Posts Tagged ‘Audience’

Your Motivation

If you are in the process of researching presentation skills, then chances are you have a presentation coming up. Few people set out learning these skills unless there is some strong motivation.

Why - because most people in our society have a fear of public speaking? … and people don’t confront fear unless they have to.

When it comes to presentations skills, “have to” usually means that they are required to give a presentation for their employment or a social event (such as a wedding or a funeral).

If this is the situation that you are in, then you have come to the right place.

What are you looking for?

Most people who are confronted with an important presentation/speech are looking for help in a combination of areas:

• Help in overcoming the fear of public speaking
• Help in composing and preparing the presentation
• Help in delivering the presentation

With your permission, I would like to assist you in all of these areas. I would like to show you how you can easily:

• Overcome your fear with less effort than you thought possible.
• Confidently compose a captivating presentation
• Deliver it in a inspirational manner

These skills will not only help you in the short term – dealing with your upcoming presentation. They will also help you in the future.

Can you imagine how it will feel when you are asked to give a presentation because you are a truly skilled speaker. Think about how it will feel as you accept the task with confidence – knowing that in no time, you will be speaking confidently before an inspired audience. Can you imagine what effect this will have on your career?

Picture the admiration and recognition you will receive from others as they acknowledge your speaking skills and confidence.

STOP!

Now I want you stop for a minute. Did you really read the previous section and picture your success? Did you really imagine what it would feel like?

This is more important than you realize. One problem that we have when confronting our fear is that our subconscious keeps sensing danger and taking over to protect us. That’s why we still experience a paralyzing dread every time we have to address an audience, even when we know logically that it is not dangerous.

I cover this in depth in my course, Three Simple Concepts to Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking – but for now I just want to share one small tip from it. You can start to reprogram your subconscious by visualizing what you want it to believe.

So… do you really want to succeed with presentation skills? If so, then just take a moment to “feel” what it will be like to deliver an inspirational speech with confidence. Imagine the audience captivated by every word. Picture them being inspired by your every point.

This little exercise can have surprising results… believe me, I know. I too was afraid of public speaking – and had very few presentation skills.

My first speech was before an audience of 300 people. I was terrified, but I was also prepared (that’s important … as your presentation approaches, make sure that you’re as prepared as you can be).

I learned from that experience that I could overcome my fear and deliver an excellent presentation. I also learned that with a little guidance anyone else can as well. I learned as much about public speaking as I could. I also applied knowledge from other subjects that I know and developed a public speaking system.

I helped a few people on the internet and got tremendous feedback. More people wrote me and I answered them as well.  I ended up getting deluged with questions. People we’re seeking me out because of my unique approach.

I put together a course (Three Simple Concepts to Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking) to teach my system. I also created a membership area where people can view videos, listen to audio programs, read articles and communicate with others about presentation skills.

You can join the membership area for free. Once you sign up you will be able to access
• a series of articles I wrote about overcoming the fear of public speaking
• a couple of audio recordings of me speaking at seminars about fear and presentation skills
• some interviews with former students of mine were they discuss what ideas have helped them the most
• the complete introduction to my course, Three Simple Concepts to Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking.
• a couple of videos that discuss two very powerful techniques – paradigms and social proof.

… AND … my S.C.P. Public Speaking and Presentation Skills course

The S.C.P. course is delivered in short 5-7 minute audio lessons. You receive one lesson per day for 7 days. Each lesson discusses one aspect of composing a winning presentation.

On day 7 you will also receive access to a 40 minute conference call. In it we move on to preparing for the delivery. We also discuss some techniques for overcoming the fear of delivering presentations.

I have had countless people write me and tell me how much this material has helped them

If you are ready to move past the visualization exercises we just talked about, and make them reality, come on over to EffectivelySpeakingMembers.Com and join the community of people how are overcoming their fear and going on to deliver excellence in presentations.

The key to an effective presentation is preparation. The key to effective preparation is knowing how to go about doing it. You will find clear, concise information on how to do just that in the membership area.

Sign up for a free membership at http://www.EffectivelySpeakingMembers.Com

To your speaking success

What if I told you that by using some very simple techniques that you probably already know that can increase your audience’s comprehension and retention significantly (maybe even double it)? Now what if I told you it takes very little additional effort to implement these techniques – would you want to start using them?

If you tell your audience something once, their chances of recalling it tomorrow are somewhat less than 50%. If you tell it to them twice it increases to 70%-75%. A third time will increase the probability of recall up to 80%-95%. By simply repeating yourself you have increased the probability of your audience remembering what you said from %50 to close to %100. With very little effort you have almost doubled the effectiveness of your presentation in terms of recall. That’s a pretty high return on the effort that it takes to repeat yourself.

But how do you go about repeating yourself without boring or “burning out” your audience. The easiest answer is with the structure that you learned in high school English. Use an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. There is a popular phrase that goes… “In the introduction, tell them what you are going to tell them, in the body tell it to them, and in the conclusion tell them what you told them.”

It may feel to you like you are being overly repetitive (and redundant, and saying the same thing over and over again…) but to your audience it most likely won’t. Remember, you already know the concepts that you are sharing with them – but they don’t. This is their first time hearing them, so having them reinforced will seem helpful.

In addition, you can give your audience a further wake up by using your introduction to grab their attention. For example, while letting them know what you are covering you could make a controversial statement, tell a humorous story that relates to your topic, share some surprising statistics, or ask a rhetorical question that gets them thinking. All of these techniques can be used to grab your audience’s attention while and help you keep it while introduce your topic.

In the body – where you tell them what you’re telling them – give the audience the details that they need to analyze and (hopefully) accept your arguments.

Finally, in the conclusion tell them what you told them while giving them a call to action. You didn’t just give a presentation for the entertainment value, you wanted something to happen – let them know what it is that you want from them and remind them why your concepts support that action.

By simply structuring your presentation the way you learned in English class, with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, you can almost double the retention rate of your audience. Since this technique is so easy to use, ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t you use it in your next presentation?”

Special note about the proceeding article:

I didn’t just give you some rules to follow about structure – I also gave you an example by how the article was written. I opened with a couple of rhetorical questions to grab your attention. I gave you the details in the body and finally concluded by summarizing the concept and giving you a call to action in the form of a rhetorical question.

Hopefully you found this technique to be powerful in writing – however, it is even more effective when used during presentations. Make sure that you use it.

This is a transcript of an audio program located in the membership area of EffectivelySpeaking.Com. To get access to this audio program, as well as many other materials, you can sign up for a free membership at
http://www.EffectivelySpeakingMembers.Com

Hi this is David Mudie and I would like talk to you about technical presentations.

I want to take a personal experience of mine as an illustration for technical presentations. As many of you know one of my first public speaking engagements was before a large audience at a software conference. Now I did not want to speak at this software conference – but I did want to make business contacts there. I could not afford the admission price – it was $3000 US, and my company was going out of business. Speakers however, got in for free – so as much as I did not like speaking, I did not like being unemployed more.

The topic of the presentation was a security methodology I had developed, and a piece of software I had written that would support this methodology.

I was accepted for the presentation and I had about five months between receiving acceptance and having to deliver the presentation.

I slowly started working away at the presentation, procrastinating a little bit, because I really didn’t want to do it - but for the most part getting on with it because I realized that I really wanted to get there.

I made a very technical presentation. At the same time I was learning as much as I could about public speaking. It was during this time that I came across a little tidbit of wisdom that I found to be incredibly valuable.

The individual said, “Don’t try to impress your audience with how smart you are… impress your audience with how smart they are.”

I took this piece of advice to heart and realized that the presentation I had been composing was for somebody with my background, my understanding.

It wasn’t going to be useful to the majority of the audience – and so I threw it out. I took my presentation and I boiled it down to two clear, concise points. Points that anybody could understand – even somebody who had never used the software that I was supporting.

The points were:
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