What do you do if you are scheduled for an hour-long conference call to pitch new business and this is the first thing you hear at the other end of the line?
Bill, “Hi Janice, I’m sorry, but my last meeting ran over and my assistant just scheduled a train for me to be on in 15 minutes. Instead of an hour, I can only give you five minutes. But I can talk to you tomorrow. Sorry.”
Here is what you should do:
Vendors come to us at Media Training Worldwide and the Speaking Channel quite frequently to pitch us their wares (as we do with prospects as well). The atmosphere is relaxed, with people sitting around a conference room chatting. Normally, the sales pitches are interesting, engaging, and useful, even if we don’t ending up hiring the company.
But the funny thing is…many of these salespeople and consultants will tell me “I’m no public speaker†or “I don’t like public speaking†or “I’m no good at public speaking.†And these people are obviously lying to me. No, they’re not intentionally fibbing. It’s just that, in most cases, I’ve just seen them give an excellent presentation, so they are obviously good at giving presentations.
I am a big believer that audiences reward speakers who don’t appear to be reading from scripts or notes. The keyword here is “appear.†I also know that most people, me included, don’t have an extra 40 hours a week to memorize speeches.
That’s why I use notes for my speeches. As I have written about before, I make sure my notes fit on a single sheet of paper, no more than three words across, and written in large type. This way I never have to touch the notes, pick them up, turn them over or hunch over to see them.
In Al Gores’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he shows that, once again, he is an excellent speaker. Why, many people ask, was Gore considered such an awful speaker in the 90s and in 2000, and now is considered a great speaker?
It all comes down to two words:
“Stop yelling!â€
Old Gore used to show enthusiasm and passion (normally good things) by yelling during his speech. This made him seem harsh, monotone, condescending, and tiresome.
I just spent two days helping a team of corporate executives rehearse major presentations. The company was in the process of trying to sell itself for a bundle of cash to a new group of private equity investors.
We were in the company’s conference room—complete with fancy overhead projector, big screen, nice conference table, and a wireless mouse and keyboard. Speaker after speaker clicked the wireless mouse to advance the PowerPoint slides. For the most part, this worked well. But every once in awhile, and executive would use the scroll button excessively and the slides would advance two at a time. Or the speaker would hit the mouse twice and advance the PowerPoint twice. Oops!
Too many speakers sweat the small stuff of speaking, i.e. the occasional “um†or “uh.†This is a misplaced fear. I am reminded of a well-know self-help series called “Don’t sweat the small stuff, and everything is small stuff,†only, not everything in speaking is small stuff.
Having something interesting, memorable and relevant for your audience—this is big stuff when it comes to speaking! For example, Martha Stewart has a lot to say to people, especially women, about how to organize their homes and lives in order to have more beauty and class. Stewart touches something in people (I’m not much of a fan, but I do admire her business and communications savvy).
There is great comfort in mediocrity when it comes to public speaking. It is easy to joke around with your colleagues about how you “hate” speaking in public and that you “just want to get through it.” To publicly admit that you like speaking and that you think you are good at it is heretical in most quarters.
Often times, when I am coaching my clients on how to be better speakers, one of them will have a breakthrough. For the first time, this person will have seen himself or herself give a great speech; one that is interesting, memorable, and filled with passion (with nary a bullet point on a PowerPoint slide in sight).
President George W. Bush has been the worst thing to ever happen to the presentation skills training industry. For the last 7 years, those in my profession have looked like fools when we said things like “public speaking skills are integral to success in business and public life.â€
People could and would just say “Ha. Then explain George Bush!†And that usually ended the discussion.
What do you do when you are attacked in the media by your local gadfly? Most communities with more than 100,000 residents have at least one professional agitator/complainer. (I don’t mean to imply that all citizen activists are without merit, but some are running a permanent gripe/industrial complex.)
This “media activist” never met a corporation or politician who wasn’t a racist, sexist, homophobic, environmental polluting, job destroying miscreant. So if you end up within the sites of this person, you are in big trouble, or so it seems.
The best part about doing media interviews for radio programs is that you can do them anywhere.
The worst part about doing media interviews for radio programs is that you can do them anywhere. By that I mean you can find yourself in situations where distractions erupt right in the middle of an interview. Recently, I was being interviewed by phone for a radio station in Los Angeles. The host was asking me to critique the State of the State speech by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
