Public Speaking : TELESEMINARS

You can conduct seminars via the telephone for up to 500 people in a very cost effective manner. The "low tech" technology is called a phone bridge. It is much cheaper than "conference calling." Your seminars could be used as both a marketing device and an income generator. The part I like about it is that I do not have to get on an airplane or even leave my home office. Here is how it works. You promote your seminar, or act as an instructor for a teleclass seminar company. The participants pay you by credit card or check in advance. After you receive payment, you give them a phone number to call. They pay their own long distance charges. At the prescribed time, the participants call the number you gave them. You conduct the seminar on the phone. You could Email or mail everyone a handout if you want.

The cost to rent a telephone bridge is very low compared to regular conference calling. You can try it for as low as $20.00 for an hour or maybe $50.00 for a month. The cost rises with the number of participants that you are able to handle. I will have more on this topic later.

Public Speaking : AUDIENCE GAGS

Audience gags are off beat jokes that occur unexpectedly during a presentation. Dr. Joel Goodman, from the Humor Project, does one where a telephone rings during his presentation. He answers the phone that was hidden in the lectern and pretends to talk to his mother. The same joke would be called a running gag if the phone rang at several other times during the program. The next several issues will be about gags.

Ten Wanted Men
I staged a gag at a seminar one time that was loads of fun and took less than one minute to complete. Before the program, I picked out about 10 fun-loving audience members to help me. I gave them secret instructions that were to be carried out on a certain cue during the program. To start the gag, I had my assistant interrupt the seminar to give me an important note. The note read (I used a serious expression): It appears that someone is in attendance today with another man's wife. There is a large and irate man on his way here right now. If you want out, there is a backstage door you can use to escape quickly.

At this point, 10 men jumped up out of their seats and ran keystone cop style out the door. Once they realized what was happening, several women jumped up and ran out too. It was great fun and the gag sure woke up everyone who had a heavy lunch.

Public Speaking : ASIDES

In the theater, an aside is something said to the audience that is not to be heard by the other actors. If the aside was delivered on a television sitcom, the actor would look right at the camera and talk to the viewers at home instead of talking to the other actors. To a presenter it means a temporary departure from the main theme or topic. If you get good at this technique, the audience will think you area genius.

The way it works is that you begin telling a story or delivering information on a certain topic. Then you go off on a tangent(aside) indirectly related to the main theme. When you have finished the aside, you pick up the main theme where you left off and keep right on going. The audience may think you are lost or confused when you first leave the original topic, but when you return to the main line after the aside, they realize you are in total control. This is very impressive. Great storytellers are able to take you down several auxiliary paths, but still move you along the main path from beginning to conclusion.

I tell a story about some medical work I had done where the doctor said to me, "This will just pinch a little bit." This phrase sends me down a whole different path talking about how my dentist had said the same thing and then pushed the Novocaine needle up into my brain, twisted it around, and pulled it out.

I then came back to the main line of the medical story until I got to the word gauze. This word sets off another tangential story about my mother ripping gauze off me. Then it is back to the main line again.

You can alert the audience of an upcoming aside by saying the word incidentally before you veer off the main path. Another good technique is to go to a different part of the stage when you do the aside. Get good at asides and you will add a new dimension to the way you tell your funny stories or deliver information.

Public Speaking : THIS WILL SURPRISE YOU Part II

Last issue I told you that it was OK to stink up the stage by being a lousy presenter. Again, I must remind you that I am not encouraging this. I want you to get better technically, so that your message has a better chance of getting through.

The big picture is that you must build rapport with an audience for them to get the message. My definition of rapport is that the audience members trust you and that they feel you care about them. Here are some ways to build that trust and caring atmosphere:

Trust
=> Know what you are talking about and admit it when you dont. BS will not cut it with the sophisticated audiences of today.

=> Have some credentials. Do something, write something, record something, help someone. i.e., do something more than talk.

=> Do everything you say you are going to do before the program and do it in a helpful and timely manner. The meeting organizer in most cases will tell the group, or let it be known that you walk your talk. Even if he or she does not you will feel great about the way you handle things and it will show.

Rapport
=> Phone interview a cross section of audience members prior to your speaking engagement. I can not tell you how wonderfully this has worked for me over the years. People cannot wait to meet you and they tell others about the call. This really screams, "I care about you!"

=> Make yourself accessible. As long as you are good on the platform, meeting planners love it when you come early and stay late. . . .NOTE: If you bomb get out quick hahahaha

=> Offer free follow up for the audience members via email or fax. If you are too busy to actually answer personally, have an assistant follow up. Do not brush this suggestion off too lightly. This is one of the main methods to deeply penetrate an organization. The people that do follow up for you are "angels"in the company. They will tell you of other events or problems where you might be able to help.

So, you can be "lousy" if you want to, but make sure the audience trusts you and build rapport and you will have a much better chance that your message gets through.

Public Speaking : THIS WILL SURPRISE YOU Part I (especially if you know me)

You can be a lousy presenter and still be great. By lousy, I mean that technically you do everything wrong. You look terrible. Your grammar and diction stink and you might have dandruff. Do not think for a moment that I want you to be these terrible things. In fact, I sell videos teaching you NOT to be pitiful technically when you present. What I want you to see is the bigger picture.

If you give really great information that is targeted to the needs of the audience, and you do the things that build rapport, you can still hit a home run. Again, do not think I am not giving you an excuse to forget about getting better technically as a speaker. I am just saying that if your information is lousy it does not make much difference how smooth you are as a presenter. Yes, there are some people that slide by because they are entertaining, but substance and helping people come first. Think, immediately usable information. Yes, they may need a long term plan, but if you give people something usable and and action plan that they can get excited about you will have done half your job.


Half my job? . . . Yes, the other half is to build rapport with the attendees. This does not necessarily mean that they like you. This means you have done what is necessary to make sure they trust in what you have to say and they feel you care about them.

Next issue we will look at ways to build that rapport.

Public Speaking : DUELING FLIP CHARTS

Here is a very interesting way to use flip charts. Put one on both sides of the stage and pop back and forth between them. You can have an audience member volunteer at each flip chart helping your record input from other audience members. This has a tremendous Wake em Up value because 1.) You have audience members on stage, 2.) You are in the audience, and 3.) Audience members are providing the input.

You are not limited to doing this with flip charts. You could have duel overhead projectors for larger crowds. You could still even have your darned old PowerPoint on a screen in the middle. You could even have flip charts placed all around the room so they are ready when you break up into smaller groups. Then the results pages could be torn off and taped in a row on the wall.

Public Speaking : FREQUENCY CHECK

It is pretty common to have multiple wireless microphones going during the same presentation. The AV crew that sets everything up usually makes sure that they are all on different frequencies so that no cross over occurs. You should still double check it anyway. BUT WHAT ABOUT MICE?

When speaking in Thailand last week I ran into a situation that has never happened to me or the other seasoned presenter before. We each had a Logitech Trackman RF Mouse. RF stands for "Radio Frequency" which means that the wireless mouse doesn't have to be in line of sight with the receiver like an infra red mouse would. It also means that I couldn't keep my mouse from moving the cursor on his computer (the other guy was on right after me with no break). We tried every trick we could think of with no luck We finally decided to shut my whole system down quickly after I was finished and boot his up as fast as we could while he made some opening comments to the crowd.

With more and more wireless technology being used during presentations you must thoroughly check out all systems and consider presenters who are on both before and after you. This is yet another reason to be there early and find out what is going on during other programs. Had we not noticed this ahead of time he would have had a really shaky beginning to his program. . . if the program were switched . . . it could have been me!

Public Speaking : BRIBES

. . . or, as I like to call them, "Tips in advance" are a part of my speaking life. Does that mean I am an unethical person. ABSOLUTELY NOT! It means I am a realist. It means that when I am 30 minutes from the beginning of a presentation and I have been trying to get a projection screen for two hours, it might be time to grease a few palms. I just consider it an investment in my image. I am the one who is going to look bad if I am not prepared to begin on time. If it costs me five or ten or even twenty bucks to get some action, so what? I don't believe in penny pinching when you get in a pinch.

Am I happy about this? No, I am not happy, but I am always willing to invest in excellence. Also, I would rather lose a few bucks than get all worked up and upset before a presentation. In addition, any problems I am having are probably not the fault of the maintenance or set up person who gets the money. It makes me feel good to give them a little boost in their pay for that day. So, have a few small bills handy before every presentation, just in case you need to get something done quick.

One more thing . . .This also works when you have too much baggage at the curb side check in. An extra bag costs 50 bucks at the airline ticket counter, so I give the skycap 20 and save myself 30. It doesn't work every time, but most of the time it does.

Public Speaking : INSTANT VIDEOS

I ran across two really awesome training tools and I put them into use immediately for fun and profit. I'm taking about moving screen capture devices. One is called Lotus Screen Cam which I'll save for another day and the other is called Camtasia http://www.techsmith.com

I decided I was going to create a few videos (I'm talking computer screen videos here) of the types of things I do on my website and with this Ezine and with the search engines etc. I downloaded the free 30 day trial version of Camtasia and started making videos of what was appearing on my computer screen. I was also doing narration into a microphone and the entire thing was being recorded. This only took me a few minutes to get going. I recorded about 30 seconds and then decided to see how large the file was because I heard that file sizes can get out of hand with audio and video. I had used up 5 MEGABYTES IN 30 SECONDS This was way too much to be reasonable so I called up Techsmith and spoke to a very competent gentlemen in tech support named Mark Brembeck. Mark showed me a few tweaks to the system and we got the file sizes down to a very reasonable 1 Megabyte per minute.

You do have to jump thru a few small hoops and download their compression technology, but that was no big deal. You have to download and install the player for Lotus Screen Cam (their competitor) too.

So what does this have to do with marketing? You can easily make CDs and videos that lead someone on a narrated tour of your website. You can make salable products and you can get your training message across much easier than trying to tell people where to click. You can actually show them in the form of a video.

In addition, they include a "producer" that lets you edit shorter movies into longer ones and edit out mistakes too. I really liked the cursor effects. A big round colored ball follows the cursor around so you can easily see it on the screen. It flashes when you click. The cursor is supposed to be translucent, but it does make the text beneath hard to see, so I kept the ball a little off to the side of where I was pointing. Again. . . no big deal. All in all, when you get the program tweaked and learn a little about Windows Media Player you can have a handy tool at your disposal that will help you train, promote and develop new products. About $150.00 retail and downloadable from their site.

Public Speaking : LISTEN TO EVERYONE

When you are speaking at an event that has multiple speakers,try to listen to as many of the other speakers as you can. In particular, don't miss the keynote or general session speakers. By doing this you are able to add a polish to your talk and to the event as a whole. It also might save you some embarrassment.

I'll never forget many years ago I was doing a breakout session fora big real estate company. We then went to the closing general session an hour later, the big shot keynote speaker made a fool of himself by using material I had gone over already. People were looking at me and winking. There were only two concurrent sessions going on and it would have been really easy for the keynoter to stop by and check out the breakouts, or at least find out what I and the other breakout session speaker were going to be talking about. Besides listening to as many speakers as you can, make sure your material is really unique which will help guard you from embarrassing situations.

Public Speaking : BE CAREFUL

I was doing an event for 3200 people in California and it was a really big deal. I had a two stage managers with a headset counting down 30 seconds till show time, a personal assistant and complete video crew for tape and image projection. Everything was hustle and bustle and rush, rush, rush. I had another bunch of assistants who, on cue, were going to distribute plastic glow stars so the whole room would be lit with the stars for the grande finale where I had blacked out the room.

The entire production went off without a hitch. People had a great time. Afterwards I was busy shining my halo . . . .until the production company head came up to me and said, "We have a problem." . . . . I did not have a clue what he meant. He told me the assistants were throwing the stars into the crowd and one of them hit an attendee in the eye and scratched his cornea. . . .Talk about your heart sinking. No one knew if he was going to be OK or not. He was on his way to the hospital. . . . It was six week before he found out if the damage was permanent or not. Luckily he ended up with a badly scratched cornea and he is perfectly alright now.

I had let all the hoopla get in the way of my normal briefing of my assistants and it almost cost someone their eyesight . . .BE CAREFUL!

Public Speaking : KEEP IT SIMPLE

Your homepage of your website should be as simple as possible. I made the mistake of adding and adding and adding things to my homepage to the point where there was nearly 24 places to click. That has been reduced to seven with only two main categories and my visitors are thanking me in the form of spending more money.

I believe in continuous improvement so I got some outside help to critique my website which was doing quite well at the time. The objective third party noticed that there were just too many choices for a visitor landing on my home page and that many of the buttons down the left hand side could be combined. My consultant encouraged me to separate my different types of visitors right at the homepage and take them down different paths. The two main visitors I get are people needing a speaker and people that want to be a speaker. Those are now the main buttons on my site and each take the specific type of visitor on their own trip through my site.

I have gotten much feed back that the site is now much easier to navigate. This is primarily because people looking for a speaker now don't have to even be bothered with speaker services and all the other things on the site for speakers. AND the speakers visiting my site don't have to be bothered with program descriptions, Frequently Asked Questions and things that only apply to meeting planners.

Determine who the key visitors are to your site and redesign the structure to separate them from the very beginning and you will find your visitors will stay longer and buy more because they don't have to sift through things that are not of interest to them.

Public Speaking : LINE OF SIGHT

When you speak alot you run into some crazy room setups. It's your job to be there early to make sure all the little preparation details are taken care of. One of these details is the visibility of you and your visuals from each chair in the audience.

It doesn't even amaze me any more that a hotel room setup crew would put up a projection screen that 1/3 of the audience couldn't possibly see. Most of the time this occurs when tables and or chairs are placed too far forward in the room. The people on the sides are at much too sharp an angle to see anything on the screen and they only see you in profile.


Another situation is when there are pillars in the room. The setup people normally just slap tables up to suit themselves and forget that the people sitting in the chairs just might like to see what is going on at the stage. When you have pillars to deal with you must be very aware of your stage positioning. You won't be able to be seen the entire time by everyone because of the pillars, but you can limit the time you are unseen by noting the worst areas of the stage with an "X" of tape on the floor. Avoid standing still anywhere near the "X." It's OK to passby or over the "X," just don't plant yourself near it.


It's your job to check every chair in the room to be sure every participant has an unobstructed line of sight for each part of your presentation. They must be able to see the screen, the flipchart and you wherever you travel on the stage.


If possible, be in the room early when lots of setup crew are around so that you can make the adjustments before the room is totally set. Taking care of details like this is one more vote for you as a highly polished presenter.