Leadership

Achieving Business Speaking Success

Written by Rayzelle Forrest Young for Gaebler Ventures

Highlights the essential elements needed for a successful business presentation. Discusses the importance of humor, audience participation and sharing short stories

If you run a business, at some point or another you will need to make a speech or give a presentation.

There is an art to achieving business speaking success. The main thing you want to do is employ tactics that will keep your audience interested, engaged and connected to what's being said. Here are tips to help you achieve business speaking success.

Give A Quick Outline

Let the audience know at the beginning of the presentation what you plan to accomplish. Inform them of your intentions and how you plan to accomplish it. This will help give them a sense of direction while you are speaking.

Use Audience Participation

Keep your audience interested by using audience participation. Ask questions, ask for volunteers or even take audience readers. Feel free to ask them to share their experiences and personal stories as well as help with demonstrations. This helps the audience feel like they are a part of the presentation and not just spectators. It will also help decrease boredom and help the audience pay attention.

Share Yourself

Feel free to share your experiences as well. Include short stories about yourself throughout the presentation. You must be careful with this though. You don't want to bore your audience. This gives your audience a way to relate to you and lets them know that you are just like them and have the same or similar life experiences.

Use Humor

In addition, use humor to hold the interest of your listeners. Humor is what helps your audience remember the presentation. No matter how boring the subject is, adding a few touches of laughter will always liven it up and make it seem more interesting than it is.

Simplify Statistics

Depending on your topic, your speech may need to use statistics. Statistics are always a crowd sleeper but it doesn't have to be that way. To make you statistics more interesting, try to use examples with them that the audience can relate to. Don't make them too sophisticated or at an intelligence level that is beyond that of your audience. This means you will have to know the demographics of your listeners.

Achieving business speaking success can be easy if you use a variety of attention grabbing techniques. Begin your presentation by letting the audience know what you plan to achieve in your speech. In addition, be sure to use audience participation and humor to keep them interested in what you're talking about.

Rayzelle is an entrepreneur and writer. Based on her experiences as an owner of her own dance studio, she will share her personal tips on being a successful entrepreneur.

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