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Author:
Sandra Schrift


Successful speakers do not do all the right things all the time. They often take risks and risk bombing. But all top speakers take daily action, to move towards their goals with many adjustments. Here are ten ways to be a highly effective speaker.

1. Have a passion for your subject(s). If you don’t care about your topic, who will? Make a list of five topics you love. Choose two and be willing to develop a program you are willing to stay with for at least two years.

2. Be persistent in your quest to be a speaker of excellence. You must be perceived as an expert with expertise. Demonstrate this through your life experiences, research and the way you customize your material for each audience. You are only as good as your last speech!

3. Have the patience to succeed. Is persistence your middle name? Don’t expect to be a success over night. Get support, mentors, a coach to help you master your presentation(s). One speaker said, This is a hard business to make an easy living.

4. Speak from your heart. Be authentic. Be vulnerable. Share your mishaps and idiosyncrasies. You won’t be perceived as real until you do this. When you are truthful, your audiences will trust what you are saying. Let your message provide hope for your audience.

5. Connect quickly with your audience. You only have 30 seconds to make your connection. So pay attention to your opening remarks. Don’t use jokes they may offend people in your audience. Do use short quotations, a funny story that is relevant to your message, a question or two to get their attention quickly.

6. Prepare 24/7 you don’t write speeches, you find them everywhere in hotels, from family experiences, in the supermarkets and restaurants. Retrieve them and retell them. Don’t lose out on great material because you didn’t have your note pad near you. Why not invest in a mini-tape recorder and record ideas as they occur throughout your day.

7. Speak to the ways people learn; auditory, visual and kinesthetic. Know your audience so that you can offer the right mix. Research suggests 40% are visual, 40% are kinesthetic, and only 20% are auditory. If you don’t use props or visuals, you will not reach 80% of your audience. Be inclusive and find ways/tools that will speak to 100% of the people in your audience.

8. Support your main points with stories most people delineate their thoughts visually. People learn best from your personal stories. They will also do a better job in retaining your message if you tell them a story. Remember when you were a kid. . .you said to your parents, tell me a story. When an adult hears your story, they are only a step away from their own story. Become a good story teller and watch your referrals and repeat business increase.

9. Make it fun learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun your audience is having laughter is like internal jogging. Inject some humor along the way. The audience wants to lighten up even with serious matters. Reminder---mature adults do not take themselves too seriously.

10. Have a reverence for the work you do. It is a privilege to be on the platform. And with this comes an awesome responsibility to your audience. Speaking is an art and a skill. Tap in to your creativity, your wholesomeness, your playfulness. Live/speak from the inside out.


Sandra Schrift

13 year speaker bureau owner and now career coach to emerging and veteran public speakers who want to "grow" a profitable speaking business. I also work with business professionals and organizations who want to delivermasterful presentations.

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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... Speaker Loses Words And Money I recently saw a phenomenal speaker. I remember being moved by his speech and desperately wanted to take his message home with me – but I couldn’t. I wanted a book, a pamphlet, or something I could hold on to – but he didn’t have it. How could someone so powerful, so inspirational, so awesome miss this opportunity? I’m still trying to figure out how such a dynamic professional speaker could leave his audience empty handed? Better yet, how could he leave with an empty wallet? I took a moment to calculate how much money he lost that day. If he had a book and sold it for $25 and if only half the audience (150 people) bought his book that day, he would have made $3,750. That’s almost $4,000! I don’t know about you, but I’d certainly like to make $3750 in one day. I learned two valuable lessons that day: 1) Speakers without books, disappoint their audience. 2) Speakers without books lose money every time they speak. That’s a very expensive lesson for a speaker to learn. Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t disappoint your audience. Don’t disappoint your wallet. You don’t have to be a writer to become a published author - you’re a speaker, which means you’ve already got the material for a money making book. Start your book by reviewing your current topics and transform them into chapters for your book. A good book doesn’t have to be long; it just has to be powerful. Remember, you’re not writing a novel, so shoot for 100 pages. Once you’ve compiled the major content of your book, go back and write an introduction and a closing chapter. Also, keep in mind that your audience wants to take YOU home with them, so make sure your personal style is reflected in the book. Once your manuscript is complete, take a few days to edit it I also suggest hiring a professional editor...