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When I ask my audiences their number one challenge with public speaking, they overwhelmingly say, “to overcome the fear of public speaking.” It’s okay to have “butterflies.” The key is how to get them organized, focused and flying in formation. Here are 10 tips for delivering a more powerful, persuasive presentation. Practice these techniques consistently to improve public speaking skills.

1. 95% of your success is determined before the presentation. Your audience will know if you didn’t rehearse. Rehearsing, or “rehearing” yourself minimizes 75% of your nervousness. Rehearse standing up, or better yet, ask someone to videotape you. The camera will be your most objective ally. The more comfortable you become with your material via rehearsing, the more comfortable you will be with your body language.

2. Either memorize or “know cold” your opener and close. Two minutes each for an opener and a close is enough. The most important thing your audience will remember is your closing. Second most important thing they’ll remember is your opener. Start with something attention grabbing, like a quote or statistic, which relates to your topic. Never start with, “Good Morning.” It is obvious and boring.

3. Public Speaking: 24 hours before your presentation:

A. Have a quiet dinner with a quiet friend. (This may or may not be your spouse!) You won’t be as concerned about your public speaking skills if you can put your nervous system on glide.

B. The evening before, put your presentation on audiocassette as background noise one hour before retiring. Listen to your opener and close before bedtime as a review.

C. No massive changes 24 hours before. Nothing increases the fear of public speaking more than rewritting your material at the last minute. Impromptu speeches notwithstanding.

D. Visualize your presentation going smoothly and successfully. All Olympic athletes use this technique, and it works with public speaking as well.

E. Review your notes and visual aids the evening before. Your notes should only be “fast food for the eyes” in bullet form, and are NEVER read to the audience.

F. Eat a good high protein breakfast the morning of your presentation. Even if you’re not speaking until that evening, feed your mind and body the proper fuel.

4. Before your presentation, check yourself in a full-length mirror. A dear friend of mine forgot to do this. During her keynote speech in front of hundreds, someone quietly pointed out that her skirt was tucked into her pantyhose!

5. Public speaking and purpose: When organizing your talk, define your purpose. Why are you there? Why are they there? Is this a sales presentation? A community watch group? If you present technical information, is this an information/knowledge transfer or a decision briefing? When presenting technical information make certain not to overload your audience with too much detail, or too much on each slide. Tailor your message. Define your objective.

6. Know your audience before designing your opener and close. It is imperative that you “speak the language” of your audience. What are their ages? Percentage of males/females? Are they highly technical or non-technical? Do they want to be there or is this mandatory? What are their expectations? If you are a scientist or engineer, speak to the “lowest common denominator.” Technical presenters have a propensity to use a lot of technical jargon. Does the person in charge of funding understand the language?

7. Avoid using too many slides. Visual aids are wonderful tools as long as they’re used to enhance the information. A common mistake is using the visual aids as the presentation. Look at the audience frequently to establish rapport and a connection. In almost every presentation, you are there to “sell” them not simply “tell” them. Do not look at your visual aids other than a quick glance, and never read them. Never turn your back on the audience to read slides. They will not look at your slides. Their minds will start to wander. Remember, you are your own best visual aid.

8. Good public speaking skills mean being prepared. As the saying goes, prior planning prevents predictably poor performance. Planning and preparation will reduce nervousness 75%. Again, your audience will know if you didn’t rehearse. Consider hiring a public speaking coach. The dollars invested may well be worth their weight in gold.

9. The Q & A period and how to handle a hostile audience. The second most frequent comment I hear in my public speaking seminars is “What if they ask a question and I don’t know the answer?” Or, “What if someone in the audience is a know-it-all and doesn’t like me?” Avoid being argumentative. If you don’t know the answer, ask if someone in the audience has the answer. Or, simply let them know when you will get back to them. Make certain you do. When you lie you die. It destroys your credibility.

10. Variety and venue. Variety serves as a “wake up call” to your audience. Examples of adding variety: humor, relevant stories, quotes, voice inflection, paired and group activities, pauses, audience participation in the question and answer period, and slides or other multimedia. As for your venue, are your visual aids appropriate to your size of audience? Will everyone be able to see them?

Lastly, make sure to confirm the time, date, and place with the appropriate contact person. If possible, arrange to see the room ahead of time so you can practice visualizing in the exact location of your presentation. At the minimum, arrive at least one hour ahead of time. To improve public speaking skills, and overcome nervousness, nothing works like being prepared.

Copyright 2006 Colleen Kettenhofen

Colleen Kettenhofen is a motivational speaker, workplace expert, & co-author of “The Masters of Success,” as featured on the Today Show, along with Ken Blanchard and Jack Canfield. http://www.ColleenSpeaks.com Topics: leadership, management, difficult people, success, public speaking. To order the book, or for free articles and newsletter visit http://www.ColleenSpeaks.com You are free to reprint or repost this information provided Colleen Kettenhofen’s name and website is provided with the article.

Technorati Tags: Public speaking, presentations, Preparing a speech, How to give a talk, overcoming fear of speaking

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I went into the competition last night with high hopes for top honors in at least one of the two contests, but was disappointed with not one, but two second place finishes.

I guess my role is to nip at the heels of my competitors to keep them sharp.

I take pride in my efforts, and will compete again.

In my international speech, I repeat some of the key points I have discussed here in the past. One of them is to be aware of your audience. Last night, as I gave my presentations, I felt the audience had a distinctly different attitude that was present at my club level.

People in my club are there in part because we have a lot of fun, and they were far more responsive, particularly to my tall tale. As a result I got a lot more laughter long the way.

In the more formal contest atmosphere last night, the audience was there to judge. They tended to not respond as much. That’s a lesson I will file away for the next time I am in such a circumstance.

Technorati Tags: Public Speaking, Public Speaking tips, Speech contests, international speech contest, tall tales speech contest,

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In my last two posts I have shared my Tall Tales speech and my International Speech Contest entry. I managed to win second place at my Toastmaster club with each and will thus be competing this evening in the local area contest with the winners from other clubs in the area. If I am successful there, I would advance to the District level at the annual spring convention in early April.

Each of the past two nights I attended a couple of the other area contests within our district and had the opportunity to listen to some of the competitors I might face, if I get that far.

I have, of course, been running my speech though my mind several times a day all week. I’ve decided to make major adjustments to my Tall Tale speech, and frankly am focusing on it, as I think I may have the best chance of success with it.

My international speech, while solid in content is a little “pedestrian” in content, and while I will do my best to convey it well, a more motivational speech is likely to do better with the judges. My fellow club member who edged me out at our club level has just such a speech and is in my opinion the likely winner. But I will give it my best shot.

My fellow club member and winner of our club tall tales contest is highly talented speaker as well, and will not be easy to surpass.

Therefore, I have dramatically revamped my tall tale presentation. If you listened to my speech the first time around, you will realize that I gave a fairly lengthy preamble that eventually built up to the “tall tale.” In my current version, I have stripped the front end of the speech out and start the tale with a flair from the beginning.

Time will tell how well I do, and if I can rise to the challenge.

Simple contests like these, are pretty insignificant in the course of human events, but they do cause us that choose to participate a goal and reason to take an idea and refine it further. To put polish on it and make it shine. As a rule of thumb, I urge people to not let perfection get in the way of their initial speech or presentation, because it will never be perfect. But once you have a product, or presentation it is possible to refine and make it better. And you should as long as you are offering it to the public.

Win or lose tonight, I have had fun with my two talks, and feel as though I have expanded my personal skill levels a notch and that is what it is all about.

Technorati Tags: public speaking, speech contest, Tall Tales Contest, International Speech Contest,

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If you are going to expend creative energy coming up with a speech, blog post or article it makes sense to use it in multiple venues if you can.

While the phrasing and emphasis may vary depending on your different audiences, this leverages your work and gets you message to more people that you would ordinarily reach.

Tomorrow I will be competing in the second of our Spring Toastmaster contests. This time instead of a tall table it will be a more straightforward serious speech called, Starting at the End.

It will be much the same material as I have already shared here and in a number of articles I have written for the article directories.  Only this one will be spoken to an audience within a 5-7 minute time line.

You can hear one of my early dress rehearsals here:

Thus a speech built on the articles I wrote previously lives again, not only as a blog post but also as a podcast sent out to the podcast universe. I like that kind of productivity when I can get it.

Technorati Tags: speech writing, tips for speech writing, public speaking, Call to action

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This morning was the Tall Tales Contest for Realtors Toastmasters 2512 in Bloomington, Mn.  I managed to win second place in the club contest which was good enough for me to advance to the next level to compete with winners from other clubs.

The title of my tale was, A Stitch in Pines Saves Nine.  The rules of the contest call for a presentation of between 3 and 5 minutes.  The video below was done with my inexpensive Flip Camera.  Hopefully the audio is loud enough for you to hear most of it.

Telling tall tales, and stories for that matter is a recent development for me. Traditionally, my topics are heavy or serious topics.  That is one of the benefits of Toastmasters because it is forcing me to go outside my normal comfort level and to try to do something different.  That’s the way we grow as individuals.

Technorati Tags: toastmasters, Minneapolis Toastmasters, tall tales, contest speech,

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At today’s meeting of Realtor’s Toastmasters 2512, we had three very good speeches as is typical of my club.

I had the opportunity to evaluate one of the speakers, Red Nelson whose speech focused on a variation on a theme.   He started with a deck of cards, and flipped it to reveal the Ace of Hearts. Lucky in love he suggested.

He then talked about three other types of cards. Advertising post cards, greeting cards and business cards. All variations on a theme of “cards”

When discussing the advertising post card, he suggested that we are all conditioned to look at the reverse of  a post card, just as we tend to want to flip a face down card to see what is on the other side.

When discussing greeting cards, he noted that a preprinted card is not all that inspiring, although we are all likely to open greeting cards mailed to us, where we may not open other junk mail. What really matters he pointed out is the added cursive writing on a card, the little extra effort that makes in personal and meaningful.

He then discussed business cards, and how the little extra of a meaningful logo or other significant short piece of information can go a long way toward making a business card more meaningful.

He tied it all back together by bringing back the deck of cards and re-emphasizing how we as people are conditioned to  look for more than the one side of cards. That we tend to automatically look for more information with the format.

In my evaluation, I suggested that he could have taken it a tiche further by suggesting more people use the reverse side of their business cards.

So what’s the message from all this?

First, when looking for a topic for a speech, even simple common things like a deck of cards can be used to serve as the foundation of a meaningful talk.  Just expand the idea and think about possible variations.

Second, part of the value of a toastmaster group is the evaluation provided by a member. Now many of us can be hyper sensitive to criticism, unless it is put into a positive framework.  In Toastmasters we offer criticism as a formal part of the meeting. That way it isn’t seen as being picked on as it is expected. Further, we practice what we refer to as a “Sandwich.”  This means an evaluation starts and ends with some positive comments, with a suggestions sandwiched in between.  We all need criticism to help us recognize and act upon shortcomings.

This is true in all aspects of life, but we frequently freeze out criticism by accepting it poorly and/or reacting negatively to those who do try to offer advice.  Public speaking is an art form and one where the recognition of strengths and weaknesses permits faster progress than in a situation where only positives or only negatives are offered.

Technorati Tags: speech topics, evaluation, speech evaluation, public speaking, Toastmasters

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