Category: Communication Skills

A creative ad by Mini Cooper placed at the Zurich , Switzerland train station, shows people climbing into or out of the car, when they are actually entering or exiting stairs. That’s persuasion at its best! More examples below.
I just listened to an mp3 interview with Paul Endress, persuasion extraordinaire and found some of his persuasion techniques insightful. He is also the man behind the persuasion article written for The Toastmaster (May 2008 edition). If you want to listen to the full version of the tutorial, click here. If you are in a hurry, you can first check out my notes below.
While research shows that most people believe they can’t be sold, the fact is those same people can indeed be persuaded if they don’t recognize that a sales tecnique is being used.
The trick lies in the different persuasive strategies used then and now. Lets use a car salesman this time since they top the list as the people you absolutely cannot trust in a poll.
Then: They go on downloading information in you, telling you EVERYTHING you need to know AND don’t need to know.
Basically, its like taking a shotgun with pellets in it, hoping that one of them will hit the target. This doesn’t work anymore!
Now: Being subtle.
The following are strategies for you to adopt as you attempt to persuade your audience, be it one or many.
1. Aiming at the Target
Have you been in a situation where a salesman or saleswoman was trying to sell you something by giving you the 4-1-1 of what he or she is selling while you absolutely couldn’t wait to get away from the guy? That he or she was boring you nuts with all the information?
You felt like running away as soon as he turns his head because he never found out what was IMPORTANT to YOU.
Ask a simple question : “What’s most important to you when you buy a car? ”
“What’s most important to you when you enroll your kids to a programme? ”
“What most important to you when you look for a life partn…( ok you get it by now don’t you? ) ”
This simple question is what gets you the most answers. So for example, if I’m going to go buy a car, what’s important to me is the price.
So if you’re going to sell me a car, you should immediately address my pricing concerns and not go rambling on how energy-efficient and how many awards the car has won. This saves your breath and of course, time spent.
2. Never start your questions with ” WHY? “
Not only is it annoying but you get only excuses.
Lets use an example: If your kid comes back from school with his report card dominated with D’s and E’s and (God Forbid, F’s ), You’ll probably be in a rage and ask ..”WHY did you get D’s and E’s ?? ”
And the answer (or rather, excuse) that you’re going to get is:
“My teacher ate my test paper.”
“My teacher doesn’t really like me.”
“The kids bully me if I get A’s.”
So how can you ask the same question but get solutions instead?
Start your questions with “What” or “How”
These 2 words empowers action in people. You’re still asking the same question, but you shift its mode and then you start to get changes!
3. Use STORIES to convey your message.
Its important to highlight before I continue with how we can use stories that people tend to be too obvious when they use their stories. As a result, they shift back into a sales mode.
Most people cannot come up with a story on the fly. Even Paul suggested practice and fine-tuning our stories to ensure an impactful message and one that really sinks into the human psyche. Remember? Stories, like humour is a process. Your stories are not going to come out fantastic the first time you tell them. Hence, you must be willing to let your stories develop over time.
I suspect, if I let my enthusiasm and excitement get the better of me, you’ll never reach the end of this entry…awake.
That’s why I’m leaving you wanting for more (which happens to be another strategy in persuasion that I shall cover in my next entry)
Promise that my next entry will be shorter..by a bit at least *grins*
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.

Inspired by Andrew Dlugan’s recent post “Stop Rehearsing! 3 Critical Things to Do Before Your Speech“, I will like to add to his list 7 more things you can do before your speech to take the nervousness out of you.
First, let’s do a quick recap of his three excellent pointers.
1. Study the venue logistics
2. Meet your audience (extra tip: build before rapport)
3. Watch, listen and participate in the event agenda
The rationale for #1 and #2 is straightforward – to reduce uncertainty, which is usually the main cause of a speaker’s nervousness. #3 is an extremely powerful strategy that is used by all professional speakers. And I strongly recommend you to do the same if you want to create impact in your presentation. Check out how Darren La Croix, 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking does it!
OK here’s my other 7.
4. Practice aloud your 30 seconds introduction
The first 30 seconds of any presentation is the most crucial because the audience is the most skeptical, and you the speaker is the most nervous. By making sure you have memorized your introduction, you will be less likely to fumble at the start. It helps to practice aloud too so that you know how you sound like. I will usually incorporate hand gestures too. By getting your entire body involved, your mind will be conditioned to think that you are doing the actual speech. And when you are on stage, you will feel like you have done in umpteen times. This has great effect in boosting your confidence.
5. Listening to music of your choice
Music is therapeutic and has a soothing effect on even the most nervous speaker. Here’s something you can try: create a personal playlist of music that works for you. It could be music that calms your nerves or music that perks you up. For some people, it is jazz. For some, it is loud heavy metal. Well to each its own. For me, instrumental music (especially piano recitals) works best (a.k.a Kevin Kern or SENS). What I usually do is to start listening to the music as I travel down to the speaking venue. And once I am there, I will usually start setting up and if possible, I will even play the playlist using their sound system. If they don’t allow them, you still have your ipod.
6. Do something that gets you in the mood
OK I know.. this sounds vague. Let me give you an example. I always get nervous before a contest. And sometimes it can get really bad. But what calms me down is watching some of my idols do their thing on stage. That includes comedians like Dane Cook and Russell Peters. Their cool demeanor never fails to make me feel relaxed. And I like how they make their audience laugh at cue. And after watching 3 – 5 mins of their gig, I will feel all motivated to also do the same. I suspect the laughing also helps a lot. So yes, watch something light-hearted.
There was once when I delivered a speech on human connection and in order to help me get into the mood, I watched a youtube video titled free hugs, which was what inspired me to deliver the speech in the first place.
So as you can tell, the form doesn’t matter, as long as you do something to get you into the mood.
7. Clear out the trash
This is a phrase I borrowed from this underground cult movie “The Peaceful Warrior”. Trash in this case is the clutter and voices in your head. Usually the black dogs. Here are some familiar ones:

You will never be good enough.
You don’t deserve to win.
They are going to walk out on me… just like the last time.
Aww.. you are trying to do your thing again. Don’t you remember how you failed the last time?
Why did I even agree to do this presentation… I am going to screw it up.
You are going to get too nervous and muck it all up!
I don’t have anything worthwhile to say, I am wasting their valuable time.
I am going to forget something important and look like a fool.

Most speakers empower these conversations by listening to them and believing in them. That’s why they look distracted and nervous on stage. The trick is to throw out these trash BEFORE your speech. Let me share with you one very effective way of doing so.
WRITE DOWN EVERY VOICE / CONVERSATION YOU HAVE IN YOUR HEAD.
Yes, it is that simple. All you need to do is just offload. Empty out all the voices in your head so that you can focus on delivering the presentation. What I like to do is to hand write it on a piece of A4 paper. Once I am done, I will crush the paper and dump it into the trashcan. The whole act itself is extremely liberating and really helps to keep you focused.
8. Do voice exercises
When you are nervous, your muscles tense up, including your throat. And if you don’t warm up, you will sound like a strangled frog on stage. Not a beautiful sight.
Voice exercises do not have to be complicated. Singing the scale works. Doing funny faces in private works too. Let me share with you a tried and tested procedure from a book titled “Preparing for Peak Performance”.
i. Massage your face. Loosen the jaw.
ii. Align your body, head, shoulders and spine; get grounded and breathe deeply
iii. Use sounds like “zzzzzzz”, “sssssss”, “haw” and “hoo”. Breathe deeply without lifting your shoulders
iv. Try some tongue twisters
v. Speak some key sentences from your presentation
If you have a microphone, I suggest you do a mike test too. So you know how you sound with a microphone. And of course to get used to holding and speaking from a mic.
9. Anchor yourself in a positive experience
Recall a positive experience where you did an excellent job on stage. Note your environment – what do you see, smell and hear? Be as specific as you can. The important thing is to re-experience the emotions – the excitement, relief, joy, happiness, pride etc. You can even pick a non-speaking experience like clinching a $100K business deal or a successful day out with your family. Any experience/memory that helps you re-experience the positive emotions.
As you are waiting to be called, close your eyes and relive your experience. Soak up all the emotions and then slowly open your eyes. Tell yourself that YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN. And then go do your thing!
10. Breathe deeply
If you recalled my first encounter with public speaking, you will remember how my best friend advised me to take 50 deep breaths to calm my nerves. And by the time I hit 20, I was hyperventilating. (grins)
Breathing deeply does help though… coz it helps your muscles relax. However you don’t have to do it 50 times. Sometimes doing it once is sufficient. The whole point is to help your body relax.
(Bonus) Ask yourself this question…
“Why am I delivering this speech in the first place?”
Remind yourself the value of your speech – how will your audience benefit from listening to you. Why is it so important for them to hear your message. In short, focus on your audience. That will also take the heat off you and allow you to put up a good show, because it is for a “higher purpose”.
Now go break a leg!

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.

How do you attract positive attention and draw a sizeable crowd to you?
This is a question I ask myself when I did my first book talk in KL. Unfortunately, I could not find any credible or relevant information that answers this burning question of mine. In times like this, I improvise.
The good news is some work and I will like to share them with you.
Here are the workable ones that have been refined after three book talks.
1. A crowd attracts a bigger crowd… hire groupies if you need to
People are naturally curious. So if they see a crowd (about 5-10) standing, with their full attention on you, they will check it out.
Most of these people will stay for about 30 seconds to assess if your talk is relevant or interesting enough for them to drop their agenda. If you want to play safe, I encourage you to “hire” a crowd. Gather some of your friends and fans. Make sure they report on time. Get them to rally together. Each time someone passes by or stops, have them give a warm smile to the person and invite him/her to join in. This has proven to work wonderfully well!
2. Location, location, location!
Pick a place where you have a lot of open space. This way, you are highly visible.
When we were in KL, the first day turned out was much better than the second day even though the second bookstore was a bigger one. Here’s why. In the picture above, you notice we were right smack in the middle of the bookstore. Judging from the density of the crowd, most of them walks in from the right (of me). I even have a friend who will stop these people and invite them to sit in.
However on the second day, we have this really HUGE waterfall blocking us (to the left of the picture).
Hence we only have a crowd on the far right and we miss about 50% of the people in the bookstore. Plus, the talk was held in the quadrangle which creates an invisible barrier. People who are not in the quadrangle will think it is a scheduled talk and avoid it. This is why the crowd size did not increase significantly compared to the first day.
3. Let ‘em do the talking
Make sure you have a lot of activities that get your audience talking and mingling. Firstly, this creates buzz which attracts people. Secondly, it allows the audience to interact with one another which makes the whole environment friendlier. So what you get is a friendly buzz that naturally draws people in.
Getting my listeners up to talk works like magic. It’s usually normal to see someone in suit talking since people will assume he has been hired. However to see a shopper speak, now that is something you don’t see everyday. So in your talk, find as many opportunities as you can to have pockets of your listeners up on stage or make sure you have a lot of activities where they get to interact with one another.
4. Use the “S” word
The word SECRET and SUCCESS seems to have an effect on the audience. Each time I say something along the line of “Let me tell you a secret…” or “Here are three tips on how to be successful…”, you will hear a pin drop. Everyone will keep really quiet. Even the kids. Passer bys will deliberately slow down so that they can eavesdrop into the million dollar secret that you were about to share.
The lesson is simple – make it exclusive.
5. If need be, pay them to laugh at all your jokes and clap at opportune times
Laughter and applause are your two best weapons in drawing crowds. In a short 60 minutes, I have about 8 stories planted in my talk. And each of them are intentionally funny. Some even require audience participation. For example the analogy about swimming and public speaking.
So if you are going to give a talk to an open crowd, make sure your speech has about 80% stories, 20% tips. Stories are naturally engaging so it becomes your magnet in pulling a crowd. After you finish your story, land them with a power point or a valuable message, that will keep them staying. Repeat the formula and you will have 10 soccer teams eating out of your hands in no time.
Here are other miscellaneous pointers on drawing an attentive crowd.
Don’t just address the crowd. Make sure you talk to passer-bys too. Catch their eye and speak to them as if they are meant to be listening to you. I guarantee you that they will stop and listen, at least until they find you boring or irrelevant to their needs.
Have a whiteboard with big words on it. Mind maps work well too. When passer by walks past, they will be curious enough to check out what you have written and since it is hard to walk and read at the same time, they will linger for a while.
Final note: Even if you have just one listener, hide your disappointment. It’s ok. Really. On the bright side, you won’t be suffering from aerobic effects of public speaking… and if you keep at it, you will start to draw a crowd. Why? Coz’ people are curious. They will be wondering why are you speaking to only one person. Why is that one person so focused on you? Is there something that they are missing out on? And before you know it, you have ten, twenty people clamoring for your attention.
Final final note… I am going to assume here that you have SOLID content that (1) resolves your audience’s top three frustrations or challenges and (2) bring them one step closer to their wants and desires.
Good luck with your next public appearance!

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.

“I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.”
If you want your presentation to be memorable even after 90 days, I strongly encourage you to INVOLVE YOUR AUDIENCE…. through DOING. Couple of ideas for you to try out.
1. After teaching a concept, get your audience to split into groups. In their groups, discuss a scenario where they can APPLY the concept. Once that is done, have them send a representative to share what was discussed.
2. Before you wrap up a presentation, get your audience to WRITE down five things that they are doing to different based on what you have shared with them. Even better, get them to do one on the spot.
3. Create handouts for your audience and as you deliver your speech, have them FILL UP the blanks with key points or phrases that you want them to remember.
4. If you are going to show them a video, have them JOT DOWN three things they discover which relates to your speech topic.
5. At the end of your speech, get your audience to buddy up and CRYSTALLIZE five things that they have learnt in your speech that will make a difference to their work or life.
And the list goes on.
Bottomline – get your audience into action.
Now here’s one thing I want you to do:
Think back to your last speech/presentation, what could be ONE action that you can get your audience to participate which will help reinforce your points or message?
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.