Image Credit: Mike Cohen
Often when we are creating a speech, we spend our time thinking about how we can connect with our audience. What it’s going to take in order to get them to believe what we are telling them. Since we understand the importance of public speaking, we also spend our time looking for ways to get our audience to take action after we are done talking to them. It turns out that all of these things are exactly the same things that sales people do when they are trying to close a sale. Speakers can play the role of a salesperson. We just have to know how to build a speech that will help us to sell…
It’s All About The Communication Strategy
As speakers we need to realize that communication strategies are important for creating messages that are relevant, appealing and differentiating to our audiences. A communication strategy can be articulated in a one-page document and is a roadmap for our efforts when creating a speech. Whether promoting yourself or your product, a communication strategy can help you craft effective messages that stand out, resonate with your audience and elicit the desired response. Now the big question is just exactly what goes into an effective communication strategy?
Building A Communication Strategy That Works
If you are going to be giving a speech in which you want to sell something to your audience, a product or an idea, then you are going to have to start things off by taking the time to understand who your target audience is. Great marketing messages, like your great speeches, begin with defining your target audience – the potential buyers of your product, service or offering. Persuasive messages have to be tailored to the people that you are trying to influence.
Your next step is going to be to make sure that you have a clear core message. Keeping your audience in mind, the core message can be developed based on what you believe is the most important to them. If you aren’t clear about what’s most important, then it won’t be clear to your audience either. Sometimes speakers cram multiple messages into a single communication, which dilutes and fragments their message.
When creating a core message, there are two important aspects. These will be your “point of difference” and the “reason why”. Your “point of difference” is what makes your idea unique. The “reason why” is the evidence that supports your product or idea’s point of difference. Across cultures and languages, meaningful core messages are the defining aspect of an effective promotion. As an example of how this works, look at how car companies around the world work to differentiate their products. At Toyota they talk about quality, at Volvo they talk about safety and at Ford they talk about the durability of their trucks.
When you are creating a speech to sell something to an audience, a key part of the speech will be its style and tone. The style and tone of your speech deal with “the feel” of your message. As a speaker you’ve got to speak in a voice that your audience will relate to. Keep in mind that conversational, authoritative, even snide tones can work if they resonate with the audience that you’re trying to reach.
The last point that you will need to consider when creating a speech to sell something to an audience is the desired response that you want to achieve. The final element is what is called your call to action; or what you want your audience to think, feel or do. A clearly defined communication strategy can enhance how effective your promotional message is and can improve the chances of achieving your desired results. At the very least, it can help to make sure that your marketing messages aren’t wasted.
What All Of This Means For You
Speakers who want to create a speech that will allow them to sell something to an audience need to understand how such a speech works. We need to use the benefits of public speaking to create a communication strategy. Once we have this taken care of, the real work of creating a speech that will sell for us then starts.
In the speech that we are creating we need to make sure that we understand who will be in our audience`. We will have to present them with a clear core message. The core message that we create will have to have a “point of difference” and a “reason why”. A key part to making our speech effective will be the style and the tone that we deliver it with. Every speech has to be created with the goal of generating a desired response.
A speech that can successfully sell something is a powerful speech. As speakers, if we understand how these speeches are put together, then we have the ability to create speeches that can move an audience to buy what we are selling to them. This can be a powerful skill for a speaker to have. We need to take the time to understand how these types of speeches are put together so that when we need to create one, we’ll know how to go about doing it.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: What should you do if you are giving a selling speech and it appears as though your audience is not buying what you are selling?
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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
Would you like to have a big audience show up for your next speech? I mean, would you like to have the room filled to overflowing? It turns out that this is actually fairly easy to do: just agree to give a speech about a controversial topic, you know what I’m talking about: sex, religion, or politics. The reason that so many people are going to show up is because a lot of them are going to disagree with what you have to say. Just exactly how is a speaker supposed to go about giving a speech like this?