Good speakers are made, not born.

Good speakers become great speakers with the proper training. Investing in professional speaker training can greatly improve your results.

There is no downside to improving your speaking skills.

The key to effective speaking comes down to one thing: the ability to be able to tell a compelling story. Years ago I was taught that effective advertising boiled down to the acronym AIDA, which stands for 1.) Attract Your ATTENTION. 2.) Stimulate their INTEREST 3.) Create DESIRE and 4.) Move them to ACTION.

Creating an effective oral presentation is not much different from those guidelines. When we speak, we are actually selling. We are trying to communicate or get someone to embrace truths, facts, inspire action, etc. How many times has someone in your life told you, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”? Most of us have heard that. We’ve all worked with highly educated, well-educated people who are absolutely brilliant in their field, but when they talked, they almost put us to sleep. How many of us have listened to a person who was charismatic, compelling, and attractive, and then, when it’s all over, wondered, “What did they just say?” or you don’t remember anything they said. It was all show without substance. To get on the path to more effective public speaking, you must master what you say AND how you say it. The best way is in a story type format. In my sales training over twenty years ago I was taught that “facts tell, stories sell.”

The stories or narrative style brings a message to the heart and mind of the audience. One of those methods is what I call the PSOx3 speech template. It is a simple method to create convincing speeches. This means presenting a Problem, Solution and Result and doing it three times during the presentation. This humanizes the presentation and allows the listener to relate to the topic being presented. Create a mental image that makes the subject more memorable. Here is an example. Let’s use a motivational theme that goes like this; “John Smith only had twenty dollars in his pocket. He was fired with no chance of rehire. His position was outsourced overseas. He had two children in private school and a baby at home. His wife worked part-time three days a day”. Weekend.

They couldn’t do it with their income alone. They only had enough financial cushion to pay their bills for about three months. She knew she had to make something happen, and do it fast. One day, after paying his bills, he had to make the decision to fill up the gas tank or buy groceries. This was the turning point in her life. It was giving in to despair and depression or rising to the occasion and going into business for yourself. He felt that no one was going to hire a professional over 40 like him with the salary that they had been accused of. One day while he was reading the newspaper, he read a story about how a large percentage of lawyers were not getting the clientele they wanted. He detected a need. The problem leads to the gain. He had experience writing marketing materials for a large company for the last twenty years. Why couldn’t he do it for another industry, he wondered.

This led him to make his first phone call to a local lawyer, who confessed that his business was slow and they disagreed on how to get more clients and increase his referrals. John made an appointment with that lawyer. He became John’s first client. That was 250 clients and three years ago. John’s now has three employees who work as independent contractors from their homes. He also works out of his house. He and his staff meet in person once a week for brainstorming sessions to give the virtual company a more human feel.”

Now, when you read John’s story, in a very short period of time, you are drawn into his situation, feel his despair, and experience the hope he has with the advent of his new business. When this story is told, instead of just telling facts, he feels for John. When he introduces himself with pauses, increases and decreases in speech volume, and appropriate body gestures, he is well on his way to creating a memorable speech. Like a good TV script, you can clearly identify the problem, the solution, and the result. John’s story is one you will remember and isn’t that why we make presentations at our work, places of worship and service organizations?