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5 MAGIC KEYS TO CREATING ANY SPEECH!

Knowing the answers to these Five Questions will enable you to create a fabulous speech for almost any occasion.  Download your Free Report now and make creating your next speech so much easier! 

    Do You Really Need To Rehearse?            

      You've been asked to give a speech at an important occasion on a subject you know well. It could be a company conference, an end of the year holiday party, your son's wedding or your colleague's retirement roast. You've done your research, created a great power point program, made sure you have all the equipment you'll need, and written a speech you're proud of. Your big moment is tomorrow and everything is ready. You won't be forced to stay up til the wee hours the night before, polishing your copy. In fact, you've done everything you can think of to make this a successful presentation.

      There's just one thing you haven't made time for. When are you going to get out your secret weapon? When are you going to rehearse?

      Do you really need to practice your speech out loud beforehand? You've read and re-read it a couple dozen times. You've transferred it to 3x5 cards or created an outline in large type that you'll have no trouble following. You've planned exactly where to change each power point slide or demonstrate a visual aid. You know which ones are your biggest jokes that have always worked before, and where to pause to give the audience time to laugh. You're ready... or so you think.

      There are some speakers who seem able to stand in front of the room and crack jokes, tell stories, look us straight in the eye, shower us with their magnetism, and it looks like they just got up and did it, like they've never had to rehearse a single word ever in their entire life. You want to be like that. You've done all this preparation. You should be able to sail through it with no trouble, don't you think?

      Do yourself a favor! Use your secret weapon!

      How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!

      There's a ton of truth in that old joke. No matter how sure of yourself you are beforehand, if you don't rehearse your presentation, you're leaving yourself open for disaster. The speakers who seem to speak naturally, off-the-cuff? Don't kid yourself. They've given their speech many times before and they've probably rehearsed every time... when you weren't looking!

      There's a world of difference between reading your speech to yourself and saying it out loud. Many things will be different aloud vs. just hearing them inside your head.

      Does a sentence that sounded brilliant in your head sound like gibberish out loud? A sentence that sounds smooth and clear in your head, when you say it aloud you may find it's too long, too convoluted, or it contains too much information for the audience to swallow in one gulp. You need to break it up into shorter sentences. Every time you do that, your speech gets a little longer. How much time do you have? If you need to rewrite several sentences to make them clearer when you say them, will your talk still fit into its allotted time?

      If you see that your speech is running too long, what will you cut out? Are you prepared to abbreviate a section or cut it out entirely on the spot? If it looks like you aren't going to have time for your killer joke, or your absolutely imperative call to action, what will you do? How will you know if your speech is going to accomplish all that you want it to in the 30 minutes you've been given to be brilliant?

      When you rehearse, you'll find all the spots that run too long or too short. If the previous speaker steals some of your time, you'll be prepared to cut so that even though you have to 'speak shorter', you won't have to omit your most important points or, worse, try the patience of your audience because they've been sitting too long already and have tuned out.

      The more you rehearse, the more comfortable you'll feel about every word, and the more comfortable you'll appear to the audience. They'll think you're one of those speakers who is able to create a speech effortlessly on the spot. They'll admire you and think you're brilliant. Only you will know about your secret weapon!