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:
Women On the Business Stage
“Not again!” I muttered under by breath – a panel of all male speakers at an event, with not a woman in sight!
This was 2011 and I found myself getting quite irritated with the speakers when in fact, I was irritated with myself for having the skills and experince to do something about this, (after all I had been coaching people to have the confidence, self-belief and the skills to speak-up for years) and anyway how often did I volunteer to speak?!
After hanging my head in shame, I put my money (or my energy!) where my mouth was, and founded WOBS. WOBS? stands for Women On the Business Stage. Over the past years WOBS has evolved into a 6 month programme for women in business to have the confidence, beliefs, skills and mega support to grow their business (and lives).
That’s the history part and the next face to face WOBS starts in September 2013 but this brief post today is to let you know about a fabulous facebook group called WOBS On-Line which is free to join. 
It’s FREE to ask any question you may have about personal development, business growth, public speaking – you have the question and we’ll do our best to answer it!
“I set this group up so that ALL women in business (or women who want to be in business) have a have place where you can ask questions about your business, maybe something you are stuck with and don’t want to share in the main social media areas, somewhere we can support each other to build on current skill base, tools and knowledge and a place we can give support and confidence.
I have been lucky to have been able to access some very high quality and high value business and personal mentoring over the past 10 years and I know not everyone is able to access such resources … I would like to share as much as I can here with you and that way I also get to continue to learn and develop as you ask questions within the group”
Here are a selection of the questions that have been posted and answered since the group started in May 2013:
• Any advice on how to market my most recent business venture
• Does anyone know how to put a ‘contact me’ form on Facebook please?
• QUESTION…about Direct Mail campaign postage costs.
• Does anyone know of a word press web designer who is reasonably priced.
• I can get a bit stuck in terms of who I am talking to in respect of copy etc – any thoughts?
• Has anyone here been to any of the 4Networking groups?
• Membership sites: alternatives to Jigsawbox
• Using boost facilities on facebook for business pages
• Anyone used dropbox
• How do I set up a free dropbox account
• How do people get speaking gigs
• Thinking of joining LinkedIn – does anyone have any hints or tips for me please x Many thanks x
• Help with Aweber sign up etc
• Logo advice
• Can anyone recommend good and easy to use short video editing software?
There’s no catch (I was also totally fed up with catches!) join us here and find out for yourself
How to Win Over a Negative Hostile Audience
17 years ago when I returned after maternity leave to my job as Head of HR my boss called me into his office and said these words “Claire, we’d like you to take on Staff Training & Development as well as HR”
I almost fainted, I knew this would involve the dreaded “Public Speaking” – speaking in front of groups – something I had never, ever, wanted to do, plus in the past I had anxiety introducing myself when I attended a training course let alone run one myself!
One of the first groups I was due to train was our trades staff, which at that time were 100% male, worked outside and liked it that way and at that time received less pay for attending training .. so there I was in front of 12 burly, overall clad men, arms folded (them not me!) and this was the last place they wanted to be – anxious? you bet!
How did I turn 12 angry men into a group who thanked me for a great morning’s training?
How to Win Over a Negative, Hostile Audience:
- Get to really know (and if you can to also love your content) – if you don’t care what you are presenting how on earth will you turn an audience onto it?
- Get into the shoes of your audience as much as possible and think about what might be in it for them (WIIFT) why should they listen to you? A motivated mind is an interested one. It’s very hard to be negative and motivated – try it!
- Anticipate what objections your audience might have for being there and use a “pre-frame” in your introduction. By this I mean use the anticipated objection (which in this example is “this is a waste of my time so what the hell am I doing here”?!) like this: “Some people have started this session thinking that this was a complete waste of their time … and by mid morning break have come up to me and thanked me … I have tried very hard to make today as relevant as possible … so please bear with me and if you can put these thoughts to one side … you can always pick them up again later! ” I often use appropriate humour (part of my presenting style) and I have also added and “if we get to the end of this session and you were right all along, and it has been a complete waste of your time … then the beers are on me”.
- When delivering the session use different methods so each learning style is accommodated (you might find this useful: 4 Questions you need to answer when designing any talk)
- Care about your audience, really care about them; demonstrate your respect for them: use names, involve, ask questions and listen
- Oh and always make sure there are plenty of refreshments too!
That was 17 years ago and since then I have mentored and trained 100′s of people from all sorts of jobs and businesses to not only feel confident to speak in front of groups of people but to also enjoy and inspire others to take action too …
Contact me to find out when my next SIYV Winning Over Reluctant Audiences – Course Outline Workshop is, or invite me to run one for your business.
How to structure a presentation
How to structure a presentation – 4 questions you need to answer
This topic crops up again and again with the managers and business owners I work with.
Once we have worked on the fears of speaking in public, what tends to crop up next is how do I structure a presentation? (more…)