Whether it’s at your marriage anniversary or at office seminar – you have to deliver a nice speech, everywhere. It’s the art of delivering a substance of 2 minutes in 2 hours, laced with confidence, good vocabulary, interaction, spontaneity and interesting ideas. Don’t try to mug up the whole speech. Make it spontaneous, relaxed, and natural. Develop a speech which will leave impression behind in the hearts of the people.
Guide to a perfect speech generation:
Map the audience
Find out whom you are going to deliver your speech to, how old they are, and which part of the country they are from. The better you analyze your audience, the easier it will be for you to prepare the speech. It will help you to develop the perfect style, set the mood, and connect with the audience by including relevant jargons. Most importantly, it will help you to pick up the apt topic, as per the interest of the audience. It must add value to their lives whether by solving a problem or setting new goals and vision. Develop an emotional connect with the audience.
Pick a relevant topic
Topic should relate to the audience. Don’t pick up a topic you are not comfortable with. You can turn spontaneous only when you have some command on the topic. Pick up a topic of interest. It can be an outcome of your personal life, general topic, current topic, or a browsed topic from Internet, magazines and newspapers. Unless you are passionate about the topic, don’t pick it up.
Set the objective and time frame
Every communication has a set objective. Speech is not an exception either. Set specific objective like what you want to achieve or want the audience to do. It will help you develop the structure of the speech, limit the content, streamline your thoughts, and march towards a desired outcome. Make important points and elaborate them, but don’t stretch too far. Too much elaboration bore the audience.
Use your imagination and build story
Hues of imagination instill life into a speech. Stretch your imagination and let it fly high. Grab attention of the audience right from the beginning. Use vivid examples while explaining the points you put across. Talk about personal experiences. Make it dramatic and personalized.
Relax and speak
Don’t appear as if you are rushing. Relax while you speak. Don’t talk in too high pitch. Don’t get too nervous, little bit of fear is okay. If initially you are to scared start practicing in front of family, friends, and mirror.
Last but not the least, enjoy!
Confidence oozes when you enjoy the session. It shouldn’t seem like a burden but an enjoyable activity. Make eye contact to appear confident and bold. Be yourself. Don’t get tempted to be like someone else.
And soon you’ll find you are the master of speech delivery.
Tags: Audience, Confidence, Desired Outcome, Effective Speech, Elaboration, Hearts, Hues, Imagination, Interaction, Internet Magazines, New Goals, Objective, Office Seminar, Perfect Style, Personal Life, Relevant Topic, Speech Generation, Spontaneity, Time Frame, Vocabulary
As we discussed in the first part, a friend of mine from X-Paper (codified name of the only organization I worked for) was not very successful in selling the ad space despite his glittering MBA degree from a reputed institution, whereas, my bosses, most of whom had just plain vanilla graduate degrees, made a killing out of it. This article will tell you why?
But before going deep into it, let’s figure out the mistake my friend was making. The methods he was employing to woo clients was creating a layer in front of his eyes, which he named professionalism, and the layer was so thick that it hardly let anything other than the works requirements, issues and problems pass through it. Whenever a client started speaking about other things, the salesperson would either shut their mind away from the question, or at worst they will try to cut the discussion short. Anything other than business related problems were prevented to enter seller’s mind.
To a pair of untrained eyes, it looks like utter professionalism: work at the time of work, no small talks, but to a mind that is well-trained in the working of human psychology this step will look utter nonsense. As a human, neither we are capable of, nor can we compartmentalize our thinking, every day we find ourselves sandwiched between our professional requirements, and familial demand. In the context of human relations with his surrounding, this is normal, and everything else is not. My friend did not understand that he was not dealing with a machine made up of blood vessels and synaptic nodes, so pure ruthless professionalism would not fetch any result, instead it would put off the person on the other side of the table.
In the recent time, the scene has changed a lot. People leaving in the post 9/11 world are no longer looking for stark professionalism. Now unlike the 80s, the speech or interaction devoid of emotion is no longer considered the epitome of professionalism. These days, people are looking for human touch in everything they do, as the societal fabric is getting torn and tattered. They want to deal with someone who is empathetic towards their needs, desires, goal and aspirations, so what if it is personal. The dividing line between the work life and personal life is blurring. Every salesperson need to understand that the person on the other side of the table is as human as he or she is, so providing them an audience when they need is not a waste of one’s time, rather it will help the salesperson develop a strong bond with the buyer that will last longer, as the connection is on human level.
As we have discussed the problem one can have if any transaction is devoid of basic human emotion. Now, it is time to talk about 10 everyday sales mistakes that you can avoid while dealing with clients.
- Focusing more on the hard data and giving less consideration to soft skills.
- Focusing too much on the strength and sporting an ostrich-like attitude on weaknesses, (if you cannot see it, it hasn’t vanished, so burying your head in the sand will not work).
- Constant jabbering and not listening to client.
- Continue to sell even after client is sold to the product, idea or services.
- No follow-ups
- Not sweating on doing the required background research for the client
- Too self-conceit to ask for referral
- Not reading the psychological and behavioral cues let out by client.
- No knowledge of where to pull the plug and ask for order
- Not enough knowledge about the products and the services you are selling.
Tags: 80s, Ad Space, Blood Vessels, Emotion, Epitome, Graduate Degrees, Human Psychology, Human Relations, Interaction, Mba Degree, Mistake, Plain Vanilla, Professional Requirements, Professionalism, Salesperson, Untrained Eyes, Utter Nonsense
