As a motivational health-care speaker, I’m a big fan of motivational quotes. Here’s one (that is sometimes attributed to Warren Buffett): “Practice makes permanent, not perfect.”
Fact is only proper practice makes perfect. Here are a few quick and easy strategies that will save you a ton of your valuable time when you practice a speech (or any other kind of corporate presentation).
A Motivational Speaker’s Five Top Tips
Tip 1: Begin rehearsing early. If you leave it too late to start, you’re in the worst situation of all. You’ll have lost the spontaneity of the extemporaneous speaker without developing the fluid delivery of the polished presenter. And, as you reach back into your memory to recall your content, you’ll falter over your lines.
Tip 2: (I learned this next tip from a motivational speaker in Texas.) Time how long it takes to read your first page of material. (I use a free online stopwatch for this task.) To be clear, I’m not suggesting you present it as if you’re actually in front of an audience, simply read it and time yourself.
This easy exercise will give you a clear sense of how many pages of material you’ll need to fill the time you’ve been allotted. For example, if you find it takes you four minutes and you’re speaking for 40 minutes then, clearly, you’re only going to have time to get through about ten pages of content.
Bear this in mind and you won’t fall into the trap of practicing 25 pages of material only to find (often on the day) that you can only get through the first few pages of the content you’ve prepared. This is both a huge waste of effort and makes you look like an amateur.
What’s more, in their frustration, some corporate speakers who’ve made this mistake try to squeeze all their content into the time allotted by speaking really fast. This obviously compounds the problem.
Tip 3: Don’t memorize your content word-for-word like a script. That’s because converting your content into a script and making it sound conversational takes a lot of time. (Even for a paid, professional speaker who already knows what her or she is doing.)
Neither should you simply read your content directly off the page because this approach prevents you from making eye contact with the audience (and, that too is critical).
Here’s the solution? Experience has taught me that a corporate speaker is most likely to get lost as he/she transitions between different chunks of material. Therefore, I would advise you to memorize the sequence of your content blocks, but not the actual content within each one.
Then, for each subtopic, memorize a few key words to keep you on track.
Tip 4: Videotape yourself. Most people preparing a speech won’t follow this step, which is a huge mistake. Sure, it takes a tiny bit of planning. However, on the other hand, it greatly reduces your overall prep time and improves the final product – your program. In particular, listen for verbal tics and watch out for distracting, repetitive gestures like toying with a marker pen.
Tip 5: Remember to do a technical rehearsal. (According to the experts in motivational speaking, this tip always distinguishes the professionals.) Don’t just assume you’ll be able to seamlessly work the audio-visual aspects of your presentation. Something that’s easy, like changing a PowerPoint slide using a remote, can seem like brain surgery when being watched by an audience.
Finally, if you practice your material adequately, on the day you’ll be free to focus on the most important thing, selling your message to the audience. People will simply assume you’re a professional speaker. Good luck.
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