Archive for 2010

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Public Speakers Need To Put The Jigsaw Puzzle Together To Have A Good Closing

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Image Credit A good closing is no puzzle if you know how to put the pieces together

A good closing is no puzzle if you know how to put the pieces together

When it comes to wrapping up a speech that you are giving, you want to do it right and not leave your audience wondering why you stopped talking all of a sudden. Two great ways to do this are to use the “jigsaw puzzle” and the “future vision” closing techniques. For the right speech, using one of these closings can make the difference between a so-so speech and a real crowd pleaser.

The Jigsaw Puzzle Close

The jigsaw puzzle close is one of my favorites. It’s not easy to do correctly, but if you take the time to plan it out, then you can create a very powerful speech.

When you are using this type of closing, you start by identifying a major problem that your audience is dealing with. In this case, the bigger the problem, the better. As you discuss the problem, you really want to get the entire room nodding in agreement with you that it’s a big, big problem.

An example of such a large problem would be if you were addressing an audience who worked for a company who had outgrown their current offices. You could detail all of the difficulties that they were currently facing because they were out of room.

The next thing that you want to do is to break the problem into multiple pieces. Continuing our example, this is where you would break an office overcrowding situation into multiple issues such as the lack of available parking, not enough offices, and not enough conference rooms to meet with customers.

Once you’ve done this, you then start to identify how your solution can solve each of the separate issues that you’ve brought up. In our example, if you had a larger workspace that you were trying to get the audience to move into, then you’d show how it would solve each of their individual problems.

Finally, in your closing you bring it all together and show how your solution solves each of the pieces of their problem and thereby solves the entire problem.

The Future Vision Close

The future vision close is easy to use and is almost always a sure fire hit with your audience. Let’s talk frankly here for just a moment: nobody can really predict the future. However, when you use this closing for your speech, you boldly claim that you can see the future.

When you are using this closing, you need to make sure that your opening and the body of your speech all lead up to the closing. In the closing, you make your predictions about the future.

These predictions show that by adopting your point of view, your audience can make the most of what is coming their way. This type of closing is hard to argue with because of two things: it hasn’t happened yet and you seem so certain about how it’s all going to turn out.

What All Of This Means For You

How you choose to end your speech is one of the most important decisions that you’ll make when you are designing your speech. If you do it correctly, then your speech can make a lasting impression on your audience.

If you choose to use the jigsaw closing technique, then you’ll have to break the audience’s big problem up into multiple smaller issues that your solution can solve. If you use the future vision closing then your vision of how the future is going to turn out should lead your audience to adopting the points that you are trying to convince them about.

Both of these closing are very powerful tools in the hands of a public speaker. Make sure that you use them, but be careful and make sure that you use them with care!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How far into the future do you think your audience will believe that you can see?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you are designing your next speech, you’re going to have an important decision to make: how do you want your audience to feel once you’re done talking? More often than not, you’re going to want them to be in a happy, positive mood. This means that you’re going to have to end your speech in a way that makes this happen. Say hello to the Great and Bridge speech closing techniques.

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Posted in closing | No Comments »

Tales From The Frontline Of Speaking: The Story Of A Keynote

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Image Credit Here's How Dr. Jim Anderson Prepared To Give A Keynote Speech

Here's How Dr. Jim Anderson Prepared To Give A Keynote Speech

Sure it’s all good for me to go on and on about how you can improve your public speaking skills; however, what happens when I get the call to come and deliver a keynote speech in front of a room of strangers? It’s times like this that everything that I’ve learned about public speaking gets put to the test. Do you want to know how it all turned out?

Getting The Call

Every speaking gig starts with a call (or an email). In my case I got an email from the folks who were setting up a meeting of product managers in Chicago called ProductCamp Chicago. They had read one of my blogs that talks about my views on product management and were wondering if I’d be available to be their keynote speaker.

In my case, flattery always works. I did a quick check of my schedule and then told them that I’d love to do it. They had taken their time in getting in touch with me: I had just under two weeks until the big event. Clearly I was going to have to move quickly.

Creating The Speech

Having accepted the offer to deliver a keynote speech, I was now faced with the challenge of figuring out just what the heck I was going to talk about. Although I had never met my audience before, I knew what they did for a living and the challenges that they were facing.

The organizers had asked me how much time I wanted for my keynote (how many times do you have the opportunity to determine that!). I had told them that between 30-45 minutes would do me fine – on a Saturday morning, I figured that was just about all that any audience would want to sit through no matter how good of a job I did.

After having racked my brain for a few days, I finally decided that what I needed to talk about were the sweeping changes that I believe are going to be transforming the field of marketing. If I did a good job, then this topic would catch the audience’s attention and get them thinking about whether or not their jobs were going to go away. Always a good way to capture your audience’s attention!

Making It Stick

Although I generally prefer a more free-form style of speaking in which I create an outline and talk from, this was a case where I wanted to make every word count. That meant that I needed to write out my speech word-for-word. In 12-point Arial font it ended up filling up 10 typewritten pages. I speak at about 150 words a minute and that gave me 4,973 words or about 33 minutes of speaking if I didn’t speed up or slow down too much.

Having written the speech out, I now had to commit it to memory. I use a image / action association technique to do this and it served me well this time out. I finished writing the speech on Tuesday and flew up to Chicago so I had roughly 3 days to commit 10 written pages to memory. It turns out that that was just about right with a bit of a push on my part.

God’s Angry Wrath

In all of my haste to create and memorize a speech, I had not had time to create any slides for the speech. I stated to feel that I needed some on Friday morning but figured that I could just slap them out on Friday night. Well wouldn’t you know it, the electrical thunderstorm to end all electrical thunderstorms rolled through western Chicago on Friday evening and where I was staying lost power at about 5pm. No power meant that my laptop wasn’t going to work and I didn’t have any access to the Internet to get images for my slides. So much for that idea!

Things got just a bit more complicated the next morning. The house that I was staying still didn’t have any electricity and it’s on well water (pumped by an electrical pump). This meant that there wasn’t going to be enough water for me to take a shower. Can you say sponge bath?

By the time I actually caught the train to go into Chicago, I really wasn’t all that worried about giving a half hour speech in front of a group of strangers. So many hurdles had already presented themselves that I basically figured what else could happen?

One Final Trick: Just Say No To Q&A

The organizers had asked me if I wanted to have a Q&A session after I was done speaking. I actually really don’t like those: if nobody asks a question, then I am sorta left hanging there and that’s never a fun feeling.

I told them that having a Q&A session sounded like a great idea, but I wanted to do things just a bit differently: I’d be the one asking the questions. My hosts agreed so I took the time to create 5 questions that I felt that anyone could answer after listening to my speech.

Since getting called on by a presenter to answer questions after a speech is the second thing that I hate the most, I came prepared. I had stopped by a store the night before and purchased chocolate bars, some with nuts, some without. People who answered my questions get a chocolate bar for their efforts. Who doesn’t like chocolate?

In the end, the speech went off without a hitch. I had no problems remembering what I wanted to say, when I wanted to say it. The audience seemed to enjoy themselves and I got many complements when it was all done. The folks who had invited me were especially grateful. They said that I had “…hit it out of the park…” and that’s when I knew that it had all been worth the effort!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How many times do you think that you should practice a speech before you feel that you could have it fully memorized?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When it comes to wrapping up a speech that you are giving, you want to do it right and not leave your audience wondering why you stopped talking all of a sudden. Two great ways to do this are to use the “jigsaw puzzle” and the “future vision” closing techniques…

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Posted in keynote | 2 Comments »

4 Things A Presenter Should NEVER Do

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Image Credit Consider These Suggestions To Be Speech Red Lights – Don't Go There

Consider These Suggestions To Be Speech Red Lights – Don't Go There

Check with just about any professional speaker or pick up a book at the book store on public speaking and you’ll get some great advice. They’ll tell you exactly what you SHOULD be doing. That’s all good, but what’s been missing has been anyone talking about the other side of that coin – what should you NOT be doing?

Don’t Apologize To Your Audience

Things happen. In fact a lot of things happen that we really have no control over. As a presenter, you’ve got to learn to just go with the flow.

During your presentation you may realize that something is wrong with one of the slides that you are using. You may realize that something is missing from your slides. None of this really matters to your audience.

When you start to apologize to your audience, they are going to start to see you in a different light. Since you have already screwed something up, they are going to start to wonder what else you are getting incorrect.

It’s a natural human reaction to want to apologize for things that happen that you didn’t plan on. Stifle this tendency. Say nothing and move on – your audience will never know and you’ll remain the expert presenter in their eyes.

Don’t Tell The Audience Why They Should Care

All too often I see speakers take the stage and then launch into their presentation without doing the correct first step. This first step is taking a moment to have a talk with your audience about why they are there and why you are there.

If you can’t answer this question right off the bat, then the purpose for your entire presentation will be lost. It’s your responsibility to tell your audience why they should care about what you are going to be talking about.

You are in a unique position: you know what you are going to be talking about. Your job before you start your presentation is to take the time to tell your audience why what you are going to be saying is important to them.

Don’t Customize Your Presentation To Your Audience

One of the greatest sins that a presenter can make is to use a generic presentation with an audience. Every audience is different and deserves to have a custom presentation.

When we create a speech, we always have to picture some type of audience in our minds. Hopefully when we give the speech, we’ll be giving it to that type of audience. If we go on and give the speech to another audience, then the speech needs to be changed and shaped to meet the needs of that audience.

If you don’t do this, then the speech will never make an impact. Your ability to connect with an audience relies on talking to them in their language so that you can make a real connection.

Don’t Overload Your Audience

You are too smart and that’s a problem. If you are not careful, you’ll write your speech from your point-of-view and not your audience’s. This could result in a data overload situation.

You need to remember that the reason that your audience has come to listen to what you have to say is that they believe that they can learn something. No matter what the format of your speech is, they believe that you’re going to tell them something that is going to allow them to see the world in a different way when you are done.

If you share everything that you know about your topic with them, then they are quickly going to become overloaded – it’s just too much to take in. Once this happens, you will have lost them. They’ll leave your speech feeling confused, upset, and angry.

You need to match your speech’s content to the amount of time that you’ll be talking for. Your goal should be to share new information with your audience, but only enough so that they walk away with a few new ideas. Don’t try to share everything with them in a single speech.

What All Of This Means For You

Great speakers know what they have to do in order to win the hearts and minds of their audiences. They also know what they should not do.

These speakers avoid simple mistakes such as apologizing to their audiences, forgetting to tell the audience why they should care about what the speaker is going to talk about, forgetting to customize their presentation, and overloading their audience with too much information.

These mistakes are easy to avoid – but first you have to know that they are out there. Once you do, you’ll be well on your way to delivering fantastic presentations…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What is the best way to determine if your speech has too much information in it?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Sure it’s all good for me to go on and on about how you can improve your public speaking skills; however, what happens when I get the call to come and deliver a keynote speech in front of a room of strangers? It’s times like this that everything that I’ve learned about public speaking gets put to the test. Do you want to know how it all turned out?

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Posted in basic rules | 2 Comments »

Helping Your Audience By Going After An Iceberg With A Shotgun

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
Image Credit When You're Hunting For A Good Speech Closing, Sometimes A Shotgun Is What You Need

When You're Hunting For A Good Speech Closing, Sometimes A Shotgun Is What You Need

If how you wrap up your next speech is really the most important part of the speech, then what’s the best way to do it? The last thing in the world that you want to do is to end up leaving your audience flat – thanks for listening to me, got any questions? Instead, you need to have a collection of possible ways to close your speech that you can pick and choose from. I’ve got three for you to take a look at now: the iceberg, the shotgun, and the offer to help.

The Iceberg Closing

This type of closing is well suited to those speeches where you have a lot of interconnected details that you’ve laid out for your audience. Your challenge as a speaker is to find a way to remind your audience of everything that you’ve covered while not overwhelming them.

The key to this type of closing is to group the various points that you’ve made into two or three main conclusions. These are what you are going to want the audience to remember. During the close you’ll present your main point (tip of the iceberg) and then you’ll present the various points that support that main point (body of the iceberg).

Now there’s no way that your audience is going to remember your multiple supporting points. However, what they will remember are your two or three main points. They will even vaguely remember that you did a good job of explaining why they should support these main points – but they won’t remember all of your supporting points.

The Shotgun Closing

Let’s move on to a more tricky type of speech to give. Sometimes we are faced with the challenge of delivering a speech in which there is a lot of information that we need to get across to our audience. Now it’s nice if this information is related to each other in some way, but all to often that is not the case.

A good example of this would be if you were introducing people to a new piece of software. There are many things that you’ll have to talk about like how you log in, what the control bar does, where your files are saved, etc. In cases like this, you’ve got a challenge on your hands – it’s going to be all to easy to overwhelm your audience and have them walk away from your speech not remembering anything.

The shotgun closing provides you with a way to prevent this from happening. The shotgun closing starts, somewhat surprisingly, when you open your speech. The best way to do this is to give your audience a verbal quiz with multiple questions about the facts that you want them to walk away from your speech knowing. Clearly they won’t have the answers now, but have them take the quiz anyway.

Next, you deliver your speech and in your speech you need to step through each of the questions on the quiz in the same sequence that they were on your quize. Finally, as part of your closing, have your audience take the verbal quiz one more time. This combination of seeing / hearing / doing can do wonders for your audience’s ability to retain what you’ve said.

The “I’m Here To Help You” Closing

When you have a problem that you need to solve, who wouldn’t want someone to show up and offer to help you out? That’s exactly what this closing does for your audience.

This closing once again starts with your opening. In your opening, you need to identify the challenge that the audience is facing. Once you’ve done this, you then need to spend the body of your speech identifying the features of your product and then relate them to the goal of solving the challenge that your audience is trying to achieve.

Finally, in your closing you are going to want to take it up a level and review what your audience is trying to achieve, and then go over how your product will help them to achieve it.

What All Of This Means For You

The way that you choose to close your next speech is perhaps the most important decision that you’ll make about that speech. In order to create the most powerful closing, you need to know as many different closing styles as possible.

Three powerful closing styles include the iceberg, the shotgun, and the “I’m here to help” approaches. The iceberg is good for summarizing lots of related points, the shotgun is a good way to get people to remember unrelated points, and the “I’m here to help” approach works to show people how your solution relates to their issues.

As with all such things in life, there is no one solution that is right for every speech that you’ll give. Instead, you are going to have to evaluate what you’d like to communicate to your audience and pick the closing that works best for you. Good luck!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What would be the best way to deliver the quiz that is part of the shotgun closing?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Check with just about any professional speaker or pick up a book at the book store on public speaking and you’ll get some great advice. They’ll tell you exactly what you SHOULD be doing. That’s all good, but what’s been missing has been anyone talking about the other side of that coin – what should you NOT be doing?

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Posted in closing | No Comments »

Why Your Speech’s Ending Doesn’t Work And What To Do About It

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Image Credit You don't want to lead your audience to a dead ending…

You don't want to lead your audience to a dead ending…

Quiz time: what’s the most important part of your next speech? The opening? The points that you make in the middle to support your position or idea? Nope, it’s the close. The last few words out of your mouth are the ones that will have the greatest impact on your audience. Since this is true, why are you doing such a poor job with your speech endings?

Where We Are Going Wrong

I’m no different than anyone else – left to my own devices, I’ll start writing a speech from the opening to the close. It turns out that this is exactly the wrong way to go about writing a speech.

What you really want to be doing is to start by writing out your speech’s closing. Look, your closing isn’t going to be all that long and so it sure seems as though you should make each word count. By writing it out you’ll be able to craft and polish exactly what you’ll end up saying.

An additional benefit of starting with the end is that once you’ve nailed down just exactly what your main point is, it makes writing the rest of the speech that much easier. You’ll be able to prevent yourself from going off-track because you’ll know where you want to leave your audience when your speech is done.

The “Solution Found” Ending

In the world of music, there are certain forms of music that get repeated in many different songs. The songs are all different; however, if you’ve studied music then you are able to pick out which form the song is using.

In the world of public speaking it’s exactly the same. There are a set of speech closing “forms” that get used over and over again. You need to pick the one that works the best with the speech that you are giving.

One of the classic forms is called the “solution found” ending. This type of ending is closely tied to both the opening and the body of your speech. When used correctly it can work as a powerful tool for convincing your audience.

The solution found ending requires that you start your speech by explaining to your audience what the characteristics of a good solution to their problem are. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about world hunger or how to clean your carpets, it’s the same idea.

In the body of your speech you are going to want to explain the features that your product or idea has. This is where you show the audience why it’s such a great product / idea.

In the closing part of your speech you now relate your product’s / idea’s features to the characteristics that make up an ideal solution to their problem. It’s this mapping of your product / idea to what you framed as being the perfect solution that will convince the audience to choose your solution.

The Funnel Effect

A different classic speech closing technique is called “the funnel effect”. This method is best used when you are giving a speech that has many different points in it.

The problem with giving a speech that contains a lot of information is that your audience is going to struggle with trying to identify just exactly what they need to remember when the speech is over. As the speaker, you can help them out by picking out the two or three key points that you want to remember as they walk away.

The net effect of this is that you create a “funnel” for your speech. The body has many key points while the closing has only a few – the most important ones.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers we all want the same thing: to change the world. If we are going to be successful at this then we’re going to have to make sure that our audience remembers our speech once we’re done talking.

It’s the closing of our speech that is the most important. In order to make it easy for our audience to remember what we’ve said, we can use some of the classic forms that have been created in order to design powerful speech closings.

Two of the classic closing forms are “solution found” and “the funnel effect”. Both of these forms allow you to start creating a speech with a clear ending in mind.

It is the responsibility of the speaker to make it easy for our audiences to remember the main point of our speech. By creating a great closing, you will have ensured that you are a successful speaker!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How many points do you think that you can pack into a closing and still have your audience remember them?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If how you wrap up your next speech is really the most important part of the speech, then what’s the best way to do it? The last thing in the world that you want to do is to end up leaving your audience flat – thanks for listening to me, got any questions? Instead, you need to have a collection of possible ways to close your speech that you can pick and choose from. I’ve got three for you to take a look at now: the iceberg, the shotgun, and the offer to help.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in closing | 1 Comment »

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