50 Things You Wish You Know That Will Guarantee Your Speaking Success

A post that I wrote earlier on “250 Things You Wish You Know That Will Guarantee Your Speaking Success” has created quite a buzz on the blogsphere. It started with Andrew Dlugin at Six Minutes who wrote a fairly long post challenging many points that I have raised. And then yesterday, Life Hacker picked up the article (thanks Kevin!) and bang! Traffic at The Public Speaking Blog quadrupled overnight with 829 new visitors (hello!) and the “250 speaking tips” entry was posted on 14 other blogs.
Understandably, not everyone agrees with my list of 250. Some like it and call them “gems” or “speech-prep zen”, others hate it and call them “hasty and forceful”. Well to each his own.
What I am really happy about is the conversations that were created out of this contentious list. At the very least, it makes people aware about how they can raise their speaking standards by a few notches if they pay attention to the tips.
To make the list palatable for you, I have filtered it down from 250 to 50. Yes, it’s Pareto Principle at work here. Focus on the 20% that delivers 80% of the results. Prepare your forks and knives… let’s dig in.
1. Audience always comes first, ask yourself “How can they benefit from listening to me?”
2. Most people seek validation and not education – don’t be like most people.
3. Tell a story, make a point.
4. Create a story bank. Each time something interesting happens – big or small – write it down. You never know where you can use it.
5. Follow the 80/20 rule – 80% prepared. 20% impromptu. Being prepared is extremely important but when you are too prepared, you take the fun out of a speech. The 20% spontaneity allows you to milk any situations that arises while you deliver your speech.
6. A powerful speech is one that can help solve your audience’s problems.
7. The best way to learn is to teach somebody else. Find opportunities to do that. Offer pointers. Offer coaching. Offer suggestions. Remember, you can’t give away what you don’t have. Once you teach somebody else what you learned, it reinforces and improves your speaking skills.
8. Don’t try to impress. Instead try to, share, help, inspire, teach, inform, guide, persuade, motivate… or make the world a little bit better.
9. Stay present in the moment. Forget about the conversations running in your head. Be with your audience. Enjoy the time you have with them.
10. Keep your presentation simple. One message, three points and a kick-ass call for action.
11. Remember, the greatest enemy of speakers is same-ness. (Thanks Patricia Fripp for the tip!)
12. Don’t memorize your entire speech. Internalize. (Thanks David Brooks for the tip!)
13. Never, ever go overtime.
14. Avoid abstractions. Always relate to a common experience.
15. A fail-safe question to answer in your speech – What’s in it for me (the audience)?
16. No pain, no action. If you want to get your audience into action, you need to first understand where their pains are. Once you have identified that particular pain, poke at it. Recreate the scenario so that they can re-experience the pain, both physically and emotionally. When you have successfully brought your audience to that state, they will be begging you to offer them a remedy or a quick solution to rid them of the pain.
17. The key to grabbing attention is surprise. The key to keeping attention is interest.
18. Smile. Smile when you are walking up to the stage. Smile when you make a mistake. Smile when your audience laugh at your story. Smile when you are delivering your message. Smile when you conclude. Smile when you leave the stage. Smile.
19. Videotaping yourself speak can be very confronting but necessary, especially if you want to improve.
20. Take extra effort to remove all your pause fillers from your speech. Common culprits include “urm”, “ah”, “so”, “you know”, “hmm” etc. They are known to reduce your credibility ten folds.
21. One way of overcoming them is to get used to the silence.
22. Stop asking WHY. (Why am I so sucky in speaking? Why did the audience look so bored?) Try asking HOW. (How can I be less sucky? How can I make the audience interested in what I have to say?) Why gets you defensive and stuck. How gets you moving forward.
23. Remember some of your audience’s names and use them in your speech. They will love you for it!
24. The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten.
25. The next time you prepare a speech, do some imagination. If your speech is a piece of music, what music will it be? If your speech is a colour, what colour will it be? If you speech is a dish, what dish will it be? The secret is to cross and merge different senses so that your speech becomes richer and more real to the audience.
26. Have “flesh” time with your audience before you get up on stage to speak.
27. Plan-Pause-Scan: Plan where you want to stand. Pause and get yourself composed. Scan at the audience. And then begin your memorized introduction.
28. Once in a while, take a risk in your speech.
29. Each time you think of something safe to do for your speech, reverse it!
30. Find things that are “just not done” in the speaking industry and go do it (for the fun of it!)
31. Ask “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. It is usually the result of fear and assumption. So why not?
32. Treat your next speech like a game! Have loads of fun with it!
33. I learned this from Seth Godin: One message per slide. Part of the less is more rule.
34. Be really interested in your audience. It shows.
35. Ask and you shall receive. Never be afraid to ask for feedback. Do it for yourself.
36. Always write your speech because what is written can be edited to be more colorful, concise, powerful and precise.
37. Read ONE public speaking article a day. Try The Public Speaking Blog.
38. You are only as good as your last speech.
39. The two main arsenal of a speaker is his stories and analogies. The better his stories and analogies, the more he get paid. (Thanks Darren La Croix for the tip!)
40. Pay attention to stories and things that happen to us. (funny stuff does happen)
41. Audience laughed when they are successfully tricked. That’s the mechanic behind humor.
42. Be knowledgeable – know your stuff. Present 70% of what you prepared. Keep the rest for emergency purposes for eg. during Q&A or when you need to show off.
43. You get creative ideas at all time. Carry around a digital recorder or notebook everywhere you go. Whenever a creative idea strikes you, record or write it. You only have 37 secs of window time to capture the idea. Don’t wait till you are booked for speech before you think of what to say.
44. 95% growth happens when you are out there with your audience. Yes, it’s another way of telling you to get stage time!
45. Don’t be afraid to say this to your audience – “RIP ME APART!” Repeat after me, “RIP ME APART!”
46. 10 “You” for Every “I” in your speech! Remember, keep your speech audience-centric.
47. ??????????? (realized this when I was competing in Macau in 2006). Here the direct translation: “Ten minutes on stage is equivalent to ten years of training offstage”.
48. It’s ok to fail or bomb on stage. What is more important is the lesson behind it. Learn it well and make sure you don’t forget.
49. Be willing to fall & fall forward.
50. Persistence is key. And I think you have it if you have read from point 1 all the way to point
Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.