Public Speaking - Tom's Year End Blowout 2010

I will put you in business for 47 bucks!

Why would I do that?

Because as my year end blowout sale I want to make sure we both make some bucks. In my past blowout sales I made a ton and you got super bargains. Those were great, but in this economy I want to make sure we both make a ton.

Here's how it works. I'm going to give you five of my best selling, high quality special reports/transcripts. You can sell them or give them as bonuses. I sell them for $29.95 each in my speaker shop. Basically you're getting five ready made, proven products for $9.40 each.

You'd pay at least $275.00 each to have someone write these for you if you could even find anyone who had this knowledge.

That's not where your big bucks comes from. Your big bucks comes from the fact that your on time fee of 47 bucks gives you the right to put a little code in all five of the transcripts and if anyone buys anything from them, you keep getting paid a affiliate commissions.

You don't have to ship anything or handle any customer service. We do all that. All you have to do is sell the reports and keep all the money or give them away as bonuses.

Simple isn't it?

Well simple is what sells.

Public Speaking - Sources For Speakers

The reason I talked about current information and personal life events first is that they will glean you the highest amount of impact. Using your own life incidents and observations makes you unique. Why should you be asked to speak if anyone could get up in front of the group and recite the same old tired information and stories? I encourage you to spice up your presentations with your interpretations of news events and information and your personal experience.

However, I go back again to the idea that you must change up. An entire presentation based on you could be considered self-aggrandizing and boring. It is perfectly acceptable and needed to include observations and humor of others to support your points. This information is easily found in reference material for speakers. Many reference books for speakers include both serious and humorous material. Here are just a few of the ones I rely on when preparing a presentation. Note: Some may be out of print, but you can search used book stores and use used book search services to find them.

The Book of Business Anecdotes by Peter Hay (New
York: Facts on File, 1988).

Speakers Library of Business Stories, Anecdotes and
Humor by Joe Griffith, (New York: Prentice Hall,
1990).

How to be the Life of the Podium by Sylvia Simmons,
(New York: Amacom, 1992).

Most of these resources are categorized by subject and they put thousands of pieces of material at your fingertips.

I also have a generous supply of used books on many other specific subjects. I really go crazy in the used bookstores and flea markets. For instance, at a yard sale, I found a book of baseball anecdotes that only cost me a quarter. When the time comes that I need a baseball story this book is waiting on my bookshelf to help me hit a home run. (I can't believe I used another dumb joke like that!)

Public Speaking - What to Do After Identifying a Story?

When you come across a story in a book, or when you have a personal incident you think will make a good story, ask yourself the following questions:

Is it clean?
Can I use it in a professional presentation to make a point?
What point does it illustrate?
What other points does it illustrate?
How many categories should I file it in so I can find it when I need it?
What should I say to lead into the story?
What should I say following the story?
Where should I put it in my presentation?
Is it better than something I am already using?

Just thinking about the answers to the above questions will make your storytelling better. Many presenters just slap any old story into their presentation, any old place, because they like the story. That is not the way to do it.

Let me pay YOU to be a better presenter!

Public Speaking: Joan Stewart's Top Ten Ways to Get Free Publicity

They're referred to as Publicity Hounds and I'll bet you know at least one.

They're the people smiling back at you from color photos that accompany their profile story in the morning paper. Turn on the radio and there they are again, chatting away on a local talk show. Two months later, they show up on the cover of your trade journal. Then they're being interviewed on the 11 o'clock news. While you're buying expensive advertising to deliver your message, they're doing it for free.

During my 22 years as a newspaper editor and reporter, I have seen well-meaning people fail repeatedly in their attempts to beg and cajole the media to pay attention to them. That's because media relations is a sophisticated game with its own etiquette, protocol and rules. Today, as a media relations consultant, professional speaker and ezine publisher, I teach people how to create free publicity to sell a product or service, champion a cause, create an image and establish their expertise.

Here are my Top 10 tips for free publicity:

1. Send news releases about new products and services, contests, awards, open houses, speaking engagements to the media, and post them online where consumers can find them. The handy checklist "89 Reasons to Send a News Release" is yours free when you subscribe to my free ezine, "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week" at PublicityHound.com.

2. Write "how-to" articles for newspapers, magazines, trade publications and newsletters, and for online article directories, and offer lots of free advice. It helps establish you as an expert. See Special Report #6: How to Write How-to Articles That Position You as an Expert.

3. Get onto the speaking circuit. Speaking to community groups and trade associations is a wonderful way to "create the buzz" about your business.

4. Create a website chock full of free advice, articles by and about you, story ideas about your business, and an electronic media kit.

5. Write an ezine. A free electronic newsletter helps you sell your products and services to an international audience and costs almost nothing compared to expensive direct mail campaigns. With permission, you can send the ezine to reporters who cover your industry. See Special Report #38: How to Publish a Profitable Electronic Newsletter

6. Get to know reporters. Offer yourself as someone they can call on for background, commentary and story ideas. Call and ask, "How can I help you?"

7. Start your own TV show on your local cable TV company's public access channel. Air time is free. You pay a minimal amount to rent the camera equipment.

8. Look for photo opportunities. Local newspapers, TV stations, weekly shoppers, trade publications and other media are always looking for interesting photos. Call the media with ideas, or submit your own photos.

9. Blog, and post comments at other blogs. Bloggers, unlike journalists, love to link to each other, and getting in front of one influential blogger can really create a buzz online.

10. Participate in online discussion groups and offer lots of helpful advice. Reporters lurk here, and if they're impressed with your messages, they might contact you for a story. Use a signature file in your email that explains what you do and how you can help solve people's problems. Link to your web site. Above all, be patient and persistent. The key to savvy media relations is understanding how to dovetail your wants and needs with those of the media.

Publicity expert Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, publishes "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week," a free ezine that shows you how to generate thousands of dollars in free online and offline publicity.

Subscribe at PublicityHound.com and receive free the handy checklist "89 Reasons to Send a Press Release." Contact her at 262-284-7451 or at JStewart@PublicityHound.com

Public Speaking - Handouts

Handouts are multipurpose tools that enhance most presentations. They are also another way to get audience members in fun. I provide handouts for virtually every presentation I do. One of the reasons is that audience members really enjoy being able to take something home with them. For me, it is also a way to make sure they have easy access to my name and phone number in case they have questions or if they want to hire me.

Computer programs make it very easy to create totally customized handouts for your presentations. These are valued by the participants and meeting planners much more than generic ones. I always make a customized cover that is printed on colored paper and that uses some type of graphic that pertains to the group. For instance, if I am speaking to the printing industry, I go to my electronic clipart collection and find something that pertains to printing. In this case I located a large roll of printing paper. If I don't have any clipart that pertains to the industry, I'll put a cartoon of myself standing on a map of their state. Don't be afraid to be creative. If it is customized to them, they will love it. Most of the time I customize the inside of the handout too. I only use modules that I know will pertain to their group and many times I include quotes that I got from the actual attendees during my pre-program interviews.

I always try to put something fun in the handout. I simply pulled out on-file humor that pertained to the group and gave it to them. This virtually insured that the handout would not be thrown away. I gave the attendees a reason for using the handout when they got back to their offices. The stress reducer exercise is lots of fun and again gives my handout a longer life. For space reasons I didn't put my name and address on each page in these examples. But when I am actually preparing handouts all my information goes at the bottom of each page.

Some presenters believe that you should not give out handouts until the end of your presentation. They think the attendees will read ahead and not pay attention to you. That could be a valid concern if you could not give them out very far in advance of the presentation. I give mine out early enough so the attendees can look through them to satisfy their curiosity before I start. Plus, I have built in elements like the stress reducer, take home funnies, and sometimes a custom crossword puzzle to encourage them to get in fun before I start.

I also use my handout as an involvement technique and memory jogger for me. I recruit audience members to follow along with the handout to make sure I'm on track. It gives them something to do and it substitutes for my notes. As soon as the audience member tells me the next topic, I start talking without notes because I've practiced each section thoroughly.

Another way to use the handout for involvement is to make an outline, but leave blank spaces for key words. The audience members must fill in the blanks. Example: It takes only 4 seconds for a telephone customer to decide whether they like you or not.

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Pubic Speaking - Watch Your Clock So They Don't Watch Theirs

One of the quickest ways to bomb is to go overtime or try to stuff too much information in too little time. I have done talks where I was a big hero at 30 minutes and a bum at 42 minutes. One time I even got in trouble with the meeting planner. She was sitting in the front row laughing the whole time then afterwards said, "You went too long." OUCH!!

When that incident happened, I was feeling the pressure to fill up the time I had been booked for. That attitude is a mistake because it pays no attention to how the audience is feeling. Now, I counsel the meeting planner to let me be the judge of when to quit. Most open-minded planners will go along with me on this. They understand that I'm not trying to be lazy and quit early. I am trying to give their audience the best presentation they can handle under the circumstances.

If the audience is really great, it sometimes makes you want to go overtime because things are going so well. Don't do it. Leave them wanting more and you will always be welcome back. If you are susceptible to losing track of time, recruit someone or have the meeting planner assign someone to stand in the back of the room and signal you when five minutes (or whatever length of time suits you) is left. One of the worst things you can do is to try to fit all your material in a
shortened time period by speaking faster. The audience won't be able to absorb it anyway and you'll look foolish besides. I regularly cut material without missing a beat when my time gets shortened or the audience is exhausted because of a long day or evening. To do this without becoming flustered takes a little preparation and a few tricks up your sleeve.

The first thing I do to make things easy on myself is to prepare a talk that is five to ten minutes shorter than the allotted time period. Rarely is your time ever lengthened, but it is routinely shortened. Even when it is not shortened it is shortened. If you are supposed to go on at 1:00 p.m., you will very seldom actually start talking until 1:10 p.m. People take time to get seated, then you have a few announcements, and then your introduction, etc., etc., etc. If you have allowed for these delays, you don't have to cut any material at all.

When your time gets cut more than 10 minutes, you must take appropriate pre-planned actions. I rank my material in order of importance to that group. I know. I know. It all should be important, but there is always something that is more important than something else for a given group. If you have studied them enough in your pre-program research, you should have less trouble deciding what material could be cut in case you are asked to shorten your talk. After you
have ranked your material for a particular talk, write down how much time each segment takes so that you'll know how much time you save by cutting a particular chunk of material.

The other supertrick I use when I have a long story to tell is to have a quotation ready that makes the same point as the story. If my time is cut, I simply use the quote instead of the story and save several minutes. Keep a clock on stage with you that you can glance at to keep yourself on track. Or, get a speaker timer that you wear like a pager that vibrates to let you know time is almost up. There are two schools of thought about looking at your watch while on stage. I'll give them to you and you decide which is right. The first school of thought is that you should never look at your watch while on stage because it will cause the audience members to start looking at their watches. The second school of thought is that you should look at your watch to let the audience members know that you are aware of time.

This supposedly allows them to listen to you rather than worry if you are going to go too long.
I don't know which one of these schools is right, so I simply make a statement to the audience sometime during the talk (usually the beginning or end) that I will not go overtime. Then I keep track of time with my hidden timer on stage.

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Public Speaking - Sexist Language

The use of sexist language is something you must also be careful to avoid in
order to be in tune with today's society. There is an excellent section about this
topic in the book Speak Like a Pro by Margaret Bedrosian. A salesman is now
a salesperson. A fireman is now a firefighter. You don't look for a chairman
for a meeting, you look for someone to chair the meeting or a chairperson.
You must be very careful in your use of humor in these sensitive times.

People may fixate on one wrong word and tune you out and/or be offended. You
may personally feel that using a little off-color joke once in awhile is OK, or you
may think that no harm is done in using sexist language whenever you feel like
it. I can assure you that you are wrong when it comes to professional
presentations. Do whatever you want with your friends, but if you persist in any
of these behaviors you will be labeled as "out-of-touch" and largely
unpromotable in virtually every major corporation.

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Public Speaking - Ethnic Expressions Are Funny Only If You Are Ethnic

A well-known humorist, Doc Blakely, does a dialect bit that has been very
successful, but he is extremely good at it. When using dialects, if you are not
good at the particular dialect, it appears you are mocking the ethnic group to
which it belongs.

There are lots of funny ethnic sayings and words. Try to resist using them
unless you are making fun of your own background. In a business setting, it is
much too risky to joke about another person's race, religion, or dialect.

If you are Polish, it may be OK to tell a Polish joke now and then. If you are
Jewish, you are the only one who really knows about matzo balls, schmatas and
schnooks. Remember both Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butts and Secretary
of the Interior James Watt were forced to resign because of "Jokes that were
deemed insensitive and insulting to minorities." If you want to use ethnic humor,
use Outer Slobovia or some other OBVIOUSLY comic, nonexistent country in
your jokes.

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Public Speaking - Record Your Presentations

You will find that the testing process is continual even after you start using your
material in front of live audiences. If you pay close attention, you will notice that
when you say something in a slightly different manner it may get a better
response. If you can remember how you said it, you can say it that way next time
too. This is how a story or a piece of material evolves and gets better all the
time. It is very difficult to remember, however, exactly how you said something
during your presentation. That is why most pros tape record whenever they can.

I try to at least audio tape every presentation I give. It is amazing how much
you can learn by doing this. You don't have to get fancy either. I started with a
$15.00 recorder. I just sat it on a table near the stage area. If you can afford a
higher quality recorder and microphone that is even better, but it is not
necessary. Video tape is even better and, with the decreasing costs involved, a
camcorder and microphone are within reach of most serious presenters.

If you are starting with audio tape only, you won't have to worry about your
body language, posture, or stage movement. All you have to do is listen to what
you actually said, if it was humorous, and how the audience responded. I used
the term actually in the last sentence, because many presenters think they said
one thing, but the tape proves they said something completely different.

If you really want to learn the most from audio taping your presentations,
have the tape transcribed. I know this is a pain in the neck, but you won't believe
how much you will learn until you do it. You will see on paper all the ums and
ahs, extra noises and words and syllables you uttered. Most people are in shock
when they look at a transcription of what they actually said during a
presentation.

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Public Speaking - Informative Speech Topics

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