Consider Your Audience, The First Step To Successful Public Speaking

You put your head in your hands in despair. You’ve been asked to deliver a talk to an audience. Just you alone in front of all those people! What will you say? Where do you [...] No related posts.]]> How To Win The Audience.

Consider Your Audience, The First Step To Successful Public Speaking

You put your head in your hands in despair. You’ve been asked to deliver a talk to an audience. Just you alone in front of all those people! What will you say? Where do you start?

 Calm down. Relax. Let’s look at this opportunity for you to speak in public – acknowledged by the way as one of our greatest fears – and proceed in a logical order.

 The first step towards successful public speaking is to consider your audience. That is: who are they and what is their attitude towards your topic?  

What might inform one audience might leave another unmoved or even irritated.  

Say for example you’ve been asked to represent your community in requesting the local council to close a road in your area. Your audience is the local council, the setting is the council chamber. You decide to concentrate your talk on the hoons who use your street as a drag strip doing burnouts, waking everybody up in the middle of the night. Wrong!  

Most of the councilors would have incidents of hoons on their own street screeching their tyres and gunning around the corners.  

The councilors have now switched off. You can almost see them thinking, ‘Why should your street be given special attention? What a cheek. What about my street? If we allow this petition where will it end?  We’ll be asked to close all the darn side streets in the district. No chance.’ 

So, think again. What is it that will move your audience to sit up and take notice? 

Ah! Safety. In your case it may be that the council allowed a fast food outlet to open on the highway at the end of your street and the customers are using your quiet backwater as a rat-run to get back on the highway. To add insult to injury the council recently allowed the outlet to trade for 24 hours. You have hoons all day and all night. Now you’re on to something. 

Or it may be that your area is adjacent to a racing precinct and horses are on the road at 4 am in the morning. Even better. Now you’re talking specific events, feeding specific ideas into the audience’s mind: safety, horses, cars, collisions, carnage, insurance, council responsibility. 

To take another example: You may be asked to address a group of salespeople. A talk to experienced salespeople would stress the product. A talk to new salespeople would stress how to sell the product. You may cover much of the same material in both cases but the length of time spent and the emphasis will change.  

Again you may be invited by the Principal of your children’s school to address the parents on the merits, the plans and the cost of constructing a swimming pool on the school grounds. As an architect this right up your alley. But hold on. Don’t jump in yet. Consider your audience. What is their attitude? Did you know that the swimming pool project is a pet idea of the Principal, but opposed by a most of the parents? They actually want a new library. Your talk could flounder. You may be able to handle this situation with a compare/contrast on the benefits of each project. 

So … you must consider your audience. It is the first step towards successful public speaking. Who are they? What is their attitude? Why are you there? 

Once you have settled those questions you can more confidently begin preparing your talk. You will have more focus. Your talk will have more relevance.

To find out more about putting together a successful and vibrant public talk after you have taken this vital first step to consider your audience, email: info@PublicSpeakingCourses4U.com  

No related posts.

One of the mistakes made by the beginning public speaker is to drop a bucketful of cold hard facts onto the audience in the belief they will be impressed.

Of course you need facts. The audience expects you to deliver information, but raw potatoes without warmth and embellishment lack appeal. 

As the [...] No related posts.]]> Don’t fall into the ‘fact’ trap.

One of the mistakes made by the beginning public speaker is to drop a bucketful of cold hard facts onto the audience in the belief they will be impressed.

Of course you need facts. The audience expects you to deliver information, but raw potatoes without warmth and embellishment lack appeal. 

As the author Sol Stein says:

“The best of good writing will entice us into subjects and knowledge we would have declared of no interest to us until we were seduced by the language they were dressed in.” 

How can we persuade an audience to believe that what we say is of benefit? 

And how can we do this if we are not confident in our own writing ability as the basis for our speech?

No problem. We can overcome this barrier.

Think of words as being either bland or visual. If the words delivered on the platform are bland they have no ‘back-story’, no character and deliver a blank image onto the mind of your audience. 

However if the words you deliver are visual they immediately paint a picture. 

To help us understand the difference between bland and visual consider the following:

Bland :  Debra is a statistic of the one in three marriages in America which end in divorce. 

Better :  Debra, a victim of America’s one in three failed marriages, contemplates a life without a breadwinner.

Visual :  Leaving the pram by the wall Debra, caught up in America’s pandemic of failed marriages, shuffles towards the social security counter hoping she is eligible for this month’s payment.

Ah. Now we know Debra has a child, is part of a dreadful social ill, is possibly depressed, and at the mercy of some government worker as to whether she and her child eats this week. 

Now you have penetrated the mind of your audience. You have evoked sympathy for your cause. They can ‘see’ the argument you are mounting. They know where you are going.

You have gone visual!

The former Australian Prime Minister Mr. Kevin Rudd addressed an audience in Germany where he said it was unlikely any progress would emerge from the Major Economic Forum “ …by way of detailed programmatic specificity.”

No one knew what he was talking about.

In a speech to the Brooking Institute in Washington D.C. in April 2008 Mr. Rudd used such words as “conceptual synthesis” and “natural complementarity,”  leaving U.S. observers bewildered.

Avoid such vacuous expressions. They are meaningless. Your audience will be heading for the exits.  

You don’t need to be a Steinbeck or a Dickens to write visually. When gathering your facts as you prepare your talk, tell the story of the facts: give them a setting, a history, a context.

If you use your imagination in preparation then your talk will reflect that effort and your audience will ‘see’ what you see.

Not only will your talk be easier to deliver you will engage the mind of your audience.

They will respond to your call to action.

They will remember you and your speech with warmth!

If you wish to know more about improving your public speaking skills please email us: info@PublicSpeakingCourses4U.com      

No related posts.

The nineteenth century author Robert Louis Stevenson said: “Everyone lives by selling something.”

An employee sells his skills and his time. An employer sells his product or his services. And in both instances the art of persuasion is involved to a greater or lesser extent.

 When selling to ten, fifty or [...] No related posts.]]> Public Speaking and the Art of Persuasion

The nineteenth century author Robert Louis Stevenson said: “Everyone lives by selling something.”

An employee sells his skills and his time. An employer sells his product or his services. And in both instances the art of persuasion is involved to a greater or lesser extent.

 When selling to ten, fifty or hundreds the art of persuasion becomes paramount, keystones in the arches of the bridge you are building between you and your audience.

 Selling is not telling. You cannot merely say to an audience: “ Buy my product/service because of the following features.”

 You need a subtle, nuanced approach. You need to persuade.

Let me illustrate with a recent selling debacle.

In Australia, the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Treasurer Wayne Swan announced without consultation that mining companies must pay a new tax which will to be applied to ‘super profits’ at a rate of 40%.

The whole country, from the man in the street to the mining executives, erupted in horror. Mining has kept Australia protected from the worst of the world’s Great Financial Crises.

The critics of the tax mounted a campaign to force the government to change its mind.

Why, they argue, destroy an industry integral to the wellbeing of the country?

Now this article is not about politics, nor is it a criticism of the proposed tax, but an example of a public speech designed to ‘sell’ an idea, which then backfired…to the extent that both financial investors and the public visibly rejected the idea.  

  What can we learn from this debacle?

 In order to persuade as a public speaker you must lay a common foundation and then stress the benefits.

 Let’s imagine you have a new beaut type of lawn you want to sell. Your audience is in an arid region of the country where water restrictions apply.

 You are aware of the prevailing mood to rip up lawns and replace them with concrete. Everybody’s doing it. You’re against the trend.

 So, let’s lay a common foundation.

Most of us actually prefer lawn to concrete. You can talk about how they as kids loved to play in their backyard and at the local park. You can remind your audience that when their children fall over on grass there are no problems, in fact they are more likely to fall over on grass and throw themselves about, which is good for their soul and their physical development… you get the picture.

You can add that when parents find themselves surrounded by a concrete jungle they can’t wait to visit the local park and let the kids scatter. Everybody benefits.  You will get no arguments here. The audience is with you. You have laid a common foundation, the first element in persuasion.  

Now you need to stress the benefits of grass over concrete. Gently, gently. We are not up to your product yet.  

With sound proof and accurate quotes from acknowledged experts, discuss the difference in ambient heat around a home surrounded in concrete compared to one with grass.

Explain how concrete will increase their air-conditioning bills and force them to close the curtains to keep out the glare.

Discuss how concrete causes runoff from your property preventing any rain that does fall from soaking into your ground and causing it to be lost into the drains.

Now discuss the benefits of your lawn in particular:

How your grass is drought resistant, requires very little water (be specific) compared to other species and yet will stay green throughout the summer.

Stress the cost benefits and the environmental benefits, the tranquility of plants and lawn around the home due to planting your seeds or roll-on.

The house is now a home. 

See what we have done here?

 We have not just dropped an idea in the audience’s lap. We have spoken persuasively by laying a common foundation and then stressed the benefits both in general and in particular.

By so doing we have brought the audience along with us. We have not been dogmatic, we have not preached or pontificated.

We have not fallen into the mistake made by the former Australian Prime Minister and his Treasurer in telling the country, without explanation, how it will be.

We have gently persuaded a doubting audience across to our side of the divide, remembering that merely telling it from your perspective does not work.

To sell in public speaking we need to cultivate the art of persuasion. It is the keystone to reaching your audience.

If you would like to know more, please email us: info@PublicSpeakingCourses4U.com  

No related posts.