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.

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

• Once you have involved your audience and met them where they are at and you have…
• …inspired them by painting out a vision for them of their dreams. Your next step is to…
• Invite them to take action
• Come from a more permissive (not submissive) place
• Your product is the vehicle to take them from where they are to where they want to be
• You can always come back to these three steps:
  1. Involve
  2. Inspire
  3. Invite

In this video I discuss how we can use speaking as a great strategy for leveraging time.  Why say the same thing over and over to 100s of clients?  Why not get 100s of clients in a room and say it once?

For more great  public speaking tips and how to put together an effective presentation that ensures your audience take action, come to our 1-day training event.  7th and 8th of May in London.  Details here:

www.ShiftPresentationSecrets.com

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!

Step One : Involve

• Be Authentic.
• Be who you are; be you
• Meet your audience where they’re at and engage them
• Love your audience so much that they feel they can do anything
• When you love your audience, it’s irresistable

You have to be careful what you wish for!

Last week, after an incredibly successful round of Shift presentation Secrets evets (or 1-day Intro events) around Australia- the 3-day intensive training (Presentation PROFITS) Sold Out! That’s right, with 130 people in the room we absolutely could not fit another soul in! Which was great news for me but no so great for the dozens of people waiting on the waiting list to be called in case someone decided to roll over to next year!

Christine really wants to attend Joanna Martin's Shift Presentation Profits!

But the collective prayers of these Aussies seem to have been heard! Much to the upset of my staff. Let me explain…

The venue we had booked for our event, called us up and said “we’ve put you in another room- its about the same size, you won’t mind will you?” Mind?! I think they thought our event was a quiet sit down affair where everyone would squeeze in and not move for the whole day.

They obviously didn’t recognise that a Shift Training is interactive, full of exercises and lots of loud music!

We flew Tam to Melbourne to pore over floor plans and measure chairs, but no matter how we shook it, their change had meant we wouldn’t even fit the 130 people in any more. Grrrrrrrr!

So thankfully the great people at CQ venues in Queen St have come to our rescue- with a lovely big room. Which was lucky realy considering EVERY OTHER VENUE in Melbourne was booked out that weekend! Ahhhh- the joys of running events.

The problem is now 130 people (ourselves included) have to re-organize our selves into a new venue (did I mention Grrr?).

But the good news is for those people who simply couldn’t wait another year- like Christine- they don’t have to. You see the room at QC is bigger – so we could COMFORTABLY fit in another few profit-minded souls.

At today’s count there’s another 11 places still available. So if you’re keen to get to this year’s event check it out here:

Shift Presentation Profits with Dr Joanna Martin

The moral of this story- never underestimate the prayers and affirmations of a few ike-minded individuals to wreak havoc on otherwise perfectly laid plans!

Love Jo!

PS This post also appears on my personal blog

Back at the beginning of January I wrote about a whole load of techniques to break the ice with your audience – but I haven’t actually shown you it in action yet. So I thought I’d show you a little sneak preview of breaking the ice IN ACTION at my Presentation Profits Intensive seminar. Remember – there is one coming up in Melbourne 19th-21st March. Click here to find out more:
Presentation Profits Intensive

• The first few moments when you are up on stage are critical to
  how well your audience receives you.
• There can be a lot of pressure on you to make them feel comfortable quickly otherwise they’ll switch off
• You need to Break the Ice and make them connect with each other.
• There are many ways to do this, and a great way is to get people to get up out of their seats and go and greet five people they have never met like long lost friends.
• It’s a lot of fun and it takes the pressure off you, so you can compose yourself ready to be the awesome speaker that you are!

Making the time to develop your voice increases your ability to emotionally move roomfuls of people and in turn increases your conversion rate.  Public speaking is an area with the potential to make a lot of money so it makes sense to invest time on your voice.  Remember….

Your voice becomes your money-making machinery.

Developing your voice also:
Builds your confidence on and off stage
Having a strong and powerful voice builds and carries your confidence to every member in your audience.

There are two sides to this coin:

1. It’s your voice that will give you away if you’re not confident.
2. A confident voice will cause you to feel more confident in your presentation and in yourself generally.

So with a good strong confident voice you’re going to really make that lasting impression we are after.  It is a positive feedback loop.

It enables you to perform and create whilst on stage

A powerful and flexible voice gives you the ability to create the most incredible moods. These are the moments where it is just you and the audience, hanging on your every word, feeling your every nuance.
Your voice enables you to create a full palette of moods:

• Conspiracy: “shhh- don’t tell anyone but…”
• Expectation:  “when all of a sudden, you would not believe it…”
• Pain: “It was the most heart-wrenching decision I had ever had to make…”
• Elation or hysteria:  “I was stunned, rapt, we were wildly celebrating…”
• Seduction: “As I looked at the options, I could tell there was really no choice but to…”

You name it…with your voice, you can create it.

When you become a master of creating mood in your audience, what happens is you become a master of the emotional journey of your audience.

A salesperson who is in control of the emotional journey of the person in front of them can control the action they take on that journey…and there you have it – “sales” in a nutshell.  This is why sales from public speaking is so powerful.  You’re not just converting one person, you’re converting hundreds!

When you can control the emotional journey of your audience you can control the action they take on that journey.

So, next time you stand on stage with the aim of making sales, why don’t you spend some time focusing on creating mood in your audience and then see what happens when you take them on an emotional journey.  You never know what magic might happen to your conversion rate!