Practice Makes Perfect

One inescapable truth about public speaking is that the more you do it the better you get — practice makes perfect. Like many other pursuits, being an accomplished speaker takes time and effort. The first time most of us spoke in public we felt awkward, unsure, terrified even. It was no different the first time we strapped on skis, swung a golf club or rode a horse.

Those who now ski, golf or ride with apparent ease — especially those who make a living at it — will attest to the hours, days and years of dedicated effort taken to achieve mastery. It is the same with professional speakers. No-one is born knowing how to speak effectively to an audience. It is, however, a skill that can be taught, if you’re willing to invest the time and money to learn. Professional sports teams pay handsomely for the best coaches. Even Tiger Woods takes every opportunity to spend time with his coach.

It’s rather surprising that few amateur speakers invest in any form of coaching. There’s a wide range of support available from the members of the Northern California Chapter of the NSA. From the services of elite presentation coaches, to speech writers and graphics consultants, there is no reason your next speech needs to be a hit-or-miss attempt.

Visit our Chapter meetings for a taste of the professionalism we bring to the art of public speaking. Meanwhile, enjoy this edition of PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING. The articles have been written by speakers with a total of over 100 years of experience! That’s a lot of practice. Read about the lessons they’ve learned along the way and you will surely pick up something that will improve your next speech. It’s a perfect opportunity.

In this Issue

Susan RoAne — Networks as safety nets during gritty times. Learn how to strengthen yours.

Marilyn Manning, CSP, CMC — How a clear vision, values and mission position you for success.

Aldonna Ambler, CSP, CMC — Tips for obtaining corporate sponsorship to grow your business.

Ford Saeks — Ways to increase bookings, boost product sales, and watch your business grow.

Craig Harrison — Improving your customer service orientation to close more business.

Lauren Mayer — Tips from a professional entertainer to address common audience distractions.

Marci Shimoff — Boost your happiness quotient … right now!

Order your copy of the magazine today.

NSA/NC Meeting Report: Saturday February 28, 2009

Marketing expert and larger-than-life character Ford Saeks flew in from Wichita, Kansas to share his ideas on how to use Social Media to make money.

Ford is best known for positioning people and their products and services for profit through proven marketing and innovative publicity campaigns.

The sold-out crowd at the National Speakers Association Northern California Chapter meeting were treated to four hours of Ford’s high-intensity ideas on how to start making money on the internet and leverage Social Media Marketing to build influence, reputation and brand within communities of potential customers. Some core principles:

“What problem do I solve that people will pay to make go away?”
“The purpose of business is to generate a customer. The purpose of a customer is to generate a profit.”

‘Nuff said. Here’s some of what Ford shared.

Creating an online cash machine

Speaking and training + Digital and physical products + consulting and coaching = a fully-rounded revenue model. Web 2.0 places a dialog with customers and prospects at the center of business today. Sharing opinions, comments, and other content in the form of audio podcasts, video, links, bookmarks, articles and slides makes a site successful.

Research the top keywords for your niche and use them relentlessly to help the search engines find your site when a customer is looking for your solution to the pain they are feeling. Learn the all-important modifiers that people use to focus search results.

Know the answers to three core questions about your business:

• Why should someone pay attention to you – what is your message?
• Who are you trying to market to?
• How are you getting the word out – what is the method?

It’s a FEATURE if it’s about you, your products or services or your company. Ask “Which means…” and you get the BENEFIT that describes an emotional or intangible result the customer gets.

Social Media Marketing

• Helps you expand your internet footprint
• Makes it easier for prospects to find you
• Improves your search engine ranking
• Establishes you as an expert
• Improves communications and feedback
• Builds relationships and networks
• Drives a steady stream of prospects to your online business

There’s a gazillion (or so) Social Media sites listed at go2web20.net. Ford recommends you start by:

1. Building a blog with WordPress.org – hosted on your own website to optimize SEO
2. Establishing your Channel on YouTube – peppered with relevant keywords
3. Building a profile on Facebook and LinkedIn – with posts from your blog and YouTube videos
4. Experiment with Twitter. Start by reading Randy Gage’s recent assessment of the uses of abuses of Twitter.

If you’d like to see the slides he used, Ford has kindly made them available. What you won’t get from the slides, or this report, is any of his incredible energy and specific insight into the ways these tools can work for you today to make money on the Internet.

For that, you had to have been there.

And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,
By crying comfort from a hollow breast,
Can chase away the first-conceived sound?
– Henry VI, Part ii, Act 3, Scene 2

Speaking while people Tweet

Olivia Mitchell has a useful article on Pistachio’s Touchbase Blog about the growing phenomena of members of your audience using Twitter to comment on a presentation in real-time on laptops, Blackberries and iPhones.

She advises audience members on the best way to engage in the conversation. She also advises speakers on how to deal with this new ‘back-channel’ of information.

Presenting while people are twittering is challenging. But isn’t it better to get that feedback in real-time when you can do something to retrieve the situation – than wait till you read the evaluation sheets a few days after the conference – and find that you bombed?

The 92 comments (to date) highlight the many implications, including this from Morriss on the way Twittering instantly repurposes a speech beyond the confines of the room:

You left out a huge bonus to the presenter: key highlights of your presentation are being sent out to an audience much bigger than those in the room. If you have something truly insightful or newsworthy to say, your message may be retweeted far and wide.

Twitter is just one aspect of modern technology that is changing public speaking.

A speech is more than a collection of dry facts. Stories make your talk come alive. Storytelling is a powerful way to drill your message into the listener’s mind. Stories are a great way of emotionally connecting with an audience. Stories engage the audience and raise their levels of motivation, acceptance, and approval. No matter how dry the topic, a personal story will build trust with the audience since you’ll come across as human. These 10 ideas will help you give a talk that connects with an audience, moves them to action and leaves a positive impression.

1. Power Opening. Start your story with a bang! Captivate and create an emotional bond with the audience. What is the one idea you want the audience to hear, remember, and act on? This one idea is the thesis of the speech. Introduce it early in a powerful opening.
2. Embrace Humor. But never tell jokes. Self-depreciating humor works best. The audience who smiles with you is more sympathetic to your argument. Make sure that you connect humor to the point you are making. Keep it short and sweet, not long and drawn-out. Avoid saying, “This is a funny” before you speak. Avoid offensive and off-color humor.
3. Learn theatrical techniques. Doug Stevenson (www.storytheater.net) shows speakers how to tell stories using powerful performance techniques. Doug teaches how to tell stories in present-time, stepping IN and OUT of your persona when on stage.
4. Make the audience the hero of the story. Turn the ‘I’ in your story into the ‘we’. Use metaphors and analogies to help explain new concepts. Analogies are best taken from common experiences that everyone shares.
5. Develop a compelling plot. Keep the story-line simple. Build a story arc. Consider starting the story in the middle – this is a real attention-grabber. Set the scene and introduce the characters. Stories with conflict are interesting. Create an obstacle, then describe and how it was overcome.
6. Develop Case Studies. A good case study is more than just a description. Discuss the issues involved. List the options – the range of possible solutions. Highlight the dilemma faced – make it interesting. Explain how a decision was arrived at. Summarize with a conclusion.
7. Be authentic. Authenticity is crucial. Your story must be congruent with your tongue, feet and wallet. Put yourself into the story. Tell compelling stories which are grounded in everyday reality. Make the story something you care about, something from your background.
8. Connect with the audience emotionally. The best way to engage an audience is to tap into their emotions. A story is the emotional fast lane to the brain allowing people to feel genuine emotion. Don’t just present dry facts. Deep learning takes place when the audience experiences stories that create triggers the listener feels emotionally, not just thinks about conceptually.
9. Ground the story in the context of the moment. Prepare your story to fit the climate, culture and mission of the audience without losing the spirit of your message. Show, don’t tell.
10. Use Specific details. The more specific, concrete, details you include, the clearer the situation will be to the audience. Leverage a known name or brand. Instead of a bar of soap say Irish Spring. Use the largest unit of measurement. Over a quarter century is a more compelling statement than saying 25 years.

Speakers who use some of these ideas in developing their next speech will connect with the audience in ways they would not dream possible. Don’t just read stories to your kids. Tell us a story.

Thanks to a posting by Chris, I’ve just enjoyed watching an excellent speech delivered by Sir Ken Robinson at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) called Changing Paradigms.

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources.

His speech (almost an hour long) has a quirky, academic quality to it, but without the dry-as-dust content many insecure PhD’s include when trying to impress with their command of the facts.

He uses self-depreciating humor to win over the British audience. Some of the humor sounds weird to those of us who live in the US. He gets appreciative chuckles when he tells them “I live in California, and you don’t…”. He speaks with sincerity and passion about challenges in education and the mis-diagnosis of kids today as ADHD.

I especially like the graphics he uses around 43:00 minutes into the talk showing the relative size of the Earth to the vastness of interstellar space. A great way to represent statistical data in a presentation.

A speech worth watching as an example of an informative and persuasive argument supported by data.

There’s just one thing I can’t get over – it looks like he & Michael Cain were separated at birth. I’m sure no-one has ever told him that…

Last month I attended an introductory evening on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). It was taught by Jeff Slayter of the World’s Hidden Masters publishing company.The course promised that the techniques were for applying NLP, easily and professionally in business. To survive in a retracted economy only those with top leadership skills and extraordinary ability to create results will thrive.

Here’s Jeff’s infomercial:

World’s Hidden Masters is a leadership training organization offering cutting edge education for group and corporate settings. The content of our workshops are a culmination of a decade of world travel interviewing the top executives, coaches, investors and professionals on the models and systems they have found to be the most effective in creating results in business and financial growth through investments. Using a combination of proprietary models in business & financial systems, neuro linguistics, executive leadership tools, collaborative systems & movement analysis, we train executives, investors and professionals on how to create unexpected and sustainable bottom line results in their businesses and investments.

.

Jeff is holding another introductory evening in San Francisco at 6:30pm on February 24th.

I asked Jeff how and why NLP is useful for professional speakers. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:30 — 1.9MB)

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The difference between an average presenter and a great one is the ease which the speaker engages the audience. Great speakers engage people’s hearts as well as their minds. They involve everyone in the presentation. They talk with them, not at them. Content (“just the facts”) is less than 5% percent of what people remember about a speech. How you look and what you sound like are the other 95%. Use these 10 tips to involve everyone in the room as active participants in your program. They’ll remember you for it.

1. Engage the audience’s emotions. The best way to engage an audience is to tap into their emotions. Don’t just present dry facts. Involve them emotionally. One way to do this is tell a story in an interactive fashion. Help people see themselves as the hero of the story. Turn the ‘I’ in your story into the ‘we’. Use metaphors and analogies to help explain new concepts. Analogies are best taken from common experiences that everyone shares.
2. Get physical. People can only sit in place for so long. If your presentation lasts more than 45 minutes plan ways to move people around. Do a pop quiz where you ask everyone in the room to stand and then sit down as they respond to questions.
3. Make the speech compelling. Exhibit empathy with the pain the audience is feeling. Align your personal interests with those of the audience. Make every sentence count – eliminate fluff. Deliver your speech with passion and focus. Use evocative words that engage each of the five senses.
4. Be aware of different learning styles. Adults acquire knowledge in different ways. Every audience will include a wide range of ‘learning styles’. Visual learners will want to see your presentation and take a look at what you will reveal. They appreciate PowerPoint, graphics and handouts. Auditory learners hear what you tell them and decide if it resonates. They respond to stories and vocal variety. Kinesthetic learners grasp the foundation of your argument. Involve them in discussion and Q&A. Auditory Digital learners love to get a sense of your material and process the talk. Give them plenty of data, graphs and statistics. They need time to digest the information and a way to contact you after the program is over.
5. Move beyond PowerPoint. Remember that your presentation is more than the set of slides. The slides should complement your outline, not visa-versa. Consider switching off the computer and using the whiteboard or flipcharts.
6. Make eye contact. Before you begin speaking, take a moment to breathe. Then look at one person and connect with your eyes. Begin your speech talking directly to that person. After you finish a thought, pause and move on to the next person and repeat the process. This helps calm your nerves and connects with your audience one person at a time.
7. Avoid reading a verbatim script. Reading a script sounds stilted and distances you from people. Free yourself from having to use extensive written notes. Take your script outline and create abbreviated notes. Carry 3×5 cards onstage with large-font key words to jog your memory.
8. Listen to the audience. Communication is a two-way street. Your audience speaks to you all the time, whether with questions spoken aloud or their facial expressions and body language. It’s critical that you listen to them. Ask questions during your talk to confirm that what you are saying connects with what they are hearing. Use body language to react physically to the audience. Don’t just speak from the neck up.
9. Challenge the audience. Audiences love controversy. Always be controversial around issues — never around personalities. Challenge conventional wisdom. Point out a glaring inconsistency in received wisdom. Offer a clean, easily-understood solution to a complex problem.
10. Use humor. But never tell jokes. Self-depreciating humor works best. The audience who smiles with you is more sympathetic to your argument. Make sure that you connect humor to the point you are making. Keep it short and sweet, not long and drawn-out. Avoid saying, “This is a funny” before you speak. Avoid offensive and off-color humor.

Speakers who follow these tips will present with an authenticity and energy that the audience will feel and respond to. Speaking honestly in a manner that involves the audience minimizes separation between the person on the podium and the listeners. We can ‘tell it like it is’ so members of the audience move beyond where they were before we showed up.

For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little – that’s how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.
– The Lion in Winter

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
– President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

President Obama’s Inaugural Address was a measured speech, somber in places, hopeful in others. It was pragmatic and direct in addressing the current situation of the country he now leads. It was less ‘inspiring’ than many speeches he made during the campaign. He’s no longer auditioning for a role which now sits squarely on his shoulders.

On a freezing day in Washington DC, in front of a building constructed by black slaves, he took the Oath of Office and delivered a speech which, as anticipated, used many of the fundamentals of the art of rhetoric.

There was the simple tricolon:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

and the tricolon with the third term doubled up:

The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.

There was anaphora, the repetition of words at the start of neighboring clauses:

Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.

and even more powerfully:

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

There was ethos in establishing his bone fides, such as this, delivered on the steps of what remains the grandest of capitals:

from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born

delivered by a man

…whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

There was the logos of the argument, developed point-by-point:

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched. But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

And, time and again, there was pathos – establishing an emotional bond with a global audience (my 88-year-old father rang to tell me that, watching from his home in England, he had tears in his eyes):

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

There was subtle alliteration:

Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions

There were words which soared to poetic heights, igniting the imagination with vivid imagery:

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

and words which were delivered with short, sharp jabs, hitting home:

The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.

There were passages that resonated with the references shared by all Americans:

With the Declaration of Independence:

What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

…all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

…but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

With Washington at Valley Forge:

…the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people.

With the Bible

…but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

With hymns:

…who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

Even with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers:

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Perhaps the most telling analysis of the speech are these snapshots of a Java-enabled ‘word tree’ of the speech showing the number of times Obama used “I”, “you”; “they” and “we”.

On the day he assumed the highest office in the land, the speech was far more about those he was elected to serve than he himself.

On the eve of President-elect Barack Obama’s eagerly anticipated Inaugural speech, newspaper headlines are reporting on past Inaugural speeches and millions of Americans plan to engage in the unnatural act of listening to a speech from beginning to end.

Obama, more than any living US President, consciously embraces oratory and the art of rhetoric. A superb assessment of Obama’s speech-making skills appeared in the Weekend Financial Times. Author Sam Leith shows how Obama deploys the terms and tools of formal rhetoric — first described by Aristotle four centuries before the birth of Christ. “They still work the same way on the human ear and the human heart as they did in Aristotle’s day.” His article covers a lot of ground. The main points I took from it are:

Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle

The rhetorical triangle sets out the ground rules for the art of persuasion. It describes how a speaker uses ‘ethos’ to establish their bona fides, ‘logos’ to make the argument logically and ‘pathos’ to manipulate emotion.

Tricolon

The ‘rule of three’ applied in a sentence with three clearly defined parts (cola) of equal length, usually independent clauses and of increasing power. Caesar’s “I came; I saw; I conquered.” Lincoln’s second inaugural with its line “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right … “. Obama at the Berlin Victory Column in front of 100,000 European’s last July: “As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice-caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.” As Leith notes, this is rhetorical power in pure form:

A double (“Boston” and “Beijing”), leading to a tricolon whose third term is itself doubled up, the whole mixture thick with alliteration. This is very far from informal or direct or off-the-cuff speech. It is marvelously and intentionally musical.

Syntheton

The balanced double words used in “Boston and Beijing” or by speakers who say “young and old” or “black and white”.

Anaphora

The repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive lines. Consider Churchill:

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

Now Obama at the Iowa caucus victory speech on January 3rd:

“I’ll be a president who finally makes healthcare affordable … I’ll be a president who ends the tax breaks … I’ll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity … I’ll be a president who ends this war in Iraq … ” Then: “This was the moment when … this was the moment when … this was the moment when … ” And, as his speech built to its climax, “Hope is what I saw … Hope is what I heard … Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire.”

Leith’s article includes an inventory of the debt Obama owes to the rhetorical power of his absent father; to the framers of the Declaration of Independence; to his schooling at Columbia and Harvard; to past President’s; to the Civil Rights movement and the Bible:

Obama sets out to position himself, and his rhetoric positions him, as the inheritor of the oratorical and political traditions of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ.

Leith concludes by remarking the scorn republican’s poured on Obama as “a person of words” and “an elitist who works with words” – while championing the inarticulate leaders they admire (Bush, Palin and the rest). Let’s not forget, as I blogged in February, Hilary Clinton also criticized him as someone who just “gives speeches”.

It’ll be interesting to see the effect a US President with such a command of rhetoric will have on the general level of discourse in the political and commercial arenas. For too long in this country our politician’s and CEO’s have avoided eloquence as something unworthy, untrustworthy, vaguely “European”. They were proud of being plain spoken. Of being a man or woman of the people. That refusal to heed Aristotle’s simple techniques might have worked until now.

The bar has been raised.

Charlie Krackeler has been a professional speaker since 1990. His background as a successful real estate practitioner, manager of a large real estate brokerage office and the Director of Training for one of the nation’s largest real estate companies led him to become of California’s most popular continuing education seminar speakers.

Charlie holds a Master of Science (MS) degree in law and public policy from California University of Pennsylvania. And, a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in history from Gonzaga University. He is a real estate broker, active investor, expert witness in real estate related cases and a mediator. Charlie has had more continuing education programs approved by the California Department of Real Estate than any other single individual in the State of California, and was rated a top evaluated speaker by the California Association of Realtors State Faculty five (5) years running.

From 2004-08 Charlie was elected and served as President of the California Real Estate Education Association (CREEA). In his continuing education seminars and negotiation seminars he has become known as one of the real estate industry’s most popular and entertaining seminar leaders. He is a regular on KRON Channel 4 news giving updates on the real estate market and hosted a popular radio program on a major bay area station.

Extra curricular activities Charlie enjoys include running, tennis, animals, fine dining and of course gossiping.

Mr. Krackeler’s company, Charlie Krackeler Presents, is an approved provider for real estate seminars by the Department of Real Estate on a diversity of topics. Charlie’s dedication to education, self improvement, achieving personal goals and being at the top of your game regardless of one’s chosen path, is what puts Charlie at the top of his game. Real Estate Professionals and Speaker Colleagues have given him the official nickname of the “C.E. King.”

Charlie Krackeler can be reached at (650) 941-4321 or by e-mail charlie@charliekrackelerpresents.com.

I asked Charlie to explain how speaking has helped his real estate business and what he is looking forward to learning from the 2009 NSA/NC Pro-Track class. To hear what he told me, double-click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:53 — 2.0MB)

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