Polish Your Speaking Skills
 By Patrick L. Wynne

If you’re like most folks, you’re petrified to stand at a podium and speak to two or more people, but have no problem yakking away in a room full of family and friends.

Seriously folks, public speaking can be totally terrifying and downright paralyzing. Guess what. It also can boost your business like little else.

The old saw is that people do business with people they know and like. It doesn’t take a graduate degree in verbal communications to know the silent wallflower is the last one to be known and therefore the last one to be liked.

What You Need To Know
Here are suggestions for publicly loosening your inhibitions by opening your mouth to the benefit of your customers and your bottom line. Public speaking for fun and profit.

• First, know thyself. What needs to be fixed? If you’re shy, admit it. If you’re nervous, concede the point. You can’t fix what you deny is broken. Understand that under the right conditions, even the shiest among us become comfortable. This should tell you an important fact about yourself: You can overcome your inhibitions. But you must first believe you can.

• Second, understand that familiarity breeds comfort. The better you know what you’re talking about, the more comfortable you will be speaking about it. Moreover, if you believe in what you sell, you can talk about it without self-doubt. (If you don’t believe in what you sell, even a glib delivery won’t help. You have bigger problems.)

Armed with these truths – self-knowledge, familiarity and comfort – you’re ready to improve your podium presence, your telephone deportment and even your across-the-counter chatter.

The ability to speak in a knowledgeable, friendly and engaging manner will profit you whether you’re addressing a room full of prospects or speaking one-on-one with your least favorite customer.

The benefits of a confident, engaging speaking manner are endless. You will earn rapt attention at the chamber of commerce. Your sales presentations will have the ring of persuasive sincerity. Employees and customers alike will hang on your every word.

Three Speaking Tips
Speaking improvement comes in two realms: the domains of knowledge and practice. Use these three tips.

No. 1. Know who, what and where
The glibbest of the glib stutter and stammer when they don’t know their material. It’s next to impossible to come off well speaking from ignorance.

Likewise, unless you know something about your audience, you risk being offensive or boring. Does the audience agree or disagree with your topic? Are they looking for validation of points they share with you, or do they need proof that their contrary assumptions are mistaken? Point of view is all important.

Also, when speaking in a new venue, familiarize yourself with the location. You may need to ask those in the back of a long room whether they can hear you, and adjust accordingly.

No. 2. Practice
Athletes train, soldiers train, and so should you if you want to win in business.

Begin with a written presentation, or at least an outline. To know your material well enough to speak comfortably, rehearse. A mirror will do, but so will sitting behind the steering wheel of your car on the freeway. Go over the material aloud, first for content, again for emphasis, again for pacing, then for inflection. Then start all over.

Repeat these steps up to the moment you deliver your spiel. Don’t read from notes or recite like a tape recorder. Capture the gist. Your practice will round off rough edges by translating the written word into conversational tone. Repetition makes your material second nature. When the big moment comes, it will roll off your tongue as if entirely impromptu, rather than pedantic and memorized.

No. 3. Relax
This is the tough part.

Here’s how to relax: Work on the first two steps until your delivery achieves that conversational tone. If you are stilted and paranoid, your words will be too. There’s no shortcut here. You aren’t going to be able to relax without knowledge and practice.

Safe Places To Learn
The foremost organization for polishing speaking skills is Toastmasters International, but other organizations offer similar opportunities.

The basic format is to deliver a speech to a group, each of whom also gets a turn at the podium. Toastmasters has refined the process so that its tips and critiques hone skills and build confidence, while letting you practice in a non-threatening venue.

Only by speaking to people can you improve in those necessary realms of knowledge and practice, which will result in relaxing when it is time to open your mouth and deliver the real thing

(Posted March 2006)

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