6 tips to engage and influence with your speaking
You know how it is, you’ve got a talk to give, a challenging team meeting to run, a key presentation to give and you need to choose words that will:
- Build rapport as fast as possible
- Engage all the audience
- Not wind anyone up (always a bonus!)
- Overcome objections
- Change minds and influence
- Inspire participants to take action
How would it be if you had 6 additional tools to use in to your future talks? I’ve been coaching leaders and speakers for over 20 years – helping them to find the words to engage, to overcome objections and to influence; and the funny and lovely thing I have noticed with many of my clients (and myself too) is that when the words feel good .. so do you. Confidence grows and nerves fade. I wanted to share my top tips in a blog – so here goes!
1. Yes Sets
Politician, copywriters and sales people are trained in “Yes Sets”
What are Yes Sets and why would you use? Yes Sets are a good way to build rapport and empathy as you can pace your audience’s issues and desires.
By stating 3 – 4 things that are indisputable, momentum is built and your audience is more likely to give a “Yes” response to your next question or statement which you want to get agreement to.
Example of a “Yes Set”:
- You’ve come to the Hilton Hotel in Winchester… and …
- …you’re here to improve your public speaking skills …
- … you’ve wanted to know how for quite a while how to influence using language skills …
- … and now it’s time… you are ready to work with me …
Your turn now, I wonder how soon you will be able to incorporate this in tour next talk?
2. Adding Charisma (NLP Charisma Model KAV)
We experience and absorb the world and communicate through our 5 major senses: Seeing, Feeling, Hearing, Taste and Smell. When we think (or as I call it “when I am processing”!) we re-present or reproduce what we have experienced, using the three major communication senses: Seeing (Visual), Hearing (Auditory) and Feeling (Kinaesthetic).
Most of us use all three of the above major senses (KAV for short) but tend to have a “preferred” or “lead” sense which we use more often.
Whats your preferred sense or senses? The next time you write about an event (try it now by writing a few paragraphs describing your last holiday), look at the words you use and see how many words are Visual, how many are Kinaesthetic (Feeling) and how many are Auditory (hearing based words) use this list to help you.
To work out other people’s preferred sense or senses? Have a ‘play’ the next time you are having a conversation and really tune in to (auditory!) to the words being used and you start to work out which is their preferred sense.
Ok, so you may be wondering how this can help when drafting and delivering a talk to a group? By using a variety of sensory based language (a good mix of VAK) we build rapport faster, connect at a deeper level with every member of our audience regardless of their primary sense and by doing so we get our message across far more effectively and are far more likely to gain commitment to an idea.
Quizette: can you guess which is the preferred sense in each of the following
- What a bright idea, I can really picture that now and can see a way ahead!
- Wow that makes a lot of sense and feels really good – I’ll move forwards with that
- What she told me really sounded good and I wanted to hear more
Did you get: 1= visual, 2= Kinaesthetic, 3 = Auditory?
Tip number 3 next week: tapping into your audience’s unconscious motivational systems … ooh!
Do you have a talk or presentation to give or board or team meeting, where you need to be at your best with high level influencing skills? need help soon – then book a session now:
