Profit From Effective Public Speaking

By: Stephen Pope

Developing and utilizing presentation skills can result in increased income for you. Here are a few ways that you can turn your public speaking experience into business profits.

1. Free Speeches to Promote Your Business

A lawyer might make a speech to a group of business persons, free of charge, about the advantages of incorporating their businesses. This could result in obtaining new clients. It could also cause existing clients to purchase additional services, such as incorporations, minute book work, income tax election filings, and so on.

2. Paid Seminars, Workshops and Teleclasses

You could charge admission fees to attend a seminar entitled "How To Incorporate Yourself Without a Lawyer". This seminar could detail the considerations and mechanics of incorporating your own private corporation.

3. Sell Information Products

The information presented during a speech or seminar could form the basis for information products such as books, courses, special reports or folios, audios, videos, DVDs, electronic books, and so forth. For example, you could write a book entitled "How To Incorporate Yourself Without a Lawyer".

Including such products as handouts at your seminar would increase the value for the attendees (which you could charge for). Even if you gave a free speech to a group, you could still receive back-end income from the sale of such information products.

Obviously, your public speaking skills will be especially important when producing an audio or video cassette. Your listeners and viewers will make certain judgments based on your personal appearance, poise, audience contact, use of gestures, enthusiasm, how informative the material is, and many other factors.

Your information products establish your credibility as an expert, resulting in even more business. As well, you can market those same information products through mail order, direct mail, Internet marketing, and other methods.

4. Consulting and Other Opportunities

As your reputation as an expert in your specialized field grows, you will become more in demand. Clients may seek you out for lucrative speaking engagements. You may be invited to write magazine articles, consult for large corporations, act as an expert trial witness, become a syndicated columnist, et cetera.

Therefore, whether you are a novice or an experienced public speaker, it pays to increase and utilize your public speaking skills.

Article Source: Articles Beyond Better


J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years. To learn more about effective public speaking and other profitable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit www.yenommarketinginc.com/public-speaking.html

Six Steps To Becoming A Powerful Public Speaker

Public speaking ranks right up there in terms of the things we are afraid to do. Whether it’s the fear of being watched closely by others, or the insecurity and self-conscious feeling of slipping up during the presentation, these six tips will help you give a polished, professional speech that you (and your audience) can be proud of!

1. Know your audience.

This is the single best piece of advice for delivering a presentation. What are there interests? Their backgrounds? Why are they coming to hear you speak? What ideas do you have to share with them? Approaching your speech as more of a “me-to-you” discussion rather than a full-blown broadcast makes it less stressful.

2. What do you want your audience to do as a result of your speech?

What’s really at the heart of your presentation? By concentrating on the “end result” rather than slogging through the beginning, you create a powerful punch that drives home your message instead of rambling on.

3. Share a story.

In public speaking circles, this is called a “hook” – something that gets your audience’s attention and makes them sit up and listen. Start off by asking questions or sharing an experience you had. People like to be active, rather than passive listeners. By giving them something that they can identify with, you’ll find that these people are just like you; that makes giving a presentation a whole lot easier. Be sure your story has a beginning, a point, and an ending. There’s nothing quite as bad as telling a story to an engaged audience and then forgetting why you told it!

4. If you’re selling a product, focus on the benefits instead of the features.

People would much rather hear WHAT a product can do for them than HOW it does it. Narrow down your product’s features until you get to the core of how it solves a problem. If you need help with figuring out the difference between a feature and a benefit, ask yourself “So What?” For example, if you’re selling a vacuum cleaner that has a hypoallergenic filter, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask yourself “so what?” The answer would be something like, “It picks up dust, mold and pet dander”. Again, “so what?” Answer, “You’ll feel relief from runny nose and sneezing plus itchy, water eyes.” Now THAT’s a benefit!

5 Powerpoint presentations are great but they can be overwhelming – or downright boring. Instead, give your audience something to DO by providing them with fill-in-the-blank flip charts or “team activities”. These help reinforce and emphasize your message in ways that a computer presentation simply cannot.

6. Make sure your speech ends in a way that reiterates the beginning.

Speakers can get carried away with the details and leave their audiences asking, “What was the point of all that?” People naturally digest information in “chunks”, so focus on the big picture rather than all the pieces. If the details are just as important, save it for an after-speech handout that the audience can take with them and read over at their leisure.

If you keep these six tips in mind, you’ll not only have an easier time overcoming your fear of public speaking, but you’ll have a very appreciative audience who will in turn be more receptive and eager to try your product or service. Go get ‘em!

Article Source: Articles Beyond Better

www.bornspeaker.com is Sintilia Miecevole's site with all kinds of speaker information from keynote, motivational, professional and dynamic speakers to car, stereo, motorcycle, outdoor speakers and much more. Be sure to visit www.bornspeaker.com for all of your speaker information.

Top 10 E's to Motivate and Influence an Audience

Speak with E's.

Be a speaker of influence not control or guilt. With the privilege of the platform comes the awesome responsibility of motivating and influencing your audienceto feel/think/act differently.

1. Educate provide your audience with extensive information on your topic. This will empower attendees to feel competent and knowledgeable. Support your points with stories. Stories help us see through the eyes of other people. Adults delineate their thoughts visually.

2. Entertain give them the facts laced with a good dose ofhumor. Adults learn better when they are lightening up! Here's the place for some magic tricks, handwriting analysis or a song.

3. Experience get the audience involved. When they interact, they get it better and retain it longer. Group exercises, simple questions and answers, role-plays.

4. Enthusiasm vary your tone of voice, smile often, and show passion for your subject matter. Make your body language reflect your comments.

5. Example be the speaker/person who motivates the audience to admire and respect you. You have succeeded when people say, I want to be like him/her.

6. Encourage be supportive to your audience believe in them. Acknowledge them Say, I did it and so can you

7. Excellence hold yourself accountable for excellence. And then help your audience be accountable and live up toits potential. Speakers need to give audiences what they need, not what they want.

8. Expertise demonstrate that you know your stuff. Speakabout what you know from your business background, personal experiences and research. Be perceived as an expert on your topic.

9. Eloquence deliver your speech with high energy, sincerity, inspiration, and a sense of humor. Are you one of a kind? What makes you different from your competitors?

10. End result you want to energize your audience to take some risks, some action, go to the edge and execute. . .make their dreams come true, or get the job done. Your information should be useful and immediately applicable to their lives.

COPYRIGHT: C2005 by Sandra Schrift.

All rights reserved

Sandra Schrift 13 year speaker bureau owner and now career coach to emerging and veteran public speakers who want to "grow" a profitable speaking business. I also work with business professionals and organizations who want to master their presentations.J
oin my free bi-weekly Monday Morning Mindfulness ezinehttp://www.schrift.com/monday.htm

Talk About Confidence

If you asked me to choose the single greatest benefit I could claim as the result of my Toastmasters experience, I would choose confidence. With so many skills and techniques to be learned, confidence can be the most elusive. Confidence is stealthy. It creeps up on you, slowly at first, then building in intensity until one day you realize it’s there.

Confidence is not the thing that propels you to the front of a room to give a talk. That’s courage.

Confidence is not what gives you the ability to speak fluently and elegantly on your topic. That’s expertise. Nor is confidence the way in which you move about the platform, your emphatic gestures or your booming voice. That’s presentation style. The actual substance of your contribution is more subtle, more sophisticated than mere flash.

Confidence is quieter. It comes from the knowledge that no matter the calamity or crisis, you can trust your ability to cope gracefully. Confidence is that esoteric something that can be difficult to describe, yet you know it when you see it.

Confidence is acquired, not given. It is an idiosyncrasy in our language that we say, “That really gave me a lot of confidence.” I tend to think of confidence “given” as that which is temporary, such as a compliment. It can be fleeting, when, for example, you are the recipient of an unflattering remark ten minutes later. Instead, think of confidence as the result of a simple mathematical equation: Time plus experience equals confidence.

The first portion of the equation, time, is a constant. Time elapses, whether you like it or not. The second part of the equation is the variable. Experience is simply trial and error, trial and success. You must have both, or there will be nothing that can be learned. In any competition, it is the person who comes in at second place that gains more from the experience. It is the second place winner who picks apart his performance, analyzes every angle, and strategizes the next step to success. No one likes to lose, but if you are at all competitive you will use the next attempt and the experience of coming up short to win. How many times have you said, “I won’t make that mistake again”? Knowledge is one of the ingredients that makes experience a variable. We choose to learn from our mistakes.

Confidence doesn’t come from being told that you are good, it lies in knowing that you’re good. From there, greatness is an exercise. It’s up to you to use time and experience to your fullest potential. This may require new choices, but by that time you will have earned the confidence you will need to go as far as you desire. You will also possess the skills and experience that will enable you to teach others. Talk about confidence!

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.

Laura Gillson is a speaker, author and educator specializing in disability awareness, advocacy, accessibility and assistive technology. For corporate, community or caregiver training, visit Eloquent Insights at http://www.eloquentinsights.com. If you need help with in-home care, you’ll find it at In-Home Insights at http://www.inhomeinsights.com. Finally, you’ll discover a site for sore eyes at Accessible Insights at http://www.accessibleinsights.com. The author's email address is lgillson@eloquentinsights.com.

Take a Peek

Public Speaking Tips: Take a Peek
by Tom Antion

I usually have notes hidden around the stage, but the audience never knows that I'm looking at them.I look at my notes that are lying flat on my table when
1. The audience is laughing
2. When I'm pushing buttons on my laptop
3. When I walk past the table looking down and holding my chin as if I'm thinking.
4. When I go to the table to pick up a prop or piece of paper.
5. When the audience is watching short videos on the screen.

Some people tape their notes to the floor when they are on a raised stage, but I don't like that because you have to look down too often for no apparent reason.Another good trick is to lightly pencil in notes to yourself on the edge of flip chart pages. The audience can't see them, but you can when you are near the flipchart.