Archive for the ‘public speaking’ Category

Social Media Has Changed Us

September 21st, 2009 |3 comments

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and other have changed the way that we communicate. Like it or not, we need to conform to get through.

This does not mean that you have to start tweeting, playing Mafia wars on Facebook or put your resume up on LinkedIn. It means that we have to reduce our message to it’s bear essentials so people will give us a chance. Twitter only allows 144 characters to get your message across. Today, a long messages that takes ages to to be delivered will be ignored, even if delivered face-to-face. People just have too much information that they are trying to sort through to wait around for you to get to the point.

Are your sales presentations getting to the point? Or do you use slides filled with bullet point after bullet point after bullet point?

%name%, communication has changed. Have you changed with it?


The Wedding Speech

July 19th, 2009 |no comments

Do you have to give a wedding speech and don’t know where to start? Or are you wondering what stories you have about the lucky couple you should include?

This free 15 minute audi0 interview was designed for you. Recorded on ABC (Australia) radio in July 2009, it has all the answers you need. Get great wedding speech tips here.


How to Give World Class Business Presentations

June 4th, 2009 |1 comment

When you are speaking, you are selling.

You could be selling your latest widget to your next customer, your ideas to your staff, or selling yourself in your annual performance review. What ever it is, you are selling.

But the reality is the results that you achieve will be a direct result of how well you present your ideas, as opposed to how good your ideas are. The world is full of bad ideas that were sold correctly, while the good ideas die with their creator.

If you want to sell more products, if you want your staff to listen to you, or if you want to be able to get that pay rise, you need to be able to sell your ideas, and sell them well.

Recorded in front of a live audience, in this audio will give you the reasons why you need to:

  • Include stories in your next presentation
  • Control the room from the moment you enter it
  • Why you need to make your very first word interesting
  • Why PowerPoint fails more often than it succeeds…and

The one thing you must remember at the start of every presentation so your audience will listen to you

At just $15, this could just be the best investment you make in your next Business Presentation.

Get it now


The New Baby and You

June 1st, 2009 |1 comment

Last week I was speaking with a new client and arranging some dates for coaching. I asked how his diary was for early June. He replied, ‘It’s full. My wife is expecting our first baby and I will be very busy. Can we look at a bit later down the track?’

Now being the proud Dad of the 2 most beautiful little girls in the world, I asked him if he knew what he was going to have. He nervously said he didn’t and was feeling anxious about it all. I assurred him, ‘Mark, you are in for the best ride of your life! It’s going to be a lot of hard work, but it will be the best journey that you can possible go on. I hope you have a little girl as they are the BEST presents a Dad can ever have!’

His response to that surprised me. He said that he was glad I had told him that as most people just said that his life as he knew it was going to end. He’d been told that in 20 years he might see some money again – if he could get the kid to move out! He’d been told that all his fun was going to end and was not sure if he really was ready for that. He’d heard this from a number of people.

Now we have all been guilty of spreading this sort of stereotype and generalisations – me included. But have you ever stopped to consider what the impact of this ‘standard response’ is on your audience? Do they fully understand your mindset and background when we pass this type of comment?

When we share our ideas, we do not always know where our audience is and what they are thinking. Potential fears and anxieties (all very natural just before a new baby arrives!) will shape how your message is heard and interpreted. Humour will often fall flat and be totally ignored!

Where possible, learn a little about what is important to your audience and frame your message so they will understand what you are saying. This will give you a greater chance of delivering your mesage in a way that your audience takes it on board and adopts it as their own.

I have not heard if the baby has arrived yet, but will let you know as soon as it comes along.

Cheers

Darren


Free Marketing in Todays Economy

April 19th, 2009 |2 comments

With today’s economy in a constant state of flux, it is important to get the biggest bang for your buck – marketing bucks included. You have to spend your money wisely.

The good news is, that you can get a lot of high quality, well targeted and free marketing if you want it … and this is how you do it.

Each night, literally hundreds of professional associations have meetings. These events are generally networking events for the industry and they are well attended. At these meetings, there is some ‘general business’ that the members need to hear. After this, there is the guest speaker who is there to share their knowledge on a particular topic. These guest speakers have a captive audience for 30 minutes and can set themself up as THE exert. Would you like to be that expert?

Here is an example of how it works:

You are a lawyer wanting to generate business in the Energy sector (gas, electricity etc). First, you need to find the hottest topic that the sector should know about – in this case it would be the governments Carbon Trading system. Then find the industry association that the decision makers belong too. You then simply call the associations’ President and ask if their members would be interested in an information session explaining the implications of the new legislation. It really is that simple. As most professional associations need to have a focus on member education and development, you are ideal for their needs.

Now, on the night, you are not selling anything. Obviously the name of your firm would be mentioned, and you may have some information sheets for people to take away, but that is it. You do not stand up and say how good you and your firm are. If you do this, it will kill any potential for business that you could generate.

Instead, what you do is generate lots and lots of questions in your audiences’ mind so they will want to talk to you after your presentation. Once you are talking, you can ask for their number and follow them up over the next few days. It really is that easy.

What are the benefits of this approach?

The content should not be too hard for you to come up with; after all you are speaking about what you do for a living. You are speaking to a self-selected audience who want to hear you. And because you are standing in front of the room, you are automatically seen as the expert. This is what you want.

I guarantee that this approach will work for any professional who knows their target market. The only cost to you will be your time … and you may just get a free drink out of it!

Give it a go, and let me know how you get on.

Cheers

Darren

 


Productive Team Meetings

March 26th, 2009 |2 comments

Love ’em or hate ’em, meetings are part of our working life. As a leader in meetings, there are a few techniques that you can use to draw people into the meeting and get them contributing. This makes the meeting more productive as everyone is contributing and quicker as you are not sitting around waiting for someone to volunteer the information you are after.

So in your next meeting (which will probably be later today) try some of these techniques:

  • Where possible, avoid meetings straight after lunch. People naturally become sleepy after lunch. Meeting when our bodies are wanting to sleep does not bode well for interaction.
  • Speak to one and address many. This is an amazingly simple technique that will bring people into what you are saying. How do you do this? Simply use the word ‘you’ when possible. For example, instead of asking, “Does anyone have any questions about the sales budget’, ask, “Do you have any questions about the sales budget’. The difference is subtle but important. When you ask the first question, people in the meeting think, “He is not speaking to me so I can try and “hide here in the silence.” However, when you ask the second question the thought pattern is, “He is talking to me. What are my questions?” This is the reaction you want.
  • Give directions with confidence. If you have ever taught children, you will know that children can smell fear in a teacher, and will exploit it to their advantage. The same is true with adults. Whilst we will generally not play up to the level of children, if the directions you give are weak and ambiguous, people will not follow them with the same conviction as they would if you gave clear and strong directions.
  • Get their feedback properly. Feedback is often sought by asking, “Are there any comments or thoughts about the new sales plan?” This is general and consequently vague. Instead, ask, “How can you implement this new sales plan with your current customers?” Once again, this is focused on 1 person, but also on how they will use what they have just learned. They will instantly start thinking of how they will use what they have just learned.
  • If you want a quick meeting, remove all the chairs from the meeting room before hand. If people are standing up, they will be less inclined to waste time

How will you use these techniques in your next meeting? Please let me know below.

Happy meetings!

Cheers

Darren Fleming

Australian Public Speaking Training


How Obama Wrote His Speech

January 21st, 2009 |1 comment

By now you will have seen the speech from the leader who we hope will set a new path for the United States of Ameria.

Have you ever wondered how the speech is put together? Follow this link to find out. (You may need to log into facebook).

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=44345466733&h=bX9nX&u=WiA-7

Cheers

Darren

 


A Presentation is a Lot Like a Marriage…

November 13th, 2008 |4 comments

A presentation is a lot like a marriage; you spend a lot of time setting up good intentions and preparing for what you will do; then when you get into it, you end up doing whatever you want.

 

Whilst this may not necessarily be true of marriages, it does highlight the power of the analogy – and that is why you are still reading.

 

Why do analogies work?

 

Analogies work because they draw on a well known topic (a marriage) to explain another (the difficulty of giving a speech). As we can all relate to failed intentions in a marriage (even if it is only a truism!) it highlights how we can have failed intentions in our presentation.

 

Analogies can be drawn between similar objects – ‘The human heart is like the fuel pump in a car”, or dissimilar concepts – “Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within.”

 

The best analogies are those that draw on dissimilar objects to make a point. Using dissimilar objects creates dissonance in our thought patterns and causes us to think more thoroughly about what is being presented. This helps us remember the point. By showing that two dissimilar objects are closely related (marriage and presentations, students and oysters) you break the chain of thought in your audience and plant a new thought.

 

How can you use this today?

 

Consider how you can use analogies to more clearly explain your message. Will an analogy help clarify your point, make it more memorable and cause people to think about what you have said? If it does, then you will change the way your audience thinks, and to having the impact that you are after!

 

Cheers

Darren Fleming

Australian Public Speaking Courses


Serious Message? Then Lighten Up!

October 18th, 2008 |7 comments

Should a serious message—a life saving message—be entertaining? Only if you want it to work!

 

When VirginBlue first started operating, it had a reputation for being a fun airline on which to travel. The most obvious thing that the flight crew did to help keep the flight less boring was to have some fun with the ever dull safety demonstration before take off. They would have lines such as, ‘Don’t smoke in the toilets as there are smoke detectors and cameras watching you’ and ‘life jackets have a light to read by and a whistle for attracting sharks’.

 

Whilst these elements of humour were never going to get the crew invited to appear at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, they did get the passengers attention. Passengers paid attention if only to hear the odd line out.

 

On a recent flight I asked the flight attendant why they no longer used humour in the safety announcements. She said that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) had directed them to stop adding humour as the safety demonstration was a very important task that everyone needed to be taken seriously.

 

So what has been the effect of removing the humour? We ignore the demonstration and safety message. We know we should listen, but simply could not be bothered. This puts us and all the other passengers at risk ‘in the unlikely event of an emergency’. The safety message is less effective and does not convey the necessary information we need to hear.

 

Advertising companies know this very well. That’s why they spend lots of money trying to come up with funny ads! It helps to grab our attention so we listen to the message.

 

How are you using humour in your presentations? You don’t have to have them rolling in the isle and you certainly should not use jokes. Aim to entertain your audience so they are paying attention long enough to hear what you have to say.

 

Cheers

Darren Fleming

Australia’s public Speaking Coach


Are You the Authority?

September 25th, 2008 |4 comments

You are speaking to a prospective client. You are making your pitch for business. As part of your presentation you quote some figures to support your argument. The question is, ‘Do you quote the source of the figures or do you leave that bit out?’

What is the answer? Well that all depends. What are you trying to achieve? Are you setting yourself up as the expert or are you after another authority to back your argument.

Today I was working with Peter as he prepared his sales pitch for new business. He is an expert in trading commodities (iron, oil, wheat etc). During his presentation he said,

‘BHP tells us that in the last 10 years, China has used more steel than the U.S. has used in the past 100 years. You need to be in commodities to be part of the action.’

So should you quote the figures as coming from BHP or leave them off?

What is the effect of quoting BHP in the figures? Quoting BHP as the source will set them up as the expert. They will be the people with the information and you will be seen as ‘the messanger’ that knows the information. This puts you in a subordinate role and not the true authority.

To overcome this, we changed the sentence to read,

‘In the last 10 years, China has used more steel than the U.S. has used in the past 100 years. You need to be in commodities to be part of the action.’

The difference is subtle, but profound. Without the reference to BHP, Peter became the expert. He was no longer playing a subordinate role to BHP. Peter was now the one to be listened too and the centre of authority. If he is pressed on where the figures come from, he could state that the figures come from BHP. This would act to further reinforce his position.

Should this be the tactic that you use all the time? Certinally not. Once you have set yourself up as the expert, you can use other authorities to support your position. By using other authorities to support your stance as an authority you are strengthening your position. However, if you do it the other way around, you will be seen as trying to achieve your authority by riding on the coat tails of others.

What if you are not an expert at what you are trying to argue? What do you do then?

This is where you can draw on other authorities to establish your credibility (as opposed to authority). By stating what you believe and then having others support your position you gain vicarious authority. Alternatively, you can state how others support what you are saying. This authority will never be as strong as setting yourself up as ‘the’ authority, but it will be better than having no authority at all.

Do you agree?

Cheers

Darren

Speak Motivate and Lead: How Real Leaders inspire others to follow

www.executivespeaking.com.au


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