Note From the Editor:

Last weekend we celebrated our nation's Independence. 

It is a sacred day for Americans.

Let's always remember the reason for the holiday.  The freedoms and rights that were won by our Founding Fathers are our inheritance. 

It's up to us to preserve them and pass them on to the next generation.

"We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."- Benjamin Franklin

One of the most effective ways to build your business is to do it from the front of a room. But if you've ever done public speaking, you know the moment when you wonder whether your audience is listening to your presentation or if they are more focused on their cell phones. This fear is legitimate, because they actually decide whether you are worth their time in the first 15 seconds after you open your mouth. With a few easy steps, you can get their attention right from the beginning and hold it to the end.

First: Don't waste your time talking about yourself; let someone else do that for you. Outsource the short bio and a brief overview of your speech to somebody else. This saves you from losing the attention of your audience during the most valuable phase of your speech.

Second: Leave out the background information about your company. Instead build credibility with other tactics that do not leave the audience bored. You can build your credibility in your introduction (that you are not giving for yourself, of course!) No one wants to hear statistics about how long your company has been around, they want to know how you can make their life easier and business more profitable.  

Third: Forget about the opening joke. The potential for crashing and burning is high, and if you don't tell the right joke the right way, you'll just come off as nervous. Your opening line is extremely important and you shouldn't waste it on a joke. Humor throughout your presentation is great - but there's a difference between jokes and humor.

Instead, you should get their attention! Give them a surprising fact to wake them up. You can continue to reference this throughout your speech, keeping it relevant to the topic at hand. Aim to inspire, motivate, or provoke questions. If they are thinking about your speech more than they are thinking about ten things they have to do after your speech, you are succeeding.

It is important that you have a clear starting point, middle, and ending with a clear call to action. There is nothing worse than ending a speech with, "...so yeah, that's it."

Take these tips to the stage, and you will deliver better speeches in no time, which will result in more people wanting to do more business with your business.

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