Quick summary: There are three ways you can think about public speaking to stop you from doing it: “I’m modest about what I do” “Other people wouldn’t be interested in me” “I won’t be good at speaking” This piece suggests some different ways to look at your thinking, freeing you to become a confident speaker.
I started my career selling recruitment advertising on the telephone. On my desk there was a phone and boxes of cards with contact details for potential advertisers and notes from previous conversations. I went on to recruit, train and coach sales people to confidently start conversations on the phone and that approach worked just fine.
Membership of an Association is far more than a product or service. Membership groups are true communities. They are formed when people come together around a set of shared values and beliefs with the mission of strengthening and supporting these beliefs to achieve change and growth. But to have real value to its members, an
When it came to growing the membership community, my biggest learning was that membership had to be sold differently because it was fundamentally different to other things. It’s not simply a set of products or services, although these are involved. What makes membership groups different to most products and services is that they are at
Belonging to an Association is about so much more than a list of benefits. Yet conversations around membership start (and often stop) on the question of ‘What do I get?’ As an Association, how do you engage your members in a way that pulls them towards you, rather than pushing the membership benefits out? This
Practise makes a great speaker. It’s easy to do and easy to avoid. Here’s how to do it. I worked with an amazing group of people at my Public Speaking Masterclass this week. The group was made up of Association leaders that want to grasp and make use of speaking opportunities rather than walk in
When you’ve got an important meeting coming up, and you know that you’ll be called upon to present an idea, what are the key things you need to think about in order to make it a success? These are my tips for a successful outcome. They’re based around the four Ps of Preparation, Practise, Performance
What comes to mind when you think about the personal impact required to step up to a leadership role? How do you acquire it? When do you start? Is it a case of waiting, doing a great job and expecting that to sell you? Or are you developing your personal impact now to be ready
In the first piece of this two-part article I introduced the idea that the attention of both the audience and the speaker are under attack. Even when the opportunity for face to face connection arises, both parties can become distracted. And this can reduce the value of speaking engagements everyone. I suggested that the speaker
Public speaking is a joy. The opportunity to stand in front of a group of people whose faces you can see, whose attention you will have for a few short moments, who are still and silent, who are interested and have come to listen to you. Think of all the things that could happen by