Posts Tagged ‘speech opening’

Life Lessons: How NOT To Open A Speech

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
Image Credit
A Poor Speech Opening Is Like Breaking A Promise To Your Audience

A Poor Speech Opening Is Like Breaking A Promise To Your Audience

Let’s say that you owned a lot of real estate. One of your properties was located on the edge of an ocean. Front this lot you could see the most beautiful sunsets every single night. Now you are getting ready to build some houses on the properties that you own. What kind of house are you going to build on your ocean front property? I suspect that it’s going to be the nicest house that you build – you are going to want the house to match the fantastic piece of property that it sits on. Turns out that you need to use the same thinking when you are creating an opening for your next speech…

How You Should NOT Open Your Next Speech

Sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is to find out how NOT to do it. I’m hoping that if we spend a moment talking about how you should not open your next speech this will help you to do a better job of coming up with a way that will work.

The first rule of what not to do is to try to tell a joke. The one exception to this is if you tell jokes for a living, then you can consider it. For the rest of us, this one is a no-no.

Likewise, opening with a barrage of words or terms that your audience won’t understand is a great way to lose them from the beginning. The flip side of this tactic is to take the time to laboriously define all of the terms that you are using. Don’t do this because it will slow down your opening and once again you will lose everyone from the beginning.

A very common mistake that I see over and over again is for the first words that come out of the speaker’s mouth to be a long series of thank-you’s. The audience really doesn’t care to hear you thanking everyone that you’ve ever met (that’s why those Hollywood awards shows are always so boring). Use your first words better.

If you need some help in what to open with, for goodness sake don’t think small. Talking about some minor point or some trivial matter will turn your audience off. They’ll be thinking that if you’re going to start out small, then you’re speech is just going to get even smaller so why should they pay attention?

Finally, no matter what is going on around you, never open your speech by apologizing for anything. Flames could be leaping from the curtains and the flood waters could be rushing in through the back doors, but don’t you mention it to your audience. You need to focus on your speech and let everything else take care of itself.

How You Should Open Your Next Speech

Now that you know what not to do, it does bring up the interesting question of what you should be doing. It turns out that the answer is that there are two things that you need to accomplish during your speech’s opening.

The first of these is to grab your audience’s attention. The first minute or so of your speech is your special time – everyone will stop what they’ve been doing and they’ll listen to you while they try to figure out if you’ll be worth spending time on.

This is your one chance to convince them that you’re going to be saying interesting things that they will want to hear. Make your opening grab their imagination by using provocative questions, startling statistics, or even by referring to recent events.

Once you’ve grabbed their attention, your job is not done. Now what you have to do is answer the one question that every audience asks themselves at the start of any speech: “what’s in it for me?” You need to tell them why spending the next 30, 60, or even 90 minutes listening to you is going to produce real tangible benefits for them. If you can do this during your opening, then you will have spent your first few words wisely.

What All Of This Means For You

Next to the way that you close your speech, the way that you open it is the most important thing that you’ll do during the speech. It sure makes sense that you don’t screw this up!

What this means is that you’re not going to want to start out with a joke unless you tell jokes for a living. You’re also not going to want to waste those precious first few words on things that have nothing to do with your speech.

You are going to want to use your opening to capture the audience’s attention. Once you’ve done that, you will want to follow up and make sure that you answer the question “what’s in it for me”.

If you can avoid doing the wrong things while at the same time doing the correct things, then the opening for your next speech should be spectacular. Just like that house that you built on your waterfront property, your speech opening will be someplace that you’ll be proud to go over and over again.

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

Question For You: How long do you think a speech opening should last?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Ever get the feeling that your audience just isn’t listening to what you are telling them? I mean sure, they seem to be with you at the start of your speech and then they seem to show up once again at the end, but how’s that middle part going for you? Researchers have studied what’s going on with your audience during the middle of your speech and let’s just say that it’s not good – they are checking out. Looks like we’re going to have to have a talk here – let’s find a way to keep them on board…

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Posted in opening | 2 Comments »

How To Rig A Speech To Get The Outcome You Want Every Time

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Image Credit If You Stack The Deck, Then You'll Win Every Time

If You Stack The Deck, Then You'll Win Every Time

You can’t always do it all by yourself. If you want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then sometimes you just gotta bring in some help to pull it off. Speakers who are ready to move up to the next level in their speaking often come to me and ask for advice. Now that they’ve gotten over their fear of speaking, they want to move on and start to make more of an impact with their audience. It’s time to bring out an advanced speaking skill – rigging a speech.

The Setup

If as a speaker you can put aside your ego long enough to admit that sometimes if you really want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then you are going to have to allow others to help you, then you’ll be half-way there.

An advanced speaking technique is to work with an outsider to act as a “plant” in the audience. Having somebody in the audience who you control gives you enormous power as a speaker when it comes to steering the audience’s mood and reactions.

The most important part of stacking the deck is to make sure that you take the time to rehearse what you want to happen with your partner in crime – these things don’t just happen by themselves.

The Action

When you rig a speech, you need to make sure that you’ve carefully scripted what you want to happen. The three most common uses of a plant are to generate anger, humor, and questions.

Having a member of your audience stand up and angrily shout something out or accuse you of something is a fantastic tool; however, it’s just about as dangerous as nitroglycerin. This is an unexpected action – your audience will not be expecting it and so it will wake them up and grab their attention. I’ve used this one when I knew that what the audience would be thinking at a certain point was directly opposite to what I was telling them. Since you knew that it was coming, you have a fantastic response ready for them, this calms your angry audience member down, and everyone else is very impressed with you. That’s exactly what I did and it took the tension out of the room.

Humor is difficult enough to try to do by yourself let alone with a partner, but if you can pull it off you’ll be able to make a lasting impression on your audience. As with all types of humor, timing is everything here. One of my favorite techniques is to have my plant ask a question and then we end up getting involved in a very fast back-and-forth dialog that amazes and entertains everyone. Once upon a time I answered my plant’s question by saying that something would take 1 year, they replied with 2, I said “3″, they said “4″ and so on.

Finally, one of the worst things that a speaker can do is to wrap up a speech by asking “does anyone have any questions” and then be greeted by dead silence. This is when having a plant can save your life: have them stand up and ask an interesting or controversial question just to get things going. Since you know what they are going to ask, you can structure your speech so that your answer to that question is really part of your speech.

What All Of This Means For You

When you are ready to take your speaking skills up to the next level, starting to “seed” the audience with your trained agents is a great way to ensure that you are able to control how the speech will flow. These agents can control the audience’s mood: get them angry, make them laugh, or ask the questions that they are all thinking about.

As with all tools, the planted agent requires skill to use. You have to take the time both to structure your speech in such a way as to accommodate your plant and to rehearse what each of you is going to say before the big day. Do it right and you’ll have left your audience with a positive lasting impression.

Under what circumstances do you think it would be a bad idea to plant someone in your audience?


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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you could wish for just one thing before you give your next speech in public, what would it be? Sure we’d all like to be able to talk like Tony Robbins, move a crowd like Zig Ziglar, or even have a powerful story to tell like Rudy Giuliani. However, I’m willing to bet good money that after considerable thought, we’d all settle for spending our wish on making sure that there were no hecklers in the audience.

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Posted in audience | 2 Comments »

Hey Baby, Come Here Often?

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Image Credit What's A Nice Girl / Guy Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

What's A Nice Girl / Guy Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

Just like a cheesy pick-up line, the first words that come out of your mouth when you are giving a speech will determine if you are going to get lucky with this audience. Unlike a wanna-be Casanova in a bar, you (normally) don’t have an opportunity to buy your audience a drink, so you’re going to have work extra hard to make your opening lines do all the work for you if you want to have any hope of sweeping the audience off of their feet. How are you going to score?

The 4 Questions That Every Audience Asks Themselves

Hopefully you’ve been given a great introduction. Now it’s your turn to speak. Dana LaMon who was the Toastmasters’ 1982 World Champion of Public-Speaking says that as your audience awaits the start of your speech, they are sitting there asking themselves four questions:

  • Am I going to take the time to listen to this speaker?
  • Am I going to benefit from what he / she talks about?
  • Will they say anything that is valuable that I can take and use?
  • Will anything that they say be worthwhile for me to take action on?

If you waste your first few words, then I can tell you what the answers to these questions will be – and you’re not going to like it!

Am I going to take the time to listen to this speaker?

Aren’t those Blackberry’s and iPhones just the coolest? Today more than ever your audience has other things that they can do while you are talking if they aren’t interested in what you have to say. Let’s pretend for just a moment that today’s jaded audience starts by answering this question with a “No”. Now you’re not just trying to move them to a “yes”, instead you’ve got the doubly hard job of moving them off of “no” and over to “yes”.

Every speech that you give will be different, but you can lose your audience every time if you make one of the following common speaker mistakes:

  • Thanking Anybody: the first words out of your mouth in a speech are the equivalent of waterfront property in real estate – super valuable. Why would you waste them by saying something like “I’d like to thank the Dairy Producers Council for inviting me to talk to you today…”
  • Calling Out Important People In The Audience: I don’t care if Obama himself is sitting in the front row or your audience, wasting your opening words pointing out that you’ve got important people in the audience is just you complementing yourself and nobody really wants to hear you do that.
  • A Man Walks Into A Bar…: Why would anyone waste an opening of a speech on an old, tired joke that has nothing to do with what they are going to be talking about? I’ve seen this happen over and over again. Even when the joke is funny, all too often it doesn’t lead anywhere – it was just a cute thing to say and then the speaker starts his / her speech and the opportunity to grab the audience’s attention has been lost forever
  • The Title Of This Speech Is…: What? Why would I be sitting in the audience if I didn’t already know what you are going to be talking about? Also, don’t waste an opening by introducing yourself “My name is Bob Johnson and I’d like to talk to you about …” Assume that either the audience already knows this information or they just don’t care about it. Get on with the meat of what you are there to talk about

Am I going to benefit from what he / she talks about?

I’m a busy guy and assuming that you have somehow gotten me to answer “yes” to the first question, you sure don’t have any guarantee that I’m going to keep listening to you – I’ve got a lot of email that I could be working my way through on my iPhone.

Right off the bat you are going to have to very concisely tell me why I should care about what you’re going to be talking about for the next 30 minutes or so. Whatever this speech’s purpose is, you’re going to have to keep it short – one sentence is the rule. If it’s longer than that, I’m not going to pay attention. Do this and there is a chance that you’re audience will remember what you said after you are done.

Will they say anything that is valuable that I can take and use?

What’s the greatest complement that a speaker can receive? Is it a standing ovation? Nope. It’s when your audience whips out a pencil and starts to take notes.

In every speech there are some “nuggets” that you want your audience to remember and use after you are done talking. It’s your job as a speaker to make these pieces of actionable information easy for your audience to find and remember. Saying things like “Here are three things that you might want to write down…” are a great way to motivate your audience to take notes.

Will anything that they say be worthwhile for me to take action on?

I’ve taken notes at a lot of speeches that I’ve attended and then I’ve gone home and filed them away somewhere and that was the end of the story. As a speaker this is exactly what you don’t want to have happen.

Instead, you want the information that you are passing on to be used – you really want to change people’s lives. To get your audience to take action you need to do three things: you need to tell them what you want them to do, you need to tell them why they should do it, and then you need to tell them that they can be successful in doing it.

What All Of This Means For You

When I’m coaching speakers who are struggling to break through to the next level in their speaking skills, we spend a lot of time working on the opening of their speech because it is so important. There are an almost unlimited number of ways that you can successfully grab an audience’s attention with your first few words. Unfortunately, there is an almost equal number of ways that you can lose them forever.

You’ll lose them if you spend your time thinking about yourself when you are putting your speech together. If, instead, you spend your time putting yourself in the position of your audience and making sure that you answer the questions that are running though their minds, then you’ll find the words that will grab their imagination from the get-go and you’ll be off and running with the best speech of your life.

What’s the best opening to a speech that you’ve ever seen?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Just how much speaking can you do in a single day? We spend a lot of time talking about how to prepare for and give a good speech. However, sometimes life just comes at us like a runaway truck and we find ourselves double or triple (or more) booked to speak in a single day. Oh oh, looks like we’ve got a whole new challenge here…

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Posted in passion | 2 Comments »