Public speaking is not a data dump -- Amen

Tags: Public Speaking, Marketing

Today's New York Times has a great article about Grading the C.E.O. Speech, in which it tells several good stories about bad and good public speakers. I particularly liked the pointers at the end:

Veterans of the speaking circuit have their own pointers. Ms. Corcoran urges brevity. "A speech is a sales call," Ms. Corcoran said. "Give just enough, and then stop."

Long or short, avoid at all costs "the dreaded data dump," said Mr. Gallo, the speech coach. He lauded John S. Chen, the chief executive of Sybase, for keeping to a dozen slides in an hourlong talk, and Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com, for limiting the information on his slides to about seven words each. But he reserved his highest praise for Mr. Chambers of Cisco, whom he called "the most electrifying speaker in corporate America today."

Fond of strolling the stage and into the audience, Mr. Chambers asks a question or rests a hand on a person's shoulder in the style of an evangelist or television talk-show host. Speaking without notes, he merely glances at PowerPoint slides that he has memorized, and he maintains constant eye contact with his audience.

If anyone wants to know how to do create memorable public presentations, Blackfriars offers a course, "Making Messages Work" that emphasizes the things are weren't in the article, namely how to boil down your message to something short, simple, and most importantly, persuasive to a wide audience. Give us a call if you are interested -- it's our most popular training and it only takes about four hours.