The Art Of Speaking: Winning The Mental Game Of Presenting

How many of your speeches could be considered artistic? Do your audiences view you as a master speaker? What would you have to do to boost your speaking to the next level?

Highly experienced speakers not only know their subject, they know themselves, their audiences and their craft. They know how to write, stage and organize winning presentations that engage the audience at all levels.

To kick your speaking up a notch, take any of these 13 tips on as a project and watch your investment in yourself as a speaker grow.

13 Strategies For Making Your Speeches Masterful

1. Go beyond telling your audience about your subject. Be passionate and become engaged with your subject.

2. Demonstrate your credibility and your right to be on the platform by recounting your experiences as an expert and how you solved problems and helped people and organizations.

3. Masterfully customize your material for each audience so they know absolutely that you are there for them.

4. Refine your voice control and turn your throat into a musical instrument your audiences love to listen to at length.

5. Speak from your heart and touch the hearts of your audience. Take risks by being vulnerable, imperfect and your audience will see you as a real human being, as one of them, not just as “the speaker”.

6. Speak the truth and your audience will respond. Avoid any inconsistencies or incongruencies between your “real life” and your “platform life”.

7. Tell more stories and give fewer statistics. Reduce the PowerPoint and get more personal and people will respond eagerly.

8. Connect with your audience, one person at a time. Begin the personal touch before you take the stage by “being with” people in the audience, not “talking at” them.

9. Have fun as you speak and so will your audience. To get in the fun mode, stop focusing on yourself, and instead be audience-centered.

10. Respect your audiences and they will respect you. Never insult or disrespect anyone in your audiences. Show your regard for everyone.

11. Stop writing your speeches and start living them. Find your best material from your travels, your work, your friends, your family and the real world around you.

12. Create multi-media presentations to engage people the way they are used to — with modern media. Coordinate your talk points with particular moments in the media show and you will WOW people.

13. Create and deliver your talk from the A-V-K matrix. This means your talk should be approximately 25% auditory, with 45% visual and 30% kinesthetic. You want to speak to everyone’s learning styles in the audience.

Now you have a better idea how master speakers make it look so easy. The hard work is in the preparation and in the crafting of the message. Enjoy your journey in the speaking world and you will reap the many benefits of this exciting calling.

For a comprehensive overview of your abilities as a speaker you need an assessment instrument that identifies your complete strengths and weaknesses. For a free, easy-to-take 65-item presentation assessment tool you can score right on the spot, visit http://www.mentalgamecoach.com/Assessments/PresentationSkillsAssessment.html. You can use this as a guide in creating your own presentation coaching program, or as the basis for a coaching program you undertake with Bill Cole, MS, MA.

Copyright © 2006 Bill Cole, MS, MA. All rights reserved.

Use of Visual Presentations in Motivational Speaking

One of the key goals of a motivational speaker is to reach out to the emotions of people so that he can tell them what they must do in a particular situation. It is most important that you must appeal to your audience. A powerful tool to help you build trust and gain control is visualization.

The best way to impress people is to give them a platform where they are able to see what they are taught. In modern age, you can use various presentation tools such as display stands, computers and projectors to make a difference to your speaking. People will be able to view the details of the topics being discussed.

In the organization, when a speaker is talking; he can use PowerPoint presentations so that he can explain in a better manner. People will not get bored and a speaker will be able to engage his audience. These days, online videos are also available. If you are discussing some historical event, you can get the related video from the internet and show it to people while you are delivering your message. This is the best way you can deliver your message based on facts. People will get affected by your efforts in this regard.

There are a lot of DVDs and CDs which can be used to show people what you want to say. You can recommend some of them to your audience as a part of your practice. In order to be a successful motivational speaker, you must make efforts and discover new ways to motivate people. With the advancement of technology and accessibility to internet, you will be able to get various methods to enhance your skills and knowledge. With the help of these tips, you will be able to become a successful speaker, mentor and practitioner and make difference in people’s life and goals.

Negotiate With Confidence

The key to negotiating is letting people talk themselves, not talking people into it. Have you ever been on holidays to the tourist spots in Spain? Any shops you walk into you find yourself negotiating with the sales assistant straight away. Sales training facilitators will point out that we have all negotiated at some point in our time whether it is with the children to go bed or with the bar man to give you an extra shot.

Many of us find it difficult to confront a negotiation as we are people pleasers. Yet this does not mean that we can not carry through the negotiation with confidence as we possess the tools and tactics that are used on sales training courses to get us to achieving our goals. Some of the tactics used can include;

1. The wince. “AAAHHH, what in the world?!” this overreaction is carried out when your counterpart gets to their point and states their position. Sales training courses will tell you that if you are not prepared for this you will give in.
2. Silence is golden. Use silence if you do not like what they say or if you are waiting for a response. You need to ride out the uncomfortable silence to accomplish your objectives. The chances are that the counterpart will feel compelled to give in.
3. Trial balloons. These are questions that sales trainers will advise that you use to test the waters.
4. The Red Herring. When someone weasels their way out of the principle point on to a smaller matter. They then get tough on the smaller less important matter. This leads you to feel bound into negotiating down even further.

Sales training courses will tell you that half of your work is actually in trying to define the problem. For this reason throughout a negotiation it is necessary for all participants to discuss their problems and what they are expecting to achieve.

Is being on guard a good tactic to use while negotiating? A sales training course will explain to you that it is not. People that loosen their guard are more approachable and therefore more likely to achieve their goals as they look for the similarities they have with the component.

Through sales training courses you can gain great knowledge and experience from others mistakes and contributions. There are hush-hush tips however that can guide you into not making the same mistakes. These mistakes may include;

o Telling your self it is the end of the world if the deal does not follow through. Put simply it is not.
o Believing your counterpart has all the negotiating power. Keep in mind that we are all equal. If you want the truth and a fair outcome go in to the negotiation with a clean slate and no prejudgements.
o They fail to see that there is more than just one option.
o An approach that it is me against my opponent.
o Accept all positions as final. This is not fact take markets for example, they say final yet if you continue persuasively the majority will lower their price again

Sales skill trainers will always stress to remember that when negotiating you are trying to help each other out rather than working against each other.