5 Tips to Be a Persuasive Speaker

Shamelessly lifted from Jason Dorsey's June 13, 2012 article at Success Magazine, I actually had the opportunity to apply these five tips to my presentation at my social club's 2013 Annual General Meeting. The speech was a rousing success, even I was impressed!

1. It's not about you - it's only about the audience.
2. Omit needless Power Point - especially slides with more than 10 words.
3. The unexpected will happen - ignore it.
4. Don't write - and memorize - a speech, word-for-word.
5. Close strong, no matter how you feel it went.

I feel that I have to note, this was truly the first successful presentation I'd given at the club. I can personally speak to every single point above.

1. The first thing I thought of, when preparing my presentation, was what I wanted my audience to take away from it. I was then able to tailor it to meet any potential questions which would arise.
2. I personally find digital slides to be a waste of time, precisely because of so many meetings where it is essentially being used as a projected book. And so I spent weeks designing my 15-slide presentation to ensure that it wowed, not bored, my audience with graphs and dynamic information.
3. We did have some technical details, some people talking (initially), and other distractions. Such things put me off during previous presentations. This time I worked through or with the issues and they resolved themselves!
4. Since I spent so much time working on my presentation, I knew the topic backward and forward. I had the slide show to keep me on track, and so was able to go the direction I needed to go without stumbling.
5. When I was finished, you could have heard a pin drop. I made my point - our numbers were down and our club was slowly dying. I closed my presentation with one further slide - a tombstone with our club's name on it. "Don't let it come to this," I said.

I have given six total presentations at our club. Five were horrible experiences which left me - and my audience - often confused. At best, they were mundane. By using these five principles, I gave a presentation so strong that people were still commending me a month later. Nobody left unchanged. And now, in small part because of that presentation, our club has turned around and is succeeding in ways we never thought possible again!