The Short Self-Promotion Business Speech

Continued from the previous page:
Researching the Market for Your Business Speech

 Writing and Developing Your Business Speech

George:
What would you tell folks who say, “I just don’t have a topic?  I don’t know where to start.” What advice would you give them?

Patricia:
Oh I would say if you’re a professional or you have a business that you’re passionate about.  That some part of that business stirs your passion, some piece of it makes you passionate.  Take that piece and make that your topic because the passion will show.

George:
Now did you start out with an outline or did you write out the entire presentation?  Did you memorize it?  How did you do it?

Patricia:
When I went to school they taught us to do an outline first and I did. Then I wrote the whole presentation. 
Indeed I started out reading them but I don’t recommend that to anybody. It’s fairly deadly.  But the audiences were very kind to me and my speeches were very successful even under those circumstances.

George:
And as it turns out you got a lot of your materiel from the audiences didn’t you?  Because in a sense you’d be doing your presentation and as you got better at it I suspect they’d start giving you feedback.  Some of the feedback that you got from them you began to incorporate into your presentation.  Is that right?

Patricia:
That’s exactly correct.  And also I would find that in answering questions that I could then add the question to my basic material because the questions are very common.

And you learn how to reorganize the material so it’s more easily learned.  Sometimes when I first started to explain things people wouldn’t get it.  So after I tried two or three different ways I would figure out which one people would get easiest.  Sometimes I still explain things twice.

George:
Yeah, do you have that feeling sometimes--or maybe you just had it in the beginning--that feeling of “Oh boy, I just didn’t explain that very well.”  That it didn’t go over, it just didn’t work.

Patricia:
Yes, indeed and sometimes I still have that feeling George but what I have found is that people are very tolerant of that is if you say something like “Does anybody have any questions or can I clarify that for anybody?”  You want to make them feel comfortable answering questions and I usually try to encourage questions throughout the presentation.

Next page: Promoting and Publicizing Your Business Speech