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How to make a one-minute speech
The key elements are:
• establish context or commonality
• hook
• theme
• need or problem
• benefit/disadvantage
• offer solution/make a proposition
• outcomeStart by sending out a carrier wave, some way of establishing common ground, e.g. ” We are all communicators here…” or “It’s the question we speakers are always asking ourselves…”
Quickly moved to your hook. In fact, you could use the hook to establish common ground, combing the first two stages, e.g. “This year Americans will pay over 38 billion dollars to hear someone speak. I’ll translate that into English. They’ll pay 24 billion pounds to hear someone speak…”
Then then state your theme, e.g. “I’d like to tell you what you need to become a professional speaker”.
State the main benefit, e.g. “With the right guidance you could qualify for the high fees that top professional speakers are paid.”
Mention a possible obstacle, e.g. “It’s not as easy as you might think, and if you get it wrong it could take a long time to claw your way back.”
Then make a proposition, e.g. “You need to set aside at least one half-day, and preferably two, to learn the secrets of becoming a professional speaker.”
Finally, focus on an outcome, e.g. “If you are serious about a career as a speaker, register now for my seminar, Be Paid to Speak.”
Admin@pkpcommunicators.com
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Ever been asked to get to the point?
What’s the point you’re making?
Get to the point.
Click!All within 3 seconds. That’s all the time you have to grab or lose your listener’s attention. Let me help you understand why it happens and what you can do about it.
First, let’s consider why.
Every day, each of us is assailed by thousands of messages – in print, in sound, in pictures, and even in person. It’s a deluge that overwhelms the senses, closing off those private moments of reflection that once we knew, forcing us to react to the demands of the moment.
Result: we have been trained to switch off.
As fast as we respond to those demands of the moment, we tend to lose interest and turn our minds to some other pressing matter. Attention Deficit has reached epidemic proportions.
It is therefore vital to be able to make your point in just a minute, because two of the dominant characteristics of advanced nations in the 21st century are a short attention span and instant gratification.
In the early ’90s, Steven Silbiger wrote a best-selling business book called “The 10-Day MBA”. He wrote that his aim was “to cut to the heart of the top MBA programs’ subject matter clearly and concisely – the way only an MBA can, and the way academics would not dare.”
An MBA in only ten days?! It struck a chord with thousands of people who rushed to buy the book. I know many of them. I’ve seen the book on their shelves, and heard them confess that they had not actually read all 348 pages.
The book is excellent. It offers what many people want: a step-by-step guide to mastering the skills taught in top business schools. In a hurry. Yet it is not “instant” enough for those who cannot, or will not, spare the time to sit and read the book, digest its information and decide how to apply it.
So how is that relevant to spoken communication and making your point in just a minute?
The relevance lies in the time pressures that govern our lives in the western world, and the need to decide quickly what is useful and discard what is not. We live in an age of Information Overload.
The important consequence is that we are being conditioned to tune out and switch off the information we do not want. It has become a universal conditioned reflex. It means that most people cannot concentrate for very long. Our brains can think several times faster than people speak, so even while we are listening to someone else, our brains are dealing with something else, especially if what’s being said is less than riveting.
In conversations, speeches and presentations, people drift away. That’s why we need to develop the skill of commanding and retaining the attention of our listeners. That’s why we need to be able to make our point in just a minute.
Why contain your message in just a minute?
The most important reason for being succinct is that it makes you and your message more acceptable. “Get to the point!” is the anguished cry in everyone’s head (including our own) when others launch into a long-winded account of an event or a proposal. A common variation is, “What’s the point you are making?”
In contrast, it is truly refreshing when we receive a communication that is brief and to the point. Even our language has changed. In the previous paragraph I first wrote “discursive account”, but changed it to “long-winded” – not shorter, this time, but it reaches your understanding quicker.
First impressions
The same principles apply to face-to-face meetings. As you know, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That first impression may be created in a fraction of a second. It’s part of the process of communication.
Think back to the last time you met someone you instantly liked or disliked. Why? What did they say or do? And are you letting others make similar snap judgements about you?
So what can you do about it all?
In a business context it is important to think through your positions and your propositions. Know what you believe and why, and be clear about the benefits of your offerings. Practise making your point, using simple structures such as Problem, Cause, Solution, as though a resistant business prospect has said, “You have 60 seconds to tell me why I should listen to you.”
At the 2009 meeting of world leaders, Gaddafi was given 15 minutes to speak, and rambled on for an hour and a half. Most of us don’t have that luxury.
When you know how to make your point in just a minute, you create a communication style that projects a sense of purpose. You’ll connect better at networking meetings. Your opinions will be better received. Strangely enough, you’ll even learn to listen more.
And that’s what wins friends and influences people.
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Every little helps
The Tesco slogan is an apt reminder of the difference we can make through even a small contribution to a bad situation. In my local High Street I saw a stall inviting people to sign petitions against cruelty to animals. I signed, but wondered what good my contribution do.
Then I remembered chaos theory.
According to chaos theory, every little helps. It means that every little thing you do can have a magnified effect later on, causing something to happen or not happen. It’s also called the butterfly effect: when a butterfly flaps its wings, it causes a tiny change in the atmosphere which in turn causes another change and so on, until eventually the tornado that would have hit China doesn’t happen.
Chaos Theory was observed by a scientist called Edward Lorenz in 1961. In 1960 he had set up his computer to process some data about the weather, and he got a certain curve. In 1961 he wanted to extend the curve, so he decided to re-start it somewhere beyond the beginning. The relevant figure stored in the computer was 0.506127, but to save paper he had printed it out to only 3 decimal places: 0.506, so that was the figure he typed in at the re-start.
When he ran the sequence, he got a very different result from the 1960 curve. All because of that minute difference of 0.000127.
But here’s the really interesting bit. When Lorenz worked out the equations for this phenomenon, instead of random patterns, there was a symmetry. It formed a pattern like a figure of eight, drawn repeatedly without tracing over a previous line (The Lorenz Attractor).
So how is that relevant to our lives? It indicates that when we find ourselves in trouble, it is easy to think there is no way out. But in reality, the ‘disconnect’ we feel is almost certainly part of a pattern that will resolve itself, and that any action we take, however small, could change the direction of our lives.
If we focus on the immediate situation, we may see and feel only the lack of rhythm. But if we take the long view, a pattern will emerge and bad times will resolve themselves.
Sometimes it’s best just to stand still and not respond to setbacks, criticisms or other negative events. At other times a small intervention may go a very long way. Because every little helps.
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HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD COPYWRITER
Sensible business people do not write their own sales letters, websites or brochures. They employ copywriters. If you are looking for one, you may like to know how to distinguish the good ones from the rest. Let me offer you a couple of tips.
There are broadly two kinds of copywriters: those who can write and those who can write and sell. (I am discounting those who think they can write but can’t.) What matters, in most cases, is the response you get.
However, if you are choosing a copywriter from scratch, you need to know how to judge him or her in advance.
A good copywriter understands how the reader receives, reacts and responds, and writes to meet those expectations. Look for these two indicators of a copywriter’s understanding of salesmanship in text:
1. Copy that leads with the company name. It’s usually a no-no, because it signals self interest. There are exceptions.
2. Long paragraphs. They are a turn-off. No exceptions.Quite a few sales letters and even TV ads these days make the mistake of leading with the company name, e.g. “At XYZ Company we believe …†A variation on this is, “Do you need to protect your family? ABC Insurance will …â€
Far better to expand on the solution and bring in the company name further down the page. The exception would be when the company itself is synonymous with the solution, as in roadside assistance, e.g. “Will you discover the value of AA membership only by accident?â€
Long paragraphs create resistance. They look too dense. In these days of attention deficit, people can’t be bothered with dense masses of text in the quick-read environment of sales letters or web pages. The copywriter needs to encourage the eye to flow down the page.
I would recommend paragraphs of five lines or less.
I have just been looking at an example of text in which the number of lines in the paragraphs is 6, 6, 6, 7, 6,6, 5 and 5. It doesn’t work.
One more thing. Check the opening paragraph. It must contain something to grab and hold your attention in just 12 words.
If you’d like to know more, send an email with Copywriting in the subject line to phillip@speakingandpresentationskills.com, or call 0845 165 9240.
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The 7th Sales Letter Secret
The seventh Secret of Successful Sales Letters is:
7. Monitor your results
• Things change. So keep your eye on all results
• Change only one key element at a time and note the effectEven the best ideas can tire, so keep watching your results and testing new ideas. Guard against the temptation to cling to your favourite things. You can always bring them back again later, perhaps with some new twist.
But when you make a change, do so with only one element at a time, so that you can see and measure the effect of the change.
In case you missed any of the first six Secrets, here they are again.
1. The List comes first
• Who is your target market?
• Must be relevant to your product or service
• Is the Database up to date, accurate, fully named?2. Make the envelope look right
• Use a stamp not a franking machine
• Make it look like personal correspondence
• Don’t put sales messages for the sake of something to say3. Create an offer that’s hard to resist
• You must MAKE AN OFFER
• Address the question, What’s in it for me?
• Make a ‘soft offer’, i.e. one that requires minimal commitment. If you require a ‘Yes/No’ response it’s a Hard Offer.4. Aim to create ACTION
• Always have a response device
• Write the response device first
• Give a compelling reason to reply5. Stop expecting only a 1% return
• With the right ingredients you CAN get double digit response
• Avoid trying to convert non-users
• Focus on getting users to switch to you6. Testing can make all the difference
• How will you know what works? By testing
• How will you know what works BEST? By testing
• Use a rolling test programme to stay ahead of the gameDirect Marketing involves much more than the seven secrets above, but they will guide your hand to more successful mailings. Another shortcut is to let me write your sales letters for you and/or coach you in Direct Marketing. Call me on 0845 165 9240 or drop me a line at phillip@pkpcommunicators.com.
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Stealing another speaker’s ideas
I gave a talk about better public speaking, and used the face of a clock as a mnemonic for all the essentials. Later I was approached by a member of the audience who told me how much he enjoyed the talk and especially the clock face idea, and he said he was going to use my idea in a speech he was planning to give soon.
I have a number of “signature” Hooks to capture the attention of my audiences. One of them is the use of Fortune Cookies, another is the 3-rope trick. It has come to my notice that another speaker has adopted both.
Back in 1985 I created the term “icrowave method” to describe my approach to training. I have seen the term in use on the internet.
My friend Paul Joslin attended a speech in the Midlands in which the speaker told a sob story that Paul had heard before in America. When he later tackled the speaker about it, the man said, “I doubt anyone in that audience had been to America, so it doesn’t matter.”
These are just a few examples of intellectual piracy. What do you think should be done about it?