Elmer Wheeler's Tested Public Speaking [Second Edition]

Elmer Wheeler

• Publisher: Golden Springs Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781787201477
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

Originally published in 1947, this is the Second Edition of "Elmer Wheeler's Tested Public Speaking" (1939). Brought up to date, it incorporates revised material based on Wheeler's further vast experience acquired in the course of giving 2,798 additional speeches since the publication of the first edition in 1939. It also includes his talk, "Take an Hour to Say No," which at the time of this 1947 publication had been reprinted over a record 7 million times.
"As usual, Elmer Wheeler has based this book not on fancy, academic rules, but rather on his own practical experience as an outstanding speaker in his own right."

 

CHAPTER 1—PICK THE SIZZLE

(Wheelerpoint 1)

IT’S THE SIZZLE that sells the steak, not the cow!

Whatever you are going to talk about has a sizzle. When the Democrats wanted to re-elect Woodrow Wilson in 1916, they seized upon the one outstanding fact of his first administration—“He kept us out of war!” That was the sizzle as far as the Democratic party was concerned.

The sizzle, then, is the core of your speech—the point of the argument. It’s the reason you are talking. It’s what you want, or the answer to what you want. The sizzle is usually the emotional side of the argument, the side that makes people want to do something for you—more than the money it may cost, or the time it may take.

It’s the tang in the cheese, the crunch in the cracker, the whiff in the coffee, the pucker in the pickle, the bubbles in the bottle—that make you want these things.

People are responding to sizzles all day long—every day.

SO PICK THE SIZZLE FOR YOUR SPEECH!

If you are going to talk at the next luncheon meeting on “Throwing the Crooked Politicians out of Office,” decide why they should be thrown out, especially as your listeners may be affected. The sizzle you pick might be this: “Every single day these fellows are in office they are wasting $426 of your money!”

The rule is simple—First find your sizzle.

Suppose you want to give a speech on the danger of fast driving. The sizzle, of course, is the fact that the listeners themselves may be hit—that very night. Their sons, daughters, fathers, or mothers may be struck by some reckless motorist. Of course, the sizzle has to be dressed up so that it gets across successfully, but first you must decide what it is.

Let’s take something hard. You have been in Ethiopia studying the manufacture of a hypothetical Smoky-Blue glass. Your Chamber of Commerce wants to know about it.

What’s the sizzle?

That the glass is pretty? That your glass factories could make it? That it can be imported cheaply from Ethiopia?

Probably none of these things would interest your Chamber of Commerce. They are important, yes—like the hoofs and the hide of the cow. But a cow couldn’t walk through a restaurant taking orders for her tenderloin! She needs the sizzle to sell her steaks, and you need one to sell your idea to the Chamber of Commerce.

To them the sizzle is: we can bring new blood and new money to this town if we go into this. There you’ve got the big sizzle—the important emotional urge in your proposition. Right in the laps of your audience!

Pick the sizzle—that’s the first law of building a talk.

WHEN YOU PICK THE SIZZLE, STICK TO IT

Before you begin your speech, you’ve got to sit down with paper and pencil and figure out what your sizzle is going to be—that big urge that will catch the audience right between the eyes! That will have the same effect on them as the sizzling of a steak does in a restaurant.

But one word of caution: when you have your sizzle, stick to it. Let it run through your speech like a lifeline. Come back to it from different angles.

Taking the Smoky-Blue glass again, as an example, you could talk about the method of marketing the glass, if you wanted to appeal to the advertising men in your audience, or the publishers, printers, and paper men. Or you could talk about sales in the stores, or increased payrolls and bank deposits. All these appeals bear your sizzle: new blood—new money.

Once you’ve decided upon your sizzle, stay with it—don’t lose it in a cloud of nebulous language. When you’ve got the sizzle clear in your mind, don’t bury it in verbiage.

When people are eating steak they don’t want side dishes of hamburger and chow mein. Serve the steak straight—not in goulash.

Too many colors spoil the necktie—too many sizzles confuse the audience, and make them “ear-blind” just the way too many colors make them “eye-blind.”

Stick to the sizzle—and the audience will stick by you.

HOW TO FIND THE SIZZLES

Now that you have an idea of what sizzles are, here is how to find them quickly: put on a pair of “sizzle specs” and look at your speech through the eyes of the audience.

Get their point of view!

What you may think is a sizzle, the audience is liable to think is a fizzle. But not if you look at your sizzles through their eyes. What do they want? What interests them?

Have “you-ability”—the ability to think “you” and not “I.” “You” is a gracious word—“I” a miserly one.

Be “you-minded!”

Let the other fellow hear about the benefits and advantages to him. What you will get will take care of itself.

So if you want to find the sizzles in your speech and make sure they aren’t fizzles, ask yourself this: “What would interest me if I were the audience?” That’s how to be a red-hot sizzler!

All of which sums up in one ten-second message:

Sell the sizzle and not the steak to your audience. Pick your sizzles with “sizzle specs” on, so you’ll know they won’t fizzle. Then stick to the sizzle!

 

It’s the Sizzle that Sells the Steak and not the Cow.

CHAPTER 2—LET THE AUDIENCE SNIFF THE SIZZLE—IN THE FIRST TEN SECONDS

(Wheelerpoint 2)

WHEN YOU ARE suddenly face to face with an audience, you have only ten short seconds to put yourself across: your first ten seconds are more important than your next ten minutes! At least if you miss getting the audience with you in your first ten words, it may take you ten minutes to regain the crowd.

You may never have another chance—so be careful how you begin!

For instance, let’s take the three speeches we mentioned before: you’ve already taken the first step in speech-building by picking out your big sizzle. But if you don’t serve it red-hot, it will flop. Nobody likes cold steak.

Here is how you might serve the sizzle about the crooked politicians with a ten-second sentence:

“Gentlemen, the wife of each one of you wasted $63 today. So did you!”

Flash!

You made the sizzle sizzle. It crashed into the audience and got them on the edge of their seats where they couldn’t fall asleep.

The talk on fast driving might be started off in this way:

“One of you gentlemen will be killed and three of you will be maimed for life by automobiles, before the end of this year!”

Zoom!

What person will fall asleep on that opener?

But the third case is not so easy. You are talking about a product that is unfamiliar, and, on the face of it, unexciting. How can you put it across? If your audience has never seen a piece of Smoky-Blue glass, you might try an attention-getter like this:

“In my pocket is something no one in this room ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• AN “OSCAR” TO ELMER WHEELER-FIRST IN AMERICA!
• PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD
• CHAPTER 1-PICK THE SIZZLE
• CHAPTER 2-LET THE AUDIENCE SNIFF THE SIZZLE-IN THE FIRST TEN SECONDS
• CHAPTER 3-SERVE THE STEAK THE WAY THEY WANT IT
• CHAPTER 4-REMEMBER THE DESSERT
• CHAPTER 5-IT’S DONE WITH MIRRORS
• CHAPTER 6-I DIDN’T KNOW THIS 2,798 SPEECHES AGO!
• CHAPTER 7-YOU CAN’T MAKE A SPEECH THROUGH FALSE WHISKERS
• CHAPTER 8-EXCITE ’EM, ANNOY ’EM, OR STARTLE ’EM
• CHAPTER 9-DON’T APOLOGIZE FOR GIVING A SPEECH
• CHAPTER 10-YOUR SPEECH BEGINS THE MOMENT YOU REACH THE PLATFORM
• CHAPTER 11-GIVE YOUR AUDIENCE A CHOICE-BETWEEN SOMETHING AND SOMETHING!
• CHAPTER 12-SYNCHRONIZE YOUR SIZZLES WITH SHOWMANSHIP
• CHAPTER 13-THE XYZ FORMULA FOR MAKING WORD MAGIC
• CHAPTER 14-DON’T BE A “HASH THINKER”-STICK TO ONE POINT
• CHAPTER 15-GET AUDIENCE ACTION WITH QUESTION MARKS
• CHAPTER 16-DON’T POINT YOUR FINGER AT THE AUDIENCE
• CHAPTER 17-THE SCARECROW ISN’T SUPPOSED TO MAKE A SPEECH
• CHAPTER 18-WHAT TO DO WHEN DISTRACTIONS OCCUR
• CHAPTER 19-TELL IT ON YOURSELF
• CHAPTER 20-UNCLE JOE CANNON “TRADEMARKS” HIMSELF WITH HAYSEEDS
• CHAPTER 21-DON’T USE SIX-BIT WORDS
• CHAPTER 22-KEEP YOUR SPEECH OUT OF THE LAND OF NOD
• CHAPTER 23-THE ART OF NOT DOING IT TOO WELL
• CHAPTER 24-BELLS, BARKS, WHISTLES, AND DRUMS
• CHAPTER 25-THE TRUTH IS GOOD ENOUGH
• CHAPTER 26-HOW TO KEEP AN AUDIENCE OF SALESMEN AWAKE
• CHAPTER 27-THE CHAIRMAN WHO “FLOPS” CAN FLOP YOU
• CHAPTER 28-A FEW HINTS TO THE TOASTMASTER
• CHAPTER 29-MAKE YOUR RADIO SPEECH SIZZLE
• CHAPTER 30-YOU CAN’T LEARN WHILE YOUR MOUTH IS OPEN
• CHAPTER 31-DON’T LET “IN CONCLUSION” BE SWEET WORDS TO YOUR AUDIENCE
• CHAPTER 32-THE CORNERED PANTHER YAWNS AND STRETCHES
• CHAPTER 33-DON’T BRING A SOAPBOX TO THE PLATFORM
• CHAPTER 34-HOW TO HANDLE AND FEED SPEAKERS
• A WORD FROM THE PUBLISHER
• MAGIC WORDS THAT MAKE PEOPLE BUY
• JUST ANOTHER WORD
• TAKE AN HOUR TO SAY… “NO”
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER