One message

Fellow speaker,

When you are creating your speech story, make sure there is one clear message. Carefully craft your story so it effectively and emotionally delivers that one clear message to your audience. After your speech is over, your audience should be able to easily state your one message.

Messaging,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Point the way

Fellow speaker,

When you are creating your speech, start with your speech point. Figure out what you want your speech to mean to your audience. Then find a story that reinforces that point and makes it stick in your audience's mind.

Pointedly,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Just the facts

Fellow speaker,

When you are creating a story based on real events, make sure  you get the facts of the story correct. Telling a story and then having incorrect or inconsistent facts will make the audience doubt you and your message.

Factually,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

A name by any other name

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Mark Brown suggests you name your story characters based on how they behave or look. For example, you could have one character called "Tall man" and another called "Big man".

Naming,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Short story

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Craig Valentine suggests using dialogue is the best way to shorten your stories. If your story seems like there is a lot of narrating without much going on, look for ways to add in dialogue and take out the narrating.

Dialoguing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Story refresher

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Craig Valentine suggests if you have told your speech so often it's getting old that you make a small change to the speech. This way, the story will be fresh again.

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Question funnel for speech coaching

Fellow speaker,

Sales trainer David Sundler suggests you a series of questions to funnel the interest of the person you are selling your services to. Each question digs a little deeper and gets a little closer to why you are a good fit with the person's speaking/coaching needs:

1. Why is this important to you?
2. Why do you feel you need this?
3. What is your biggest challenge?
4. How long has this been a problem?
5. What actions have you taken to solve it?
6. What were the results of those actions?
7. What is this costing you?
8. What do you want to do about that?

When going through the question funnel, customize it to fit the service you are selling.

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Selling to your audience

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Deirdre Van Nest suggests you use the BIG approach to sell to your audience:

1. Begin with the end in mind - ensure your entire presentation is focused on and about the product or service you are selling to your audience
2. Invite buy-in - give your audience a reason to be interested in your product - mention benefits, how the product personally helped you, etc. 
3. Give a precise next step - ask for the sale at the end and clearly give the one thing the audience needs to do to get your information (e.g., sign up for a blog, click on an internet link, etc.)

Selling,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Eyeing the audience - Part 3

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you can work with an audience to develop better eye contact by getting a test audience together to practice on. After you give your speech, ask the people in the audience to raise their hands if they felt you were looking at and paying attention to them.

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Eyeing the audience - Part 2

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you can work with an audience to develop better eye contact by getting a test audience together to practice on. Ask everyone in the audience to raise their hand at the beginning of your speech and keep their hand up. Each person will lower their hand only when they feel that you have looked at and connected to them.

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Eyeing the audience - Part 1

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you can work with an audience to develop better eye contact by greeting your audience before you begin your speech. Practice making eye contact with all the people you talk to and repeat that same level of eye contact during your speech.

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Eye checkup

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you video your speech and watch the video to see whether or not your eyes are moving naturally around the room.

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Practice eye-ing

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests if you have a problem making eye contact you move your eyes around the room while practicing your speech, visualizing yourself looking at each person in the room where you will be giving your speech.

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Triangulating by eye

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests if you have a problem moving  your eye contact around the room during your speech you use the "triangle method":

1. Look at someone in front of you
2. Look at someone in the back left
3. Look at someone in the back right
4. Repeat

Moving your eyes this way will form a "triangle" of eye movement. After you have done this for awhile, "flip the triangle":

1. Look at someone in front of you and at the back of the room
2. Look at someone in the front left
3. Look at someone in the front right

Triangle-ing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Eye Contact 101

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests if you have a problem making eye contact with other people in general you practice eye contact by:

• Look at a spot slightly above or between the other person's eyes
• Create one-on-one speaking opportunities to practice eye contact with people you know and  strangers(e.g., asking someone for directions)

Practicing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

The eyes have it - Part 4

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you can improve your eye contact during your speech by:

• Keep your head inside a 45 degree angle to your left and right when making eye contact
• Be aware when speaking to cultures that regard steady eye contact as rude, and shorten your eye contact time appropriately
• Take a real interest in your audience

Eyeing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

The eyes have it - Part 3

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you can improve your eye contact during your speech by:

• When presenting with slides projected behind you, maintain eye contact with your audience when talking
• Pause your steady eye contact when you want the audience to think and reflect
• Believe in your message so your eye contact comes across as open and honest

Eyeing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

The eyes have it - Part 2

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you can improve your eye contact during your speech by:

• Knowing your speech well so you can maintain eye contact
• After asking someone something, maintain eye contact until you get some sort of a response
• If reading your speech, read ahead silently then maintain eye contact with the audience while speaking what out loud what you just silently read

Eyeing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

The eyes have it - Part 1

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Billie Joe Williams suggests you can improve your eye contact during your speech by:

• Speaking a complete thought to one person
• Making eye contact with as many people as possible
• Keeping your eyes smoothly and evenly moving around the room

Eyeing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

An emotional VIP

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Tim Juda suggests you create emotion in  your speeches using the VIP method:

• Visualize - help your audience to see what you are talking about with vivid, descriptive words
• Imagine - pause to give your audience time to imagine what you are saying
• Passion - show your passion for your speech in how you speak and gesture

VIP-ing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Time and tag again

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Patricia Fripp suggests you structure your sentences with:

• Time tags at the beginning (for example, "Last year I...")
• Punch words at the end (for example, "...most importantly, to speak your mind.")

Structuring,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Show me what you're saying

Fellow speaker,

Presentation researcher Michael suggests you do your presenters with a "Say It/Show It" style:

• Say It: title with a clear meaning at the top of the page (e.g., "Our profits have gone up 25% this year."
• Show It: visual that clearly shows what the title mentions (e.g., graph showing a 25% increase in yearly profits)

Showing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Black or white?

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Manley Fineberg suggests you choose whether your speech slides have a black or white background:

Black background:

• Use in dark room
• Highlights individual items on page

White background:

• Use in brightly lit room
• Easy to print for handouts

Visually,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Short stuff

Picture the possibilities

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Hiba Hamdan suggests you choose visuals which reflect your audience's:

• Culture
• Ethnicity
• Life

Visually,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Pause for the point

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Lance Miller suggests you use a "three word pause":

1. Say 3-6 words of your speech
2. Pause
3. Continue with the rest of your speech.

Pausing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Write it out

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Hiba Hamdan suggests you plan out and write out your speech presentation before using presentation software:

1. Outline your ideas clearly and completely
2. Draw a roadmap showing how these ideas interconnect
3. Create Twitter-like headlines that quickly convey information while grabbing your audience's attention

Planning,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Get to know your audience - Part 2

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Hiba Hamdan suggests you answer some questions about your audience before you create your speech:

• How can you make their lives better?
• What do you want them to do?
• Why should they do what you want?
• What's the best way to interact with them?

Questioning,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Get to know your audience - Part 1

Fellow speaker,

Professional speaker Hiba Hamdan suggests you answer some questions about your audience before you create your speech:

• What are they like?
• Why are they here?
• What do they know about your speech topic?

Questioning,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Dramatic speaking

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Lance Miller suggests you tie your dramatic gestures and movements on the stage to disrupting your audience's normal way of thinking. For example, in World Champion Speaker Darren LaCroix's speech he falls on the stage and stays there, getting the audience to think, "You're staying down on the stage too long for this speech to work." and then asks the audience, "Did you think I stayed down too long? Did you ever stay down too long?" By staying down for such a long time he was able to get the audience to think in a completely new way.

Editing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

The basic background

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Lance Miller suggests you be careful not to over-describe the setup to your story. Instead, simply say what was happening at the time. For example, instead of saying, "I was out of a job, worrying about it, not certain what I was going to do next." say instead, "I had just lost my job and didn't know what to do."

Editing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Write three times...

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Lance Miller suggests you write your original speech out three completely different ways. Include at least one way that you are convinced simply doesn't work or doesn't make any sense. Reread each version and see if any of the three new versions add insight to the original version of your speech. Rewrite your speech using these new insights.

Re-writing,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com

Story finding

Fellow speaker,

World Champion Speaker Darren LaCroix suggests you look for stories that:

• Amaze - What events amaze you? How will they amaze your audience?
• Amuse - What events amuse you? What will your audience see funny in them?
• Move - What events move you emotionally? How can you share those so your audience feels the same emotion?

Still storied,

Tim Wilson
Professional Speech Coach
Free speaking tips at: http://speakingquicktips.blogspot.com