Robert W. Bly - Persuasive presentations

Do you enjoy speaking in front of groups? Most of us dont. And many folks find the thought downright frightening.

Author George Plimpton once wrote, One of lifes terrors for the uninitiated is to be asked to make a speech. A survey done by the London Times found that more than four out of ten respondents listed public speaking as their number one fear. Todays public speakers can no longer write their own speeches or books, and theres some evidence that they can no longer read them, laments author Gore Vidal. In his book Speechwriting: The Master Touch, Joseph J. Kelley Jr. writes: The word speech sends shivers up and down countless spines.

Fear and loathing of public speaking causes huge numbers of people in all walks of life - from corporate employees making presentations at workplace meetings, to local citizens addressing the town council - to be lousy public speakers. And the inability of employees to articulate is costing corporate America a small fortune.

Speechwriters routinely get paid $3,000 to $5,000 per assignment to ghostwrite short speeches for executives, with staff speechwriters earning up to $100,000 (or more) a year. Professional speakers earn $1,000 to $5,000 and up to talk for 60 minutes, either to educate, motivate, or entertain a group. More than $3 billion a year is spent annually in the U.S. training workers in writing, public speaking, and other basic communication skills. Countless workers are held back in their careers by flubbing interviews for promotions and jobs.

How many times have you decided not to buy something because the salesperson gave a dull or unconvincing presentation? In academia, student evaluations play a bigger role in the decision to award tenure to professors than in years past; a teacher who is boring or difficult to understand will get poor marks from his students. Ph.D. candidates with lousy presentation skills risk flunking their orals. Political candidates lacking in oratory skills often lose elections to opponents who present a better public image and speak more engagingly - think of Nixon vs. Kennedy.

Even though public speaking is routinely cited as one of the average Americans greatest fears, the ability to communicate clearly plays a critical role in both business and career success - even in personal relationships. Toastmasters, a national membership organization dedicated to helping people become better public speakers, reports, Survey after survey shows that presentation skills are crucial to success in the workplace.

Businesspeople today need to communicate clearly and persuasively with customers, co-workers, employees, team members, vendors, business partners, and colleagues - both in writing and orally. Bill Wilson, a speaking coach, estimates that eight billion presentations are given annually in the U.S. alone. Rare is the white-collar employee who is excused from ever having to give a talk or presentation in the workplace.

There are plenty of books that teach old-fashioned oration or are geared toward professional speakers. But Persuasive Presentations has a clear and simple goal: To help the average person. Whether you are giving a speech before the local Chamber of Commerce or leading a safety training class for factory workers, this book will help you to:

• Become a comfortable and confident speaker.
• Overcome fear of public speaking and get rid of butterflies.
• Gain and hold the audiences attention.
• Communicate your message in a compelling and engaging fashion.
• Get your audience to listen to you and like you.
• Persuade your audience to see your point of view - and take whatever actions you want them to take.
• Impress and satisfy the person who brought you in to speak, so you are asked back for a repeat performance.
• Consistently get evaluations of excellent from your audiences whenever you speak.
• Generate leads, sales, new business opportunities, and orders every time you speak in public.
• In addition, speakers in every walk of life can find useful instruction and guidance on how to be a better presenter in the pages that follow. This book can help you if you fit in any of the following categories:
  • Businesspeople - engineers, scientists, professionals, programmers, middle managers, senior executives, support staff, and others in the corporate world required to give presentations in meetings or in front of customers and prospects.
  • Entrepreneurs - small business owners, self-employed professionals, and other entrepreneurs who want to promote themselves and become established experts in their field.
  • Students - high school, college, and graduate students making oral presentations or taking oral exams.
  • Educators - teachers who want to master presentation techniques to become more effective instructors and make more of an impact on their students.
  • Professional speakers - self-employed professionals who speak part-time as an ancillary profit center, 3,600 of whom are members of the National Speakers Association, and thousands of part-time and fulltime speakers who are not.
  • Salespeople - anybody who spends all or part of his or her time selling products and services.
  • Trainers - those who want to earn some of the billions of dollars that U.S. corporations spend annually to train their employees in both basic and technical skills.
  • And anyone else who has to - either regularly or sporadically - speak in front of groups ranging in size from 3 to 3,000.

I do have a favor to ask. If youve got a tip for your fellow speakers, or youve written a speech that generated a standing ovation, or even better, improved the business operations or changed the lives of the meeting planner or attendees, why not send them to me so I can share them with readers of the next edition? You can reach me through my web site, www.bly.com.

When you are young, you often think you will do great things. You dream of writing a bestseller, starting an internet business and selling it for millions of dollars, playing for the NY. Yankees, winning American Idol, becoming a high-powered corporate executive with a six-or seven-figure salary, becoming Donald Trumps next apprentice, making a killing in the stock market, or inventing a cure for cancer.

In most of these imagined futures, we see ourselves doing it alone: toiling long hours over a Bunsen burner with beakers and flasks until we shout Eureka! and announce our cancer cure. Or hiding away in a garret banging out the Great American Novel on our laptop, for which we are awarded a Pulitzer Prize.