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October 7, 2011

How To Write The Perfect Speech

The Perfect Speech Needs To Contain The Perfect Stories

The Perfect Speech Needs To Contain The Perfect Stories

Last week I had the opportunity to give the perfect speech. Now, you might be offended by this statement and are probably wondering just how I could become so full of myself, so perhaps I should explain myself.

I had spoken in this venue four times before, I had been invited to speak again because they liked what I had had to say before, and I knew that I was going to be speaking about a month before I actually got up on stage. These are all the elements of a perfect speech.

Since I already basically knew what I wanted to tell this audience, this time around I really worked on HOW I said it – I wanted to make an impact in their lives. Awhile ago I had read an article in which Patricia Fripp boiled down what makes a really memorable speech: tell a story, make your point, tell a story, make your point, etc.

So I did. I ended up working six stories into my speech and then following them up with the point that I wanted to make. In order to make sure that I would fit the 30 minutes that I had available, I did some quick math: 30 minutes x 150 words/minute = 4,500 words in speech. I then did something that I’ve almost never done before.

I wrote out my speech word for word. I did this because I had read somewhere else that in order for you to “tune” a speech, you need to know exactly what you are going to say. This came out to be about five single spaced pages of text.

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If you are interested in finding out more about how you and your team can improve how you give presentations using the Clear Blue Presentation System(tm), get in contact with Blue Elephant Consulting in order to find out how a customized presentation, consulting or training program could be created to meet your unique needs.