Public Speaking

Imagine you’d be hired to provide a product to a client. You would have to understand what needs that client has so that you can tailor your product to meet those needs and to therefore give the client what he wants, to fulfill the buyer’s demand.

In public speaking, you have to understand what the audience is looking for when listening to a public speaker. But even before that, you have to have the answers to these questions: What is the person or organization that will hire you looking for? What goal do they want to accomplish by hiring you?

How to come up with the answer to that question? Easy: Understand what the person or organization that is looking for a professional public speaker is looking for exactly? In an interview with the organization, they are likely to want to gather facts about you. Some of those facts include these qualifications:

Do you have a topic that is right for their audience?
The company hiring you wants you to accomplish some goal. What goal might that be? Motivate their employees with a motivational speech? Educate the employees? Inform them about important news? Whatever their goal is, you should make clear that you can achieve that goal for them.

Do you have references to back you up?

The company wants to be sure that you have references, endorsements of others, some type of qualification to be there doing what you are doing. How to get references and endorsements when you just start out as a public speaker? You’ll get some top-notch strategies to get references here at IntenseInfluence! Would you like to get your appendix removed by a fresh doctor who just came from medical school and never did a real operation on a living human being, or would you prefer to have it removed from an “old hand” who’s gone through the movements a thousand times already? Organizations and companies that hire you want to know that you’re good at what you’re doing. Better than trying to convince them yourself, you should have other people convince them for you! That will be much more believable.

Can you get your message accross effectively?
Here, they want to be sure that you can drive home a winning presentation. Most want to have public speakers that are able to provide audio and visual demonstrations and materials to really bring out their point.

Can you custom-tailor your message?
When you speak to a group of employees, will you be able to customize your message to that company? Nobody wants to listen to generalities only. Everybody wants to feel special. Everybody wants to get something special. Customizing your message can really be an effective way to bring in the information that the company is looking for. Many companies today are hiring professionals to do just that.

Can you mesmerize the audience?
In short, you do have to be somewhat of an entertainer in order to be successful. We life in attention deficit times - you have to cut through a lot of thought clutter to get hold of your audiences attention. Organizations are looking for people that will stimulate thoughts and goals, but that will do it in a way that is fun. Few companies will hire you to bore their audience. Involve your audience in your presentation when you give a speech. There are many more ways to entertain your audience, and you’ll find more about this in “Presentation Skills for Public Speakers”

What fee do you charge and what does it include?
As a public speaker, you got two choices: speak or starve. You got to sell your speeches. You’ll have to overcome objections, and one of the most common objections you’ll run accross as a public speaker is: are you worth the money you charge? You have two options to get higher fees: either you have a big name in your industry already, or you use your brain creatively in order to justify your prices. (And “discounting” your prices is not a good idea - professionals will make judge you on the amount of money you charge. That means if you’re cheap - you’re cheap.) Most organizations want to be sure that you are providing them with all that you can which means appearances before and after to talk to guests as well as an overall willingness to “walk the extra mile”.

Organizations demand quality products and services. They want to be provided with the best of the best. If you can meet this need, your public speaking career is off for a good start.

… learn more about becoming a public speaker in our next post …