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Author:
Tom Antion

I recently had one of the toughest public speaking engagements of my career. It was a three hour afternoon session on Martin Luther King day in Baltimore, Maryland. It was difficult for many reasons, but one of the most trying was that the audience consisted of all the employees of one company. They ranged from the lowest level to the highest level in the company.

When you have all managers or all executives, it is relatively easy to hone in on their interests and concerns.

When you have such a varied group you have to 'bounce around' and not spend too much time on the interests and concerns of any one type of audience member. If you do, you will lose the interest of all the other groups.

Copyright © 1998 - 2005 Advanced Public Speaking Institute

Tom Antion provides entertaining speeches and educational seminars. He is the ultimate entrepreneur, having owned many businesses BEFORE graduating college. Tom is the author of the best selling presentation skills book "Wake 'em Up Business Presentations" and "Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing." It is important to Tom that his knowledge be not only absorbed, but enjoyed. This is why he delivers his speeches laced with great humor and hysterical jokes. Tom has addressed more than 87 different industries and is thoroughly committed to his clients' needs. http://www.antion.com

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| Article Keywords: Professional Speaker

A Quick Note From The Publisher... If you like the article above, you may be interested in the following article which is also related to Professional Speaker... Public Speaking: From Trainer to Speaker - A World of Difference A lot of trainers have aspirations to become professional speakers and are often misled into thinking that because both activities involve speaking to a group of people they are all basically the same activity. The truth is that there are probably more differences than similarities between training and speaking. The most obvious difference of course is with numbers. Trainers tend to deal with smaller numbers from one to one to perhaps fifty. There are exceptions, but most training courses deal with small groups of people. Speakers tend to work with larger groups. Again there are exceptions but audiences from fifty to thousands are more common. Another apparent similarity is that both training and speaking are concerned with changing behaviour, but again each discipline approaches this in a very different way. A trainer usually works to a Training Gap. There is a gap between a person's actual and desired performance and the goal of the trainer is help the individual to correct that gap. That skill development may involve some significant changes in habits, knowledge and attitude. The trainer breaks the process into a number of simple steps – then they Show and Tell, Observe and Correct, Motivate and Supervise, until the new skill is mastered. A speaker has a different challenge. The audience are not usually there because a specific training gap has been identified. The speaker is selected because there is a belief that learning about a specific topic will be of interest and benefit to members to the audience. Once the speech is over it is the responsibility of each member of the audience to decide if they want to change behaviour. Now here is the problem with that. We learn skills that help us to survive and prosper and “if it ain’t broke we don’t fix it.” ...