154: Create Raving Fans When Presenting

<p>We can speak to a group. Then there is another level, where we try to totally captivate our audience.  What makes the difference?  The content could even be the same, but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner.  Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life.  We see this with music.  The same lyrics, but with a different arrangement and something magical happens. This new version becomes a smash hit.  Speeches are similar.  A boring rendition is given a delivery make over and suddenly has the audience sitting on the edge of their seats fully enthralled.  I am sure we would all vote for the enthralling version, so how to do we do that?</p> <p> </p> <p>The quality of the argument we are going to present is important.  We definitely need to design two powerful closes, one for the end of the speech and an extra one for after the Q&A.  It sounds counterintuitive, but we should start from the close when designing the talk.  We work hard to clearly define what is the most compelling message we want to leave with our audience.  Only then do we start to work backwards, structuring the rest of the speech from that point. </p> <p> </p> <p>Once we know what will really resonate with the audience, we begin gathering evidence to back that assertion up.  We have to remember that broad statements are too easy to make.  This is the Era of Cynicism, “fake news”, so the listener will need a lot of convincing.</p> <p> </p> <p>We now do a rough sketch of the key points and attach the supporting evidence.  In a thirty minute speech, there won’t be so much time, so we might get through three or four of these key points and that is it.  We must make sure that the evidence is super, super strong.  We need really compelling proof, in order to build solid credibility for our argument.</p> <p> </p> <p>The next stage is vital, especially in this Age of Distraction.  We have to wrangle a dynamite blockbuster opening.  We have to compete with all the things running through the mind