• Stand Still
• There is nothing worse than a speaker who dithers and wanders aimlessly about the stage
• Standing still makes you feel more grounded…

…which gives you more confidence…

…which helps you to earn more money

• Be Strong, and Calm, and Centered. It makes you audience feel more comfortable with you.

• When you are doing a presentation you must stick to time
• At a multi speaker event if you over run, the promoter will not be happy.
• The speakers after you won’t like it either
• You can perfect your presentation timing by practice, practice, practice
• If you haven’t started to close by about 60-70minutes your close rate will start to fall off rapidly.

As a speaker, the first key area that you need to really always be focusing on building is your credibility. 

What is Credibility?
Credibility is the way that your market perceives you and it’s vital to be credible to them.

Why Is It Important To Have Good Credibilty?

Because your audience needs to trust you and promoters need to trust you.  Event planners need to trust you.  If you want to be in demand for speaking engagements then you need to be a sought-after person.

First and foremost, that means you need to be trustworthy.  You need to have a story to tell, have a reputation behind you and be credible.  Now, there are lots of ways of establishing and working on building your credibility.

What Should You Focus On To Build Your Credibilty?

1. Story
   Look at your background – what’s in your background becomes a really good reason why people should listen to you.
   What is it in your background that gives you some credibility?
2. Results
   Another part to your credibility is your results – things that you’ve personally achieved in your life.
   My credibility is based around how I made over $1.25 million in my first 12 months as a professional speaker.  That has credibility!
   We refer to this kind of credibility statement as a “hook”—it’s a hook that instantly captures people’s attention.  It captures their imagination and they get excited!
3. Profitability
   Another very important factor, especially if you’re doing multi-speaker events, where you’re doing affiliates, and you’re sharing profit etc with the host, is you need to also be a profitable speaker.  Promoters want to know that you can actually make sales.  That’s yet another thing that will add to your credibility.

Make sure that you constantly track and record your results!

4. Integrity and Authenticity
   Always focus on maintaining good relationships with promoters, event planners, and people that you’ve worked with in the past.  That’s a really vital part of it….  So that people can trust you.  Credibility is all about establishing and maintaining trust.
5. Testimonials
   Another really quick and easy way to get credibility is through the use of testimonials. 
6. Media Endorsement
   Another way of building credibility is 3rd party endorsement from the media.  So if you’ve been in the newspapers, magazines, and so forth, you can use that resource as part of your armour of credibility.
7. Success of Students
   If you’re an educator and you’re teaching people, then it’s really good to use the  success of your students, because that’s probably the best thing that you can use to reflect your own credibility.

Always look at building up credibility in order to become attractive to promoters and other presenters.

So, I’ve given you lots of useful tips here.  What one thing can you do this week to start building your credibility?  Could it be trying to get some media endorsement?  What about getting those testimonials together?  Or even working on your bio to strengthen your hook?  The sooner you start building your credibility, the more promoters and audiences will want to work with you!

In Part one of this 2 part series I looked at why to use success stories in your presentation and in this, the second part I’m expanding on how to use success stories in your presentation.  Remember, there’s nothing more influential than hearing how someone else has become successful to inspire people to action.

The “HOOK” to grab your audience from the get-go!

The best way to start a great success story is with an audience-grabbing opening question. It’s a fantastic way to engage your audience.  An obvious opening question would be,  “Does anyone here know Joe Bloggs?” 

Painting the Picture

The next step is the details of the story. When I met the person, here’s what their life was like before they joined my program.  Let the audience know the biggest challenge for that person that they needed to overcome.

Prove Success

Here is where you will explain how the tools were applied to create proven success. We are going to want to know those skills and lessons.  And then you show the results:

• Increased his closing ratio from his presentations three times
• Has more clients that he knows what to do with
• Is enjoying the financial rewards of that with his partner..

Good OR Good?!

Before Picture: My biggest challenge was!

After Picture: Ultimate benefit!

It’s key that you get into the details of the story by following these steps:

• Does anyone know …?
• Acknowledge that – “I wish you did…” or “Brilliant, you’ll love…”
• When I first met them – their biggest challenge was…
• What happened was…
• What that meant was…

Multi-Sensory Language

To take your success stories to another level, you can use multi-sensory language. This is what I call VAK:

• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinesthetic 

Provide a visual picture of what he/she looks like.  Include something he/she told you ‘She was telling me the other day..” which is the auditory part of the story. And kinesthetically, a real sense of power (you would act this one out a bit). So we get to know him/her even more.

You’ll love this TIP!

If you don’t have any success stories, go to your clients.

• Ask them what successes have they had.
• Find out what people have been up to or get on the phone to your clients.
• You can run “The World’s Greatest Testimonial Competition!”

Summary

By now, you know why and how to use success stories in your presentations!  So, if you still haven’t got any success stories, why don’t you make it your focus this week to gather as many as possible so that next time you give a presentation you can inspire  your audience to take the next step with you.

I have a real gem of a tip for you today. It’s about reconnecting with your passion. I get so many people asking me how they can find their passion I thought I’d give you this little nugget.

• Passion is that driving force – that oomph that enables you to just keep doing what it is that you do
• It enables you to connect with your audience because if you speak from your passion your audience will feel an emotional connection with you
• If you don’t have passion – you won’t inspire passion in your audience

Reconnecting with your passion

• Every week – for the next 12 weeks
• Take 2 hours per week and do something you loved as a child
• Just you – no family, no friends, no spouse, no children
• Just you and your inner child
• Connecting with your passion is not something you will figure out in your head – it is something you will feel with your heart

There’s nothing more powerful than using a success story in your presentation to prove what you say is true.  And there’s nothing more influential than hearing how someone else has become successful to inspire people to action.

Why You Need To Use A Success Story In Your Presentation

This is a bit of a no-brainer but I thought I would spell it out anyway.  Why do you need to use success stories in your presentation?  The key benefits of using success stories are:

• They hammer home your credibility.
• They convince your audience that you do what you say you do – that you can deliver; the bigger the results the better.
• They prove you have market trust in you – this makes your audience more receptive to putting their trust in you.
• It uses social proof perfectly – other people have risked their time and money investing in you.  It worked for them so it could work for you.
• By using someone else’s words to promote you, and not just you saying how good you are, it’s a compelling call to action.

What Makes A Good Success Story?

A good success story in a presentation should be brief and to the point. It should be a balance of enough detail and enough emotional impact and yet still be nice and clear.

The lesson in the telling of success stories of other people is take them back to the place where they were emotionally.  Paint out that journey from struggle to success. Share these stories with your audience as faithfully as you know them.  This is a really key point – be honest in your success stories because if you aren’t, this lack of honesty will come back and bite you.

The 5 Keys of How To Make A Good Success Story In A Presentation

• The “hook” to grab your audiences’ attention
• Painting the Picture
• Prove Success
• Using Multi Sensory Language
• A Success Story for when you don’t have a Success Story

A success story in a presentation is not about proving how good you are at what you do, although it certainly does that. It’s about opening up the emotional place and allowing people access to it. And then of course, you give them the tool that allowed you to make the shift. It’s this change that makes all the difference in the world.

In my next article, we’ll break this down and examine the 5 key components in more detail.  So in the meantime, if you don’t have any success stories why don’t you ask your clients and ask them what they’ve been up to.  Get on the phone to them and see what successes they’ve had.  You could even run the world’s greatest testimonial competition!

Good luck!

How To Make An Impact

Public speaking is very much about improving our communication skills, for when we know how to communicate effectively (to one person or to an entire room full of people) we also know how to inform, inspire and persuade others.

Each and every time you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are.  People form opinions about us, based not only on our appearance but also on our communication skills. And while many people go to great lengths to look good, dress professionally and so on, very few people take any sort of action to improve their communication skills. And believe me, there is nothing more effective than standing on stage for improving your communication skills!

Many of the world’s most successful people are also highly developed communicators. They have taken the time and energy to develop and hone their communication skills. As a result, they know how to inform, persuade and inspire others.

Public speaking is a sure-fire way to improve your communication skills.

Do You Want To Be In High Demand?

Strong communicators are in high demand.  Next time you pick up the newspaper have a look at the careers section – regardless of whether you speak on stage or not. Virtually every job listing requests that applicants have good or excellent ‘communication skills’. Your success lies in your ability to communicate your message – regardless of which platform you speak from. If your message is unclear and you appear unconfident, this dramatically impacts on your end result.

But just like any other skill, public speaking is a skill which must be learned!

So, why don’t you make a point to practice your presentation and hone those communication skills even further?  You can never stop learning how to communicate more and more effectively – and this will serve you in almost every walk of life, be it professionally or personally.

Here’s a question : why would you want to speak in public at all?  What’s in it for you?  Public speaking is (apparently) the number one fear that most people have.   This is such a shame as there are so many benefits to becoming a speaker – for your business, your bottom-line AND for your own personal confidence. 

The Top Five Benefits Of Public Speaking

1. Increased Self Confidence

Once you have mastered speaking in front on an audience, whether it be in front of a crowd of ten or a crowd of thousands, your confidence levels will go through the roof.  Do this, and you can do anything.

2. Reach More People

If you have a vision which is close to your heart, a vision which could shape the world, and you want to share this,   does it make more sense to talk to one person at a time, or a roomful of people?  Which method will spread your vision faster?  Remember, a vision flies when you stand on stage.  You give it wings.

3. Make More Sales

Regardless of what you are selling -  your ebook, your 3-day seminar, your coaching or your membership site, you will multiply your sales and in far LESS time when you speak to a hundred people as opposed to  selling one on one. This is a MASSIVE benefit of public speaking – the opportunity to make more sales in one sitting.

4. Build Credibility

When you are on stage you become an authority in your field.  People look up to you.  Their opinion on you changes simply because you are standing on stage.  This credibility will open up more opportunities and earn you more recognition which in turn builds credibility and gets you more opportunities.  It’s a winning cycle.

5. Make Big Money

I saved the best benefit for public speaking for last.  Public speaking is one of the easiest and best ways to make money.  Big money.   I’m not suggesting this will happen the first time round (although it can and it does all the time) but if you have researched your market, determined your niche, sent out a compelling message to this market and added tonnes of value to your product, then why not?

So, now you’ve seen the benefits of public speaking, why not go out there and stretch your comfort zone?  If you’ve never spoken at an event (but always secretly wanted to), is now the time to book your first one? If you’ve only ever spoken to smaller audiences, could now be the time to step up to the next level?  If you’ve spoken to large audiences, what could you do differently that will stretch you?
There’s always another step out there.  Perhaps now is the time to take it.

This is the second part in a series of 3 Behind the Scenes tips on influence. In this tip I talk about the second step to influence – inspiring your audience. This content is taken directly from my Presentation Profits Intensive seminar.

• To inspire – breathe life into the dreams of your audience
• You’re not asking them to believe in you, you’re asking them to believe in themselves
• Get them to take action that will make their lives better
• Paint out a bright picture of their future
• Get them to see their grand vision

Creating emotion has a few key elements that cannot be missed. These are:

1. Awareness
2. Intention
3. Vocal strength and flexibility

1. Awareness

The first key is to recognize the power that the voice has in impacting and creating change in another human and as such, how this can generate more sales.

It has been said that the words that we choose are only 7% of the message that we communicate.  38% of our message is due to our tonality, and 55% of it is due to our physiology, our physical action.

So over a third of your outcome depends on your voice.

Create awareness of your own voice and use it dramatically.

Listen to how you use your voice, listen to the vocal range that you have.

Start to listen to other people’s voices, how they use them, and then start to bring awareness to the extremes that you use in your own voice. Do you have extremes or is it all flat lining? 

You will make more money from stage AND make it easier to listen to you if you can work on your voice variation.

2. Set the intention

These are the intentions you will want to set if you want to make more money from stage:

• That you will start to expand your vocal range
• You will create moods with your voice
• You will carry your confidence in your voice
• And that your voice will take people on an emotional journey.

3. Vocal Strength and Flexibility

If you start to learn how to use your voice in a powerful manner, then you’ll find that it will be more powerful for longer, and you will be able to preserve and conserve your voice.   You want to use your voice in such a way that it touches the hearts and minds of the people in your audience and thus create more sales from speaking.

Don’t Be Just Comfortable, Be Memorable
If you’re committed to becoming, not just a profitable speaker, but also a memorable speaker, then the next step is to get masterful with your voice.

Be the sort of person that when people leave the room they continue to talk about you, not just because of your content, but because of your style, your charisma and your ability to take them on an emotional journey.   And be the sort of speaker that makes massive money from stage!

So, What’s Next?
Well, my suggestion would be to go and see a high drama movie!

Listen to the way these highly trained actors use their voice to create mood.
Notice the high, the loud, the soft, notice the pace changes, notice the volume changes.
So this week I want you to spend the whole time listening to people with a new intention and then see how you can utilize this in your next speaking gig.

And remember, have fun!