Whether they like it or not, most business executives and community leaders need to make speeches from time to time. It's an occasion that casts a singular spotlight on their ability to stand and deliver (or flop and fall flat) and few go it alone in crafting the right words to have a memorable impact on their audience.
Those who are wise in the ways of speechwriting know that a good script with a strong theme, clear purpose and conversational style can make even the most reluctant public speaker connect with their audience. If you want to inspire instead of perspire, work with a PR pro or copywriter with proven speechwriting experience and follow these flop-proof rules.
Know your audience. Knowing as much as you can about the group you'll be speaking to gives you a huge advantage in winning them over by customizing your talk to their specific interests. For example, a speech we prepared for a city official to give at the groundbreaking of an affordable housing project was heard by an audience comprised of county government officials and local residents. It appealed to both groups with a mixture of facts about how the city's overall affordable housing program was made into a legislative mission and an emotional message about turning the American dream of owning a home into a reality for hard-working residents.
Write in a conversational style. The best speeches sound like someone talking "off the top of their head," not like a dissertation or academic thesis. Maintain a conversational tone by using short words, short sentences and even some casual language or slang here and there. Once you have a draft together, test the conversational flavor of the speech by reading it out loud. If it doesn't sound natural, rewrite it until it talks the talk of real people with warmth, wit, humor and passion.
Keep it simple. Speeches are effective at expressing ideas and opinions in ways that inform, persuade and (if you really knock it out of the park) inspire. They're far less effective at delivering complex theories or relaying a large volume of facts, so be realistic and stick to one main theme and just a couple of central points. Give your listeners bite-size nuggets of information, friendly persuasion and advice and they'll likely stay with you for the duration of your speech. Weigh them down with a complicated line of thinking, scholarly arguments or too many numbers and statistics, and you might as well be making the last portion of your speech to a brick wall.
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