Tag Archives: Presentation Trainer St. Louis

Speakers at the Conventions Were Given. . .

Depending upon their time slot, speakers at the recent National Political Conventions, were seen and heard by thousands to millions of people.

What an amazing time to showcase themselves and their presentation skills! What a fantastic item to add to their resumes!

My mantra is: “Speaking Opportunities are Business, Career, and Leadership Opportunities!”

Obviously, another Speaking Opportunity that could be added to that list is Political Opportunities.

To be on a national stage, at an extremely important event, is something most of us only dream of doing.

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Speakers: Make a Point – Tell a Story!

Here’s the Point: Each of us has a personal story to tell.

You have stories of: overcoming adversity, not quitting, speaking your mind when it wasn’t the popular belief, and other stories from your school of hard knocks.

The Key is to do as they say in practicing yoga – “Be present on the journey and always in the moment.”

Be aware of what’s happening when it’s happening.

Then, when those stories occur in real time, capture them, and put them in the hard drive that is your brain!

Do this, and you’ll start building files of stories to use when you’re developing and preparing a speech.

Then use these in the Make a Point – Tell a Story elements part of the body of your talk.

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Elevator + Speech = Elevator Speech

Elevator + Speech

The other thing about Elevator that jumped out at me as I was thinking this through, was that an Elevator goes up, floor by floor! It became apparent that an Elevator Speech should be crafted, one floor at a time! Furthermore:

Each floor should convey specific information.
Start simple. As interest grows (in the Face-To-Face), and time permits (in Both), move to the “next floor” and give more specific information.
For the Group setting, we want to take everyone in the room to the top floor, and give them all the information we’ve crafted for our “ultimate” Elevator Speech.
Where there are time constraints, some floors can be skipped.
For the Individual, Face-To-Face setting, we start on the ground floor, and want to take them up, one floor at a time, only if interest is shown after we speak.

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Speaker’s Humor: “Did you hear the one about. . .”

Here are some guidelines for Humor in Presentations:

Self-Effacing humor is good!
Don’t overdue it else it really gets the audience wondering about you and your self-confidence.
If you’re like me, you have lots of material to work with!
Never make fun of others, especially audience members. The person, even if a celebrity, that you might want to poke fun at, might be someone’s hero.
The old rule, “If you can’t say it in front of your mother, spouse and child – Don’t!, holds true.
All humor you use should be relevant to your overall message with the goal of helping your audience GET IT!

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