Do you get nervous before a presentation? If so, the following 3 strategies will be of interest to you because they will help you to calm your nerves before your next presentation.

1. Get to know your audience
Most people find it easier to start a conversation with friends than with strangers. Similarly, presenting in front of people that you know is also easier than presenting in front of complete strangers. Therefore, one way for you to calm your nerves before a presentation is to create a sense of familiarity with your audience. You can do this by introducing yourself and engaging in small talk with your audience members before it is your turn to speak. After you befriend your audience, you will find that presenting to them becomes easier.

2. Focus on your audience
The physiological traits of nervousness and excitement are the same, but the comfort level of the two is very different! One reason for this is that when you are nervous, you tend to focus on yourself. As a result, you ask yourself, “what if I mess up?’, ‘what if I forget what to say?”, “what if I…” On the other hand, when you are excited, you tend to focus on what you are about to do. Hence, instead of speculating on what might happen, you would say to yourself, “I can’t wait to share my speech with them”, “I can’t wait to entertain my audience, “I can’t wait…” Therefore, if you want to calm your nerves, you can turn your nervousness into excitement by focusing on your audience and all the benefits that they will gain from your presentation.

3. Adequately practice and prepare
A major source of nervousness before a presentation is self-knowledge that you have not adequately practiced and you are not prepared for it! If you are not ready for the presentation, then you should not risk your reputation by ‘winging it’. When you ‘wing it’, the audience can tell because the disorganisation will be obvious. As a result, you will damage your reputation as a speaker and dent your credibility in the subject area. Don’t risk it! Adequately prepare for your presentation and practice it. After every practice, your presentation gets better.

In summary…
If you take the time to befriend your audience, if you shift your focus away from yourself and onto your audience, and if you adequately practice and prepare for your presentations, you will find yourself with a sense of peace and serenity before it is your turn to speak.

Jim is a featured speaker on the “The Essentials Guide to Public Speaking” DVD. Free educationals from the DVD are available at http://speakersgeneration.com/dvd/.

Cost selling
Benefit selling is the foundation of most persuasive messages: “If you do this, you will [obtain this benefit]“. Although selling the benefits of your message is important, it is only one pillar of the many that builds a persuasive speech. Another approach to structure a persuasive speech is for you to sell the costs to your audience if they choose not to adopt your ideas, which I will term as cost selling. For example, “If you don’t do this, you will [incur this cost]“. In essence, cost selling motivates the audience to act by appealing to their fear. This article explores the use of cost selling in motivating your audience and how you can apply it in your next presentation.

Why is cost selling important?
Different individuals may be doing the same tasks, but they may be doing it for a completely different reason. For example, when I ask a university student, “why are you studying so hard for your exam?” I will usually get two types of response.
• Student 1: “Because I want to get a good mark!”
• Student 2: “Because I don’t want to fail!”
The former is motivated by the benefits of the task, while the latter is motivated by the costs of not doing the task.

What’s going to happen if you start selling to both students with “If you [do this], you will get a good mark”? The likely outcome is that student 1 is likely to be moved by your proposal, while student 2 will be sitting back thinking, “that’s not for me, I just want to pass”. On the other hand, if you sell with “If you [don't do this], you will probably fail”, you are more likely to get the attention of student 2. In other words, benefit selling is effective when selling to those motivated by benefits; cost selling is effective when selling to those motivated by costs.

The truth is people are not solely motivated by either benefits or costs. We are moved by both, but with different emphasise on each. Hence, it is important to understand cost selling, because some of your audience need this extra push to buy into your message.

Foundation to cost selling
In 1994, Kim Witte proposed the Extended Parallel Process Model (EFFM) [Reference: Witte, K. (1994). Fear control and danger control: A test of the extended parallel process model. Communications Monographs, 61(2), 113-134], a model of how attitudes are formed and changed when fear is used as a factor of persuasion. Since 1994, this model has received considerable support from laboratory research. I find this model relevant and practical when considering how you can structure a cost selling message. This model is the foundation to cost selling.

Cost selling is avoided by presenters due to fear that it will backfire instead of motivate. This fear is not unfounded - a poorly constructed cost selling message will backfire. What you should know is that there are two parts in a cost selling message:
• The first part appeals to your audience’s fear; and
• The second part provides the cure for your audience’s fear.

Part 1 - Appeal to your audience’s fear
Cost selling motivates the audience to act by appealing to their fear; hence in order for cost selling to work for you, you must first succeed in appealing to your audience’s fear. This will require that you emphasise two key points to your audience - (1) susceptibility of your audience to the cost; and (2) the severity of the cost.

For example, if your message relates to the importance of presentation skills, you can point out that:
• “If you find that you are leading a group of people, you will very soon find yourself being asked to present in front of an audience” [susceptibility of audience to cost];
• “if you can’t speak eloquently in front of your peers, you are damaging your credibility as an expert in front of them and limiting your chances in being promoted” [the severity of the cost].

Part 2 - Provide the cure
The reason that most cost selling fails to motivate and backfires is because an efficacious cure is not provided. When this happens, your audience will hypnotise themselves into denial, “this won’t ever happen to me so I won’t think about it”. For you to provide an efficacious cure, you will need to emphasise two key points to your audience - (1) the ease of applying the cure; and (2) the effectiveness of the cure.

For example, if you are promoting a presentation workshop, you can point out that:
• “If you give me 2 days, I will transform you into an eloquent speaker” [the ease of applying the cure];
• “Don’t just take my words for it, look at the heights the workshop graduates have obtained” [the effectiveness of the cure].

Summary
How do you horrify your audience into buying in? You must appeal to your audience’s fear and provide an efficacious cure at the same time. One cannot do without the other.

Jim is a featured speaker on the “The Essentials Guide to Public Speaking” DVD. Free educationals from the DVD are available at http://speakersgeneration.com/dvd/.

Do you want to present better with PowerPoint? Here are 10 areas that are worth your consideration.

1. Preparation mindset. If you are using your slides to prompt you as to what you should say next, then your slides are probably prepared with your own interest in mind. Are your slides prepared for you or your audience?

2. Slide purpose. Is every one of your slides purposeful? Consider including only slides that complement the presentation and leave what can be left out, out! For example, do you really need a slide that prompts you to say “the end” or “any questions”?

3. Visual aids. Do you want to prepare slides that enhance your verbal message? You can do so by complementing your verbal with visuals, like charts, pictures, or diagrams.

4. Limit text. Although you may want to place visually stimulating objects on your slides, you will occasionally need text slides. However, instead of placing paragraphs of text on your slides, you can consider placing a limited number (e.g., 5 to 7) of short sentence bullet points. After all, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too much information.

5. Animation scheme. Do you want the focus of your presentation to be on your message or the medium (the PowerPoint slides)? The more animation schemes you use, the more you are putting the focus on the medium as opposed to the message. Consider choosing and sticking to one animation scheme.

6. Refocusing attention. Are you expecting your audience to listen and read your slides at the same time? When you do, one of them will generally be a distraction to your audience because doing both at the same time is difficult! When in slide show mode, consider utilising the ‘B’ or ‘W’ button to refocus the attention of your audience from the slides back onto you.

7. Prepare handouts. Avoid making your PowerPoint slides a reading labour for your audience with slides and slides of information dump. On your slides, include what they must know, then you can expand further in your handouts by including more on what they could know.

8. Eye contact. In parliament, the “ayes” have it; in speaking, the “eyes” have it. So never read your slides and turn your back to your audience because you will lose eye contact.

9. Plan B. In most cases, the show must go on, whether your slides are ready or not! This means that you should never rule out equipment failure and should always ‘rule in’ a plan B.

10. It’s a presentation! Remember that you are giving a presentation with PowerPoint and not just presenting a PowerPoint. This means that the fundamentals of presentation skills still apply (e.g., body language, vocal variety). Technology is not there to drive the presentation; you are the driver of every presentation!

Jim is a featured speaker on the “The Essentials Guide to Public Speaking” DVD. Free educationals from the DVD are available at http://speakersgeneration.com/dvd/.

Looking to maximise the impact of your next presentation? Then consider these three ways on evaluating your speech after each presentation.

A common thing that happens after a speech is that you will start evaluating yourself right from the moment you leave the stage. Did everything go as planned? What did the audience think? Often times you will get so caught up in presenting your speech that you lose track of how the audience is reacting. That’s why getting feedback after the speech is important, so you know what you did well, and so you can identify things that could make your speech even better.

One way to get feedback is to ask someone in the audience who listened to your speech. However, the opinions of your audience members may not be what you are looking for, especially if you are looking to improve technical elements of your presentation that go beyond simple observations. If you don’t have access to feedback from an experienced presenter or speech coach, what can you do? The answer is simple. Give yourself feedback, by making a video recording of your speech.

Why is watching and listening to a recording of yourself so important? When you watch yourself present you get a more accurate idea of how others see you, and you’ll improve your judgement when it comes to making changes to improve your speech.

Once you have your speech recorded, the first thing I recommend is watching the whole presentation from start to finish, and looking for any distractive or repetitive mannerisms you use. Do you use repetitive hand gestures? Do you continuously shift your weight from one foot to the other? Watching your video back is a great way for making you aware that you are subconsciously doing distracting movements. When it comes to refining your movements on stage, remember that whatever you do, you’ve got to have a reason. If you’re going to make a movement, you’ve got have a reason for doing it. If you don’t have a reason, then it might be best to not do it all.

The second time you watch through the video I recommend listening closely to how the audience reacts. When did the audience react in ways you expected? When did the audience react in ways you didn’t expect? One of the best learning experiences I had was the first time I did stand-up comedy at an open-mic comedy night (open-mic comedy nights give amateur comedians a chance to do stand-up at a comedy club). Taking my own advice, I had someone record my performance. The most important learning moments for me came from understanding why the audience laughed where I didn’t expect them to laugh. Was the audience laughing at the words I said or the way I said it? Either way, if it worked, that’s something I could use again!

When I was preparing to do stand-up comedy, I read a book called “The Comedy Bible” written by Judy Carter who is a professional comedy coach. She tells us that amateur comedians will end a joke, and then start the next joke before the audience has finished laughing, whereas professional comedians will let the audience laugh before beginning the next joke. The power of this pause can be applied to any type of speech. Keep this in mind during your second viewing of the video, as you try to understand why the audience reacts in the ways they do.

The third time you watch the video, I recommend listening to the audio only, and writing down word for word what you actually said. Professional speech coaches actually recommend that you write down this word for word manuscript because it gives you an idea of what you really said, which is usually different to what you planned on saying. You might be surprised at some of the things you didn’t know you were saying or didn’t intend to say.

When I did this exercise for the first time, I discovered that I used the words “you know” a lot in between sentences. This is a type of “crutch” word, those unnecessary sounds you make when you’re thinking of what to say next. Other crutch words include “um”, “ah”, “like”, “and”, or any other sound you use to fill in the gaps during your speech. It’s natural to use a few crutch words when you speak, but when you start using too many, they can become distracting to the audience and make you look unprofessional. Once you are aware that you are using crutch words, you can start thinking about replacing them with a pause. This exercise of writing a word for word manuscript will help you greatly when it comes to refining your use of words and pauses.

In summary, we’ve covered three ways to give yourself feedback from watching a video recording of your speech. For the first viewing I recommended looking for any distractive or repetitive mannerisms, for the second viewing I recommended listening closely to audience reactions, and for the third viewing I recommend listening to the audio only, and writing down word for word what you actually said. When you implement these tips, not only will you look more professional, but you will feel more confident in your presentation as you make a greater your impact on your audience.

Leonard is a featured speaker on the “The Essentials Guide to Public Speaking” DVD. Free educationals from the DVD are available at http://speakersgeneration.com/dvd/.

Do you want to improve your speech writing skills? One approach is to study the influential speeches of our time. After all, what could be better than to study the craft you wish to learn, than to study it from the best! A great resource is the website American Rhetoric, an online speech bank that contains significant public addresses and speeches, delivered in the United States.

At American Rhetoric, you will find political speeches, movie speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, and other public addresses. Not only does the site provide you with full text transcriptions of the speeches, but in some cases, audio and video versions of the speeches are also offered. And if you’ve ever wondered how these historical speeches of the 20th century compare to each other, well you’re in luck. American Rhetoric provides a ranking of the speeches according to the 137 leading scholars of American public address.

Most importantly, the site offers all its resources free of charge! The only imperfection of this site, I felt, is that it does not capture great speeches outside of the United States. Nonetheless, American Rhetoric is comprehensive in what it offers.

You may be wondering how you can best utilise the resources on American Rhetoric to your benefit. Here are two strategies that I personally use to study these speeches:

• Learn from words, sentences, or phrases that connect with you. Read, listen, or watch the speech of your choosing, then write down the words, sentences, or phrases that connect with you. Consider why and how they connect with you. Once you discover the source of that connection, you can replicate it in your own speeches.
• Get into the mindset of great speech writers. Transcribing your favourite speeches from start to finish and thinking about what you are writing down will allow you to temporarily ‘become’ the speech writer of the speech. If you do this several times, you will naturally improve your own speech writing skills, as you learn from the thinking of great speech writers.

For more information on American Rhetoric and its resources, check out http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

Looking to add a bit of funny to your next presentation? Then look no further than John Kinde’s Humor Power.

John calls on decades of public speaking experience (specialising in humour) to provide genuinely practical tips and tricks on using humour in your presentations. John Kinde’s Humor Power blog is updated regularly and his free ezine is sent out twice a month.

I’ve been a subscriber to the ezine for several years. John’s tips are detailed yet concise, explaining why the joke works, the setup, and delivery, and he backs this up with specific real life examples of how these techniques have been incorporated into speeches. His observational humour articles are some of my favourite, and have allowed me to take my speaking skills to a new level, by adding a slice of spontaneity into all of my presentations. John Kinde also runs monthly cartoon caption and joke-writing contests, that are great for exercising your funny bone and getting practise writing those one-liners.

The icing on the cake is an extensive list of resources and links, on all things humour, writing, speaking, motivating, and getting on stage and putting these skills to work. This is the goods!

For more information on John Kinde, the blog, or to subscribe to the ezine, check out http://humorpower.com

If you have that little old fear of public speaking that needs facing, uncontrollable nerves in front of an audience, or just want to become confident in your communication and leadership skills, then Toastmasters could be the answer for you. Public speaking is definitely a learn by doing experience, and Toastmasters provides the perfect medium, whether you be a complete novice, or a seasoned veteran.

Beginning in 1924, Toastmasters International has grown to a worldwide organisation, with clubs in every state of the United States and approximately 90 other countries. A quick search on their website should reveal clubs in your city, and maybe even in your local area. Clubs consist of anywhere between 6 and 40 members, and meet on a regular basis (monthly, fortnightly, or weekly) to practise prepared and impromptu speaking skills, and providing feedback and evaluations.

My personal experience with Toastmasters began with their public speaking course “Speechcraft”. In a class of a dozen students, we were guided by experienced members of a local club, as well as several guest speakers, on the various aspects of Toasmasters meetings. At each meeting we learned to progressively incorporate the elements of public speaking: speech structure, body language, vocal variety, evaluating others, impromptu speaking, and dealing with nerves. Joining the club after the course was a no brainer, as that would allow me to practise all the useful techniques I had learnt.  I’ve since served as an executive in the club (the Vice President of Public Relations to be exact) and competed in humorous and evaluators public speaking competitions; competitions that start at the club level, where winners could potentially progress to the world championships. Needless to say, there have been no shortage of opportunities to develop my communication and leadership abilities.

So will Toastmasters be right for you? Give it a go and see for yourself. Whether you decide to only attend a few meetings as a visitor, or join a club and work your way to the world championships of public speaking, here are some tips on getting the most out of your Toastmasters experience:

• Find the right people - Visit different clubs, talk with the people there, and find one which feels right for you. Different clubs will have different styles of running their meetings, so find one which appeals to you, and if you’re out of luck, you may consider starting your own club!
• Go where there are experienced members - You will learn the most from the seasoned veterans who have been there and done that. Toastmasters has been around for a while, so there should be no shortage! Even if they don’t evaluate your speeches, ask for their feedback anyway. If your club is short of experience, then invite members from other clubs to attend your meetings and bask in their words of wisdom!
• Take the opportunity to become an executive or organiser - Since Toastmasters invites people from a diverse background of age groups and skill sets, this is an excellent way to network with other members, and to just network in general! If becoming a leader is your game, then this is also an excellent way to develop those leadership abilities.
• Go extracurricular - Don’t forget that Toastmasters isn’t the only place you can practice public speaking! Translate your abilities to other aspects of your life (be it work, social, recreation, or hobbies) and wow your audiences with your refined speaking skills.

For more information on Toastmasters International, check out the official website, http://www.toastmasters.org/