Carmine Gallo - 10 Simple Secrets of the Worlds Greatest Business Communicators

When you change the way you see yourself as a speaker, the speaker your audience sees will change.

Carmine Gallo

You have an extraordinary story to tell. But whether youre pitching a service, product, company, or cause, how you craft and deliver your message makes all the difference. Some people tell their stories better than otherscapturing the hearts and minds of everyone in their personal and professional lives. They are considered the worlds greatest business communicatorsthe most electrifying speakers in the corporate world. Heres the best part. Anyone can develop the skills to join the worlds most astonishing speakers. Great communicators are made, not born. In this book, youll learn the 10 Simple Secrets that have turned ordinary individuals into dazzling presenters. Youll hear directly from the worlds top contemporary business leaders, many of whom reveal their communication secrets for the first time.

By identifying and adopting the techniques of the worlds greatest business communicators, you will:

• stand apart from your competition;
• attract customers;
• close more sales;
• raise your visibility;
• advance your business agenda;
• inspire your audiences; and
• potentially change the world with your service, product, company, or cause.

Consider just a few of the leaders who will share their secrets with you: a man who took his passion for coffee and transformed nearly every street corner in America, an investor who became the worlds richest person, and a young woman who leveraged a $1,000 loan to build a billion-dollar real estate empire. They go by rather common names like Howard, Warren, and Barbara. But the companies they built are extraordinary, with names like Starbucks, Berkshire Hathaway, and the Corcoran Group.

Others have ordinary beginnings but enjoy astounding success. There are many, many more. Youll learn about the presentation and speaking techniques of the worlds most influential leaders and how you can incorporate their strategies in your own professional business communications. Youll read interviews with leading CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, experts, and authors. For the first time, they share presentation secrets that have catapulted them to the top of their fields.

Lincoln Never Used PowerPoint; He Had a Tree Stump Instead

Show me a movement that changed the world, and Ill show you a great communicator who made it happen. For example, long before Lincoln crafted and delivered the Gettysburg Addressthe short speech known as one of the greatest of all timehe honed his storytelling experience on the American frontier. If it hadnt been for Lincolns skill as a communicator, he wouldnt have won the presidency, he wouldnt have signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and America might look far different than it does today.

In Team of Rivals , Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin credits Lincolns storytelling skills as a key component of his success. Storytelling played a central role in the presidents ability to communicate with the public, she writes.

Lincolns reputation as a great communicator attracted townspeople from far and wide to watch a magnificent storyteller captivate their imagination. Lincoln didnt have PowerPoint to lean on. Lincoln didnt have a TED stage to share his ideas with the world. All he had was tree stump and a fierce drive to improve his public-speaking skills. Great communicators inform, illuminate, and inspire on any platform.

Communication Skills Are Fundamental in the Digital Age

Communication skills are dramatically more important today than they were twenty years ago, according to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, whom I interviewed for a column in Forbes.com. His track record is nothing short of astonishing. In his twenty years as CEO, Chambers grew the networking company from four hundred employees to seventy thousand and from $70 million in sales to $47 billion a year.

Chambers built a reputation for electrifying audiences around the world with a captivating speaking style. Although he delivers presentations about complex topics, he makes the audience feel as though hes having a one-on-one conversation with each and every person. He walks among the audience and can speak for up to an hour with no notes.

As I learned in a candid and revealing conversation with Chambers at his Silicon Valley home, he wasnt always a confident speaker. I am not a natural public speaker, he acknowledged. Between the challenges of dyslexia and a deep fear of public speaking, it did not come easy to me. It was really hard to get over.

Dyslexia made it hard for Chambers to follow written notes or read a teleprompter. But the learning disorder turned out be an asset when Chambers realized he could see the outline of the entire presentation in his minds eye and deliver the content in a far more conversational style that made him stand out among his peers. Today, Chambers says, communication is one of the most important skills that a leader and, frankly, most employees now need to excel on the job.

According to Chambers, one or two decades ago, a leader could get by without being an exceptional communicator and still be considered great. Today its a different world. If you dont have communication skills, youre not going to be an effective leader.

Whether youre a CEO, manager, entrepreneur, or educator, presentations are critical to your career success. Think about how many presentations you give every dayface-to-face with a potential client, in the elevator with the boss, at a staff meeting, in a conference, or over the phone. Youre presenting constantly. How do you come across? Are you dull or dazzling? The techniques described in the pages that follow will help you craft and deliver your message with power, passion, and persuasion.

While the vast majority of business professionals fail to rise to their full potential as communicators, I believe you can harness the 10 Simple Secrets in this book to stand alongside the worlds greatest leadersinspiring everyone in your personal or professional life to buy into your message.