Reaction, Behavior, Results

When a speaker is making a presentation to an audience there are three observable indicators of effectiveness:

1. Reaction - How do audience members respond to the speaker while the presentation is in progress? What kind of feedback do they offer following the presentation? Were they informed, inspired, and entertained? Were they glad they attended?

2. Behavior - What observable changes in behavior have taken place following the presentation? Can participants cite changes in their own behavior? Do they take steps to alleviate problem situations? Are they better able to perform their jobs as a result of something that they learned at the presentation?

3. Results - Here's the ultimate payoff; what long-term changes have ensued as a result of what participants learned from the presentation? How have they been more effective at their jobs? How have they supported the overall goals of their organizations? Was the presentation sufficiently worthwhile such that they want to hear more from the same speaker?

Unusual Speaking Experiences

A World of Unusual Speaking Experiences!

In the course of speaking to more than 770 audiences around the world, I have encountered my share of unique engagements. For example, when I spoke to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department, every audience member was carrying a gun. Understandably, I felt compelled to give a great presentation.

At a leadership conference sponsored by the St. Alfonsus Regional Medical Center, I was introduced by a staff member, wearing skis, whose conclusion involved sliding down the stairs off the podium.

Win Over the Middle

The most effective presentations are offered to the audience participants in “middle,” not at the extremes. Let me elaborate. When I worked with Domino Pizza's distribution corporation in 1992 on a book titled The Domino Effect, I learned from their division president that among any target or audience group, roughly 6% to 8% will dislike you no matter what you do because they associate you with something or someone negative! Hence, their evaluations are essentially invalid.

A similar percentage, roughly 6% to 8%, will approve of you almost regardless of what you do
because they like the way you look or your personality! Their feedback is invalid too.

Your real task becomes reaching the middle 84% to 88% of the audience who arrive relatively-free of inclinations towards the presenter one way or the other.

No More Off-the Shelf

Today, every audience requires at least some form of a tailored presentation. There are no more off-the-shelf programs that fit every audience every time, even when the topic is as generic as management, leadership, or stress. The speaker has to take time to know the audience, what they're specifically facing, their daily challenges, and so on.

The true professional speaker will spend more time asking you about your audience than conveying the essence of his or her message, at least at the outset. Be wary of any speaker who claims to have just the right message but who does not ask you a lot of questions.

Warning up the Audience

Some of the best speakers I know employ a tried and true technique for warming up an audience: getting them to offer applause, three times, early in the session. For example, I recall someone effectively using this approach: "Let's give a hand for the food service people who prepared and delivered our breakfast this morning. Also let’s recognized the people at (organization) who flew me in to be here with you. How about a round of applause for them? Last, and certainly not least, how about yourselves? You took time out of your busy schedules to be here. Let’s have a round of applause for everyone here."

At this point, what audience wouldn’t be focused, ready to listen, applaud, and have a good time?

Accessible Speakers

There might be some mystery and allure surrounding the speaker who doesn't interact with audience members prior to the speech. Increasingly, however, attendees want to see the speaker as a fellow professional, certified member of the human race, and someone who is accessible. Are your speakers willing to meet with audience members prior to their actual presentation? If they'll be attending your conference or convention, are they willing to rub elbows with members or staff in the hallways, at other meeting events, just prior to going on stage, and afterwards, if time permits?

The functionally competent, oratorically stirring speaker who is aloof to your audience before and after presenting does not win over hearts and minds in the way that the fully engaging, personable, and accessible speaker does. Ask about this consideration when you're in the negotiation stage. You may be surprised as to the answers you receive.

Speakers Who Go Beyond

What type of speaker routinely pleases meeting planners? The speaker who:

1.) Knows how to make the meeting planner's task easier and more enjoyable.

2.) Researches the audience in advance through interviews.

3.) Offers subject matter that directly coincides with audience needs.

4.) Is a lively and compelling presenter who engages the audience the whole way through.

5.) Offers value added services which may include posting handouts on a blog or website, making follow-up calls, or offering desired bonus items or information.

Four Basic Audience Needs

Since my first paid presentation in 1983, I’ve learned a great deal about what audiences need, want, and expect, which primarily boils down to four vital ingredients:
* to be informed,
* to be entertained,
* to participate in some way,
* and most of all to be inspired to take action.

Over the course of 26 years, remarkably, these four basic needs prevail.

Keynotes: Less is More

In a keynote speech it is better to present one key idea four different ways than it is to cram your keynote full of material that is guaranteed to miss the mark with 75% of the audience.

Death by Powerpoint

What audiences find irritating about Powerpoint presentations:

speaker read the slides 60%

text too small to read 51%

text too wordy 48%

poor color choices 37%

moving text or graphics 25%

irritating sounds 22%

complex charts 22%

What is the Speaker's Impact

A strong positive reaction from the audience members and the visible exhibition of learning are desirable outcomes for any speaker. A larger question, however, is "what impact did the presentation have on job performance?"

It behooves you to make follow up efforts to determine what changes in behavior, if any, on the parts your audience members resulted from a speaker’s presentation. Have audience members done anything differently since the presentation? Has their behavior changed? Has their performance improved? Do groups handle their responsibilities with greater ease? The simple speaker evaluation rating sheets that audience members complete directly following the presentation don't and can't answer these types of questions.

Don't Over-Pack the Conference

Packing the day looks good in the conference brochure but wears on attendees. Give them a mid- morning and a mid-afternoon break of 20 to 30 minutes. The day and whole conference will go better for everyone.

Adding Humor to a Speech

Sprinkle in humorous quotes from family members.

Add a completely incongruous slide to your A/V presentation.

Prepare a ready list of comical "blooper comebacks" for possible miscues.

Offer a Davids Letterman-like "Top-10 list" related to your message.

Devise "What's In and What's Out" parody related to your topic.

Your Exhausted Audience

Whether you plan meetings or speak at them, here's a long term development that you can't ignore: Only 3 per cent of professionals get eight hours of sleep every night of the working week. According to Travelodge's 2007 sleep study, company directors are the most sleep-deprived of all, with 8 per cent getting under four hours of rest per night. The typical audience today is exhausted

Travelodge's survey included more than 5,200 individuals from 30 different careers to discover more about how work affects rest. Those in the travel industry, such as cabin crew and pilots, found it hardest to get to sleep: 86% struggled with sleepless nights. Teachers were the most likely to stay awake because they were worrying about their work (39%).

What are the top 10 most sleep-deprived professions? In order:

* Company directors (averaging 5.9 hours of sleep a night)
* Ambulance crew/paramedics (6 hours)
* Tradesmen (6 hours)
* Leisure and hospitality workers (6 hours)
* Police officers (6.1 hours)

* Factory workers (6.2 hours)
* Nurses (6.3 hours)
* Engineers (6.3 hours)
* Doctors (6.4 hours)
* Civil servants (6.4 hours)

Speaker Selection Challenge

Nancy Lazarus, writing in meetingnewsresearch says that “the process of picking a speaker, while not as universally feared as public speaking itself, still has an assortment of variables, any of which could result in a wrong choice.”

“As expensive as speakers are, usually the most costly component of their presentation is the cumulative time of those listening,” said Brian Palmer, president of National Speakers Bureau in Libertyville, Ill. That makes picking speakers who can deliver messages that resonate with the audience among a meeting planner’s most vital tasks. The rest of the article

Critique Your Literature

Attracting people to your meeting can be a challenge. Have you critiqued your own marketing literature of late?
* As you read your Web content, brochure, or other marketing literature, following each assertion made, ask yourself the question, "According to whom?" To be convincing, the answer has to be someone who is held in esteem by the people in your target market.
* Stellar marketing materials could be handed to an individual who's never heard of you and enable him to quickly and accurately determine what you offer and why it’s worth investigating.
* A person of average intelligence should be able to quickly understand based on your marketing materials what the meeting will deleiver. If not, they need to be rewritten.

Speaking Experiences, 2nd

When Jeff was retained to speak on board a cruise ship to the National Association of Women Business Owners, he was surprised and pleased to discover that he was the only male presenter onboard!

Another time, Jeff presented a half-day seminar to a group of association executives who were given nothing for breakfast and nothing during the breaks except for coffee or tea. By the third hour of the presentation, blood sugar levels and attention spans were dropping all over the room. Had he known in advance, Jeff would have brought bagels and cream cheese for everyone!

Theme Ideas Handbook

Jerry Busche has assembled a resource of themes for your futures meetings at BizMotivation site where he offers a "Theme Ideas Handbook" available for download. The handbook contains more than 600 theme ideas, adaptable for meetings, conferences, or other events. Here is a brief sampling of some of the ideas:

* Teamwork in Action
* Brown Bag Briefing
* They Said It Couldn’t Be Done
* Delighting the Customer
* Treating Customers Right

Ms. Snowden McFall

In the speakers worth knowing category: Hailing from the tiny New England state of New Hampshire, Snowden McFall is a whirlwind of energy and right-on-target marketing and promotion strategies.

Ms. McFall, whose husband's last name is White (she retained her maiden name, so as not be Snow White) disarms audiences from the first minutes on with a quiet exuberance that reaches every person in the group on a one-to-one basis. Her accomplishments are phenomenal. The owner of a highly successfully advertising and public relations firm, she has handled campaigns for politicians, corporation, and well-known institutions.

McFall leaves no stone unturned in presenting her strategies. She offers step-by-step instruction in clear, easy-to-understand terminology bolstered by supporting A/V. When she is done, listeners feel more than motivated to get up off their duffs. Afterwards, McFall makes herself available for follow-up questions and to receive the kudos that keep coming her way.

Free vs. Fee Speakers

Free vs. Fee Speakers
By Ed Rigsbee, CSP

When is it cheaper to hire a professional than it is to hire free speakers? The answer that many meeting planners would instantly offer is, never. The other day, I had an eye-opening conversation with the executive director of an association based in the eastern part of North America. If you answered the opening question the same way, hopefully, this will open your eyes.

The executive director said to me, "Ed, I discovered it was cheaper to hire you to speak for two days at my meeting than pay the travel and lodging expenses of the four free speakers that I was thinking of using." For a couple years now I have been conducting multi-day for single-fee programs, and still, his comment was truly an eye-opener for me.

In an effort to be accurate, I should share some additional details with you. First, the meeting venue is Maui, Hawaii and some of the free speakers would fly from eastern North America. Second, I offer multi-day programs eliminating the need for additional speakers.

Deliver Value vs. Fill the Void
Do the people responsible for particular meetings want to offer usable take-home value for the meeting attendees or do they simply want to fill a void? Last spring, a meeting planner hired me to present at her national fall meeting. Since I live in the Greater Los Angeles area, she suggested that I might want to attend her coming Western Regional meeting that was to be held in Los Angeles.

I took her up on the offer and arrived early enough to hear the keynote speaker, a local college professor of marketing. Following the keynote, I said to the meeting planner, "I thought your members were in industry." She responded, "They are." And then went into long discussion about how disappointed she was that the professor was so off-target for her group.

The Real Cost of Cheap
What percentage of the attendees from the above mentioned Western Regional meeting will rush to attend that same meeting the next year? What percentage will wonder if they again want to listen to an off-target college professor, who thinks he is addressing retailers but in reality is addressing industrial fabricators? How many potential following-year attendees did the professor lose for that meeting planner? Would this situation make your meeting appear to be shoddy or inferior?

Supplier companies love to send their representatives/salespeople to speak at conventions, as it is free publicity-even if they have to pay their own way. Sometimes the meeting attendees are lucky in that the supplier's speaker will be motivating while offering usable content. Sometimes they aren’t so lucky, especially when the supplier's speaker does not take the time (like the college professor mentioned above) to either understand the needs of the audience or plan an honest presentation. Too often attendees only get a sixty-minute commercial. After a sixty-minute commercial, what percentage of attendees will break down the doors to attend the following year?

What percentage of your other suppliers would also be outraged? How excited will they be the following year to belly up to the table and again pay more than their fair share for the meeting? Fair Share? Yes, suppliers always pay more than regular members. Associations justify the higher charge since they "get business" there.

Could the above combination of situations cost you 10 percent of your attendees the following year? And again cost you another 10% of the reduced number the year after that? And what about the following year? Could this be the reason for the downward spiral many associations are currently facing?

Saving with Professionals
Professional speakers live and die on their reputation. Please do not confuse celebrity speakers with professional speakers. Celebrity speakers get paid gobs of money to speak at a meeting, not because of their eloquence, but because of the average person's desire to be in the same room with them-to experience them live. Their job is exclusively to attract people to the meeting. When I talk about professional speakers, I'm talking about the people that earn the lion's share of their income from speaking at meetings or conducting trainings and their related books, tapes, etc. These are the people who generally interview and research the issues and needs of their audiences and tailor or customize their proven material for each unique audience. These people are experts in their field or experienced sorry tellers or humorists.

These are also the people your attendees expect at their meeting. These are the speakers that deliver solid take-home content while also creating a motivating environment. They have to be exciting, motivating and funny-or they don't eat!

Keeping in mind all that has been mentioned above, why in the world would you settle for a free speaker? Especially, when that choice could be the most expensive. Don't your meeting attendees deserve the value they expect?

* * * *

Fellow speaker Ed Rigsbee, CSP is the author of PartnerShift, Developing Strategic Alliances and The Art of Partnering. Rigsbee is a keynote presenter at corporate and trade association conferences across North America and can be reached at ed@rigsbee.com or via www.rigsbee.com.