This question should always be in the forefront of your mind. Most public speakers write their content, present it, and hope somebody will care. That’s exactly backwards!
Instead, you should analyse your audience in advance, think about their needs, and adapt your speech content to those needs. Empathize with them; think about your audience’s perspective, about how they feel.
This will allow you to make your speech relevant to them.
A good way to boost your level of relevance is to ask rhetorical questions. Have you ever asked yourself why rhetorical questions are so powerful? Rhetorical questions make the audience confirm your point. Once they nod, indicating their agreement, you have them in the palm of your hand.
Who of you here has children? Aren’t they wonderful? Aren’t they precious? Wouldn’t you agree that we should protect our little angels?
Today, I will talk about a budget increase for private security services.
Without the rhetorical questions, the audience might think only about the cost, and switch you off right away. On the other hand, after you’ve asked these rhetorical questions, it is very difficult for your audience just to tune you out. You’ve made it relevant to them personally.
Whether you use rhetorical questions or not, you must always find an answer to this one crucial question when you’re preparing a speech:
Why should they care?
Boost your content even more by making your speech relevant to your audience.
BE A MANDELA, BE A KING, BE A KENNEDY
The unification of a nation, equal rights, or a man on the moon — Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy — they had one thing in common: they all shared their vision with the people.
How can you convince people to follow your lead if you don’t share your vision? From business presentations to wedding speeches — always share your vision. Audiences love it.
Typical vison-triggering phrases are:
Where do I see this department five years from now?
My vision of the future is...
Imagine what we can accomplish as a team...
Once I visited the Hewlett-Packard plant in Barcelona. In a long hallway, a mega-sized poster said: Seeing is believing. With your personal vision, you paint a colorful picture of the future. People can see it, and they can start to believe in it. If you don’t share your vision, you’ll miss out on a great opportunity to communicate. Maybe you’re not a Mandela or a King or a Kennedy, but you have a vision too. Share it with your audience!
Boost your content even more by sharing your vision.
ONCE UPON A TIME
Back in the days when there were no iPads, no cell phones, no computers, no television, back in the days when radio didn’t even exist, back in those days the epitome of communication was the storyteller.
We humans love stories. We love to hear stories; we love to tell stories. Hence, it’s only common sense to tell stories in speeches. But, as Voltaire put it: Common sense is not so common. Most public speakers completely forget about telling stories.
One of my clients is a European market leader in distributing frozen food. In a seminar I asked a bunch of the sales guys about their competitive advantage. Without thinking, and in unison, they replied:
We have the integrated frozen food chain.
Now, I’ve played baloney-bingo myself (I was a business consultant for almost a decade), so I thought, What a great blah-blah phrase! I wanted to know more about it.
During our lunch break my clients explained their integrated frozen food chain to me. I learned about a Swedish farmer named Mr. Mallmö, who grows peas. A driver picks them up, and in less than two hours the fresh product has been flash-frozen. After they’ve been packaged, the peas are delivered to sales centers throughout Europe — one of them in Kamp-Lintfort, close to Düsseldorf. Thomas Müller is a driver there. His client, the 92 year-old Mrs. Theissen, sometimes orders peas. When she does, Thomas drives to her home and walks up to the fourth floor carrying the peas in a special box. Thomas Müller usually chats about life for a while with Mrs. Theissen, before he takes the peas to her freezer, opens the door, and places them on the shelf. From a Swedish field to Mrs. Theissen’s freezer — an integrated frozen food chain.
I looked at them, frowned, and asked, Why don’t you tell that story instead?
Stories connect with people much more than fancy marketing expressions ever could. As you’ve already learned, personal anecdotes and stories make a great opening, so you can connect right from the start.
Once I gave an inspirational speech at the Berlin-based web conference Heureka! 550 people out there in front of me, poor acoustics with a severe echo, and high expectations. It was then that I experienced the power a personal anecdote can have as a speech opener:
Last Tuesday morning I woke up in our home in Bigues i Riells, a small mountain village on the outskirts of Barcelona. I woke up because someone was licking my hand. It was Lucas — our Golden Retriever.
I turned around to give Rose, my sweetheart, a good-morning hug, but then I remembered that she was on a business trip to Madrid.
So I got up, went to the kitchen, and made myself some coffee. I opened the computer, checked my Twitter account, then had my first sip of coffee.
I got dressed and went out. It was a sunny day — as usual. I went to the mailbox to pick up the mail, and that one letter caught my attention in an instant. I rushed back to the kitchen, dropped the other letters, opened the envelope, unfolded the letter, and thought — Heureka!
You should’ve seen them. Without saying anything, but building suspense, I managed to get everyone in the entire room listening to me, right from the start. It was fantastic!
It’s a good idea to begin your stories at a particular moment in the past, like last Tuesday morning or two months ago. That signals that a story is coming, and your audience will be hooked right away.
Your life is full of the greatest stories you could possibly tell. Tell as many stories as possible. And the best thing? These stories are already in your head. You don’t even need to use notes.
Boost your content even more by telling stories.
THE SIX-WORD STORY
Ernest Hemingway, the famous American writer, was a master of packing a great deal of meaning into just a few words. He became famous for his compelling short stories, such as The Killers (1927). Later he wrote such masterpieces as For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Old Man And The Sea, and The Sun Also Rises.
Once a friend challenged Hemingway to come up with a short story of only six words. Never short of self-esteem, Hemingway took on the challenge. The result is impressive:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
With only six words Hemingway manages to drive our imagination into the wildest directions. It’s an art to say less but express more.
Public speakers tend to do exactly the opposite. They talk more and say less. They have difficulty getting to the point, or they never hit their target at all.
Less is more — it’s the golden rule of public speaking.
If you changed your job because you didn’t get along with your boss, there’s no need to explain that conflict-laden relationship in detail — that he never really liked you because you voted for the wrong political