, then it is good for me - You see, there is the rule of three in action!

In speaking, the "rule of three" is mostly used to create humor. When comedians create their humor, they use what is called the "set up - punch". Comedians use this set up-punch formula to get every one of their laughs. Comedians don't always need to use the rule of three, they are so good at creating humor that they don't always need to rely it, but for the rest of us speakers, using the rule of three is a technique that we should always use, and that if done right, can almost guarantee a laugh from the audience.

The psychology of the Set up-Punch Formula

What is the comedian's secret to getting a laugh from the audience? Comedians are not psychologists, but they know how the human minds works - at least when it comes to getting a laugh. Comedians know three things about the human mind very well when it comes to humor.

1. That a "Spontaneous shift" is the key.

2. That proper timing is crucial

3. That the content must be appropriate for the audience

Spontaneous shift

So what is a spontaneous shift? A spontaneous shift is when the speaker puts the audience on one track. The speaker fills up the mind of their audience with a vivid picture of one particular thought or idea and just at the point when the audience is expecting to continue on that track, the speaker suddenly puts them on a totally different track and Walla a laugh occurs!

The key here is spontaneous. From the speakers perspective, it may not seem spontaneous, because the speakers is prepared and knows what he or she is planning to say. However, from the perspective of the audience it definitely comes across as spontaneous. How many times have you had conversations with friends or family and laughs seemed to easily flow. If you think about it, you will probably realize that the instant the laugh occurred, someone said something spontaneous and which also put everyone else's thoughts on another track.

Proper Timing

Putting your audience on another thought track is not enough. You also need to have your timing down in order to make an impact and receive a laugh. Your punch line needs to come immediately after the set up. If you wait too long, you will lose the impact potential of your punch line.

When using the rule of three, you are essentially doing the same thing as what comedians do with their set-punch in their comedy routines, but your set up will be a bit longer.

The rule of Three in Action

A friend of mine and fellow speaker, Marry Cheyne, had used the rule of three extremely well when she delivered her speech "Nelly" at the Toastmasters 2009 international convention. She gave some background about how challenging and uncomfortable it was for her to come to Australia as a 7 year old Chinese. She then said, "I was so uncomfortable that I felt like a fish out of water, like a bird out of its nest, like a "guest (pause) at a toastmasters meeting." The last line, "like a guest at a toastmasters meeting" was the punch line. The other two lines were the set up for her punch line.

The background story gave the audience the "thought track" of her being uncomfortable, The first two lines went along that track - uncomfortable like a fish out of water, uncomfortable like a bird out of its nest and then she throws the twist - Like a guest (she pauses) and then says "at a toastmasters meeting". The audience was expecting her to stay serious, but she doesn't. She spontaneously puts their thought on another track and walla she gets a laugh!

The Rule of Three must be Adaptable to Your Audience

When coming up with the right content for the rule of three, make sure your content is applicable to your audience. When Marry came up with her content, she knew who her audience was. It was a room full of fellow toastmasters. So everyone in her audience knew how uncomfortable a guest at a toastmasters club meeting feels, because at one time or another everyone was a guest before they became a member. That is why it was funny to that audience. Her line would not have been funny to a group of people no affiliated with toastmasters and surely she would not have used it. So always make sure that your content is appropriate to your audience. Enjoy tinkering with "the rule of three" for your next speech!

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Lewis Roth helps speakers build a presentation that is memorable and keeps their audience members on the edge of their seats. Lewis is an award winning speaker, certified world class speech coach, keynote speaker and presentation skills trainer. To receive his free audio download, please visit http://www.hightouchspeaking.com

I was asked to identify the five words or phrases that mattered more than any other. If I was limited to just five recommendations--and these phrases had to work in every aspect of life--what would I say?

=> http://bit.ly/gMK9Ts

Everything that you say or do in your presentation has to be geared to your audience... what you want them to do or think at the end, what they will be receptive to, what their triggers are, the language that they will respond to.

So in researching that presentation to write it, or prepare it, you will also need to research the audience.

Find out as much as you can – their age range, gender, income levels, dreams, needs, wants, culture.

You can gain much from a registration form.

You can ask the event manager.

In your preparation routine, you can mingle with them before your speech.

Then you can use that information in constructing your speech. If you need to persuade, for example, you can use your knowledge of their interests and dreams.

You will choose language that they understand, and that is not irritating or offensive to them, and subject matter to suit that audience - themes, supports, anecdotes all will be tailored to them.

I'm not sure whether researching the audience is more important than researching content. What do you think?

I do know that for the content to be effective, the research you do on your audience will be vital.