Giving a great speech is about finding the best way to make your audience pay attention so you can get your message across. Whether your goal is to motivate someone, have someone hire you, buy your product, approve a new budget request, learn something new, or anything else, how to give a killer speech boils down to connecting with your audience and delivering the right content.
Connect with your audience to give a killer speech
Every great presentation relies on the speaker connecting with the audience to inspire trust and action. Deliver value for them at every moment. Address their questions and concerns. Maintain good eye contact. Show your passion, enthusiasm, and knowledge of the topic.
Our audience should be our focus at every step as we are planning for and then delivering our speech.
Check out our 4 Steps to Build a Presentation that Connects with Your Audience for more ideas.
Grab attention at the beginning
Openings are important to capture attention and keep our audience from multitasking with the many distractions that compete for attention.
Keep your introduction short and focus on the value your speech will bring and why you are the best person to deliver it. It is also helpful to give a sense of how you plan to organize your speech or presentation.
To help, try this four step formula to develop the opening for your presentation and this guide to use a story as your presentation opening.
Make sure your visual cues match your words
Your audience will take in much more than your content when you are speaking. It is very important that your visual cues align with your words to give a killer speech.
Having good posture and maintaining eye contact are two ways that we can show our audiences we are confident and passionate about our topic. Incorporating hand gestures at appropriate times can help us emphasize important points and key messages.
Similarly, walking around the room or stage can help you keep your audience engaged. For additional ideas on this, read 3 Tips to Move on Stage to Engage Your Audience.
Turn up your sound quality
Have you ever had a hard time hearing someone speak at an event? Whether it is a crowded room, a bad mic, or a poor Internet connection, it can be very difficult to pay attention when we have problems hearing the words someone says. Plan for this as you prepare your speech to think about how you can optimize your sound for the situation you will be presenting in and consider asking someone in the room like the event organizer to let you know if there are any sound issues while you are presenting.
Sound is an area that few people pay attention to but it can really help us become better speakers. Pay attention to your volume, pace and intonation. Also try to add a few strategic pauses to give your audience time to reflect on a point you made or simply to emphasize an important message.
Make your content stick with stories
Our brains are hardwired to remember stories. To help make our content stick with our audiences so they will remember it later, incorporate stories during your speech. Share a personal experience you had that reinforces a point you want to make or a lesson you learned. Bring data and trends to life by telling a story that brings it to life – perhaps by sharing one specific example of how that trend manifests in real life or profiling a person who is included in the data set.
Grab our 5 Easy Ways to Jump into Business Storytelling cheat sheet with some more ideas to incorporate storytelling at work.
