Speaking Tips - Break Through the Ho-Hum Barrier

One of the fastest ways to grow your list of contacts and leads is to give a speech with an audience brimming full of people in your market niche.

How many speeches did you attend in the last year? How many of them do you remember? How many of the presenters' names do you recall? Hmmm...thought so...not that many. Let's fix this problem so you will not be amongst the "forgettable".

I'm sure you are already familiar with some of the more common speaking tips about how to get over your fear of public speaking, how to "tell them what you're going to tell them," "tell them," etc.

In this article, I am going to share with you four uncommon speaking tips that I use to create my speeches, that have garnered comments like, "The instructor rocks!" from attendees, which is more desirable than alternative comments might be!

Use these tips or steps, and you will turn your speeches from mediocre into extraordinary, which will attract much more business to you when you conduct speaking presentations and seminars.

The Four Steps

Imagine you are speaking to an audience of fifty people, and they begin shouting out these four emotional outbursts as you give your talk:

1. "Ho hum!"

2. "Why bring that up!"

3. "For instance?"

4. "So what?"

I'm sure the thought of this has you feeling like a mass of quivering jelly. Nevertheless, thinking about this experience will teach you some valuable lessons about giving a successful speech.

Let's address each of these four emotional outbursts individually, and I'll give you some tips about how to avoid these from being shouted at you while doing a presentation; literally or figuratively.

1. "Blast through the "Ho-Hum" Barrier!"

Have you ever attended a speech or seminar where the presenter started like this?

"Today we are going to talk about 5 strategies to reduce the high school dropout rate"...

Ho-Hum!

How much more interesting it would be to start your speech with,

"50% of high school students drop out of our largest cities' high schools each year."

The most critical principle of giving an effective speech is your opening must electrify your audience, shake them awake, and crash the ho-hum barrier. Otherwise, you've lost their attention before you've even gave them one piece of useful information.

Get their attention, make a startling statement, and provide an interesting fact. Next time you are creating an opening line for a speech, put it to the "Ho-Hum" test. If it doesn't pass, rework your opening line until it's a zinger!

2. "Why Bring that Up?"

Okay, you've crafted your opening line. The next thing to do is imagine your entire audience SHOUTS at you:

"Why bring that up?"

This is your invitation to expand upon your attention-getting opener. Tell them why they need to know the information you're sharing with them, how it will benefit them in a direct way.