Speak Up! & Succeed

How to get everything you want in meetings, presentations and conversations

Nance Rosen

• Publisher: Pegasus Media World
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780978607876
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Public speaking made easy! Networking made fun! Build your reputation with communication leadership techniques. Win sales and job interviews. Enjoy collaborating with productive team meetings. Experience career success and business success. Easily overcome any objection to you or your proposal. Be crisp, clear and memorable. Feel confident and relaxed in meetings, presentations, and conversations. Prepare a talk in 10 minutes or less. Discover the tips and techniques professional speakers use to persuade, inform and influence an audience. Learn the secrets to persuasion, team-building, training, and briefing anyone. Get a career advantage for successful job interviews, new business development, and collaboration. Overcome objections, impress decision-makers, get approvals quickly. Move ahead in your career. Learn how to wow an audience by simply setting goals and developing the ideal mindset, presentation plan, content, and closing strategy, Great for professionals, consultants, managers, trainers, investor pitches, and career transition seekers. The Speak Up System is a nine-step method you can easily follow, with all the formulas for persuading, educating, brain-storming, and bringing decision-makers up-to-date. All the tips and techniques you need, including tons of examples you can use to create your own amazing presentations. The author is Nance Rosen, called America's job coach by CNBC, former Coca-Cola marketing executive, Forbes Coaching Council member and featured expert in Investors Business Daily’s Managing for Success. Visit the website: http://NanceSpeaks.com.

WHAT’S IN THIS SECTION?

Chapter 11: Your Heroic Achievement Story

Chapter 12: Your Startling Statistic

Chapter 13: Your Dramatic Quotation

ACT 1: GREAT OPENING

Segment 1: Introduce Yourself

Segment 2: Introduce Topic

Segment 3: Make Promises

ACT 2: STREAMLINED CONTENT

Segment 1: Foster Understanding

Segment 2: Create Belief

Segment 3: Ignite Urgency

ACT 3: GREAT CLOSING

Segment 1: Recall Promises Kept

Segment 2: Add Unexpected Value

Segment 3: Give Instructions

Section Four
Key Concepts

THIS SECTION EXPLORES THE ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF, which takes place in the first segment of your Great Opening in the Speak Up System. Introducing yourself is a crucial step in getting your audience to trust you, like you, and care about you. Plus, you must get their attention.

Your ideal outcome is this refrain in your audience’s brain: “Wow, you have remarkable experience, I feel lucky to listen to you!”

What’s the difference between the alternatives? A heroic achievement story is great for showcasing your values and character. A startling statistic is a fast way to share an achievement. A dramatic quotation conveys your philosophy or motivation.

There is a chapter for each style of introducing yourself, with formulas and examples. For each presentation you make, choose just one of the alternatives.

ACT 1: GREAT OPENING

Segment 1: Introduce Yourself

Segment 2: Introduce Topic

Segment 3: Make Promises

Section Four

CHAPTER 11

Heroic Achievement

Alternative #1 for a Great Opening, Segment One (Introduce Yourself)

THE FIRST ALTERNATIVE FOR INTRODUCING YOURSELF IS THE HEROIC Achievement story, which is perfect when you want to highlight your values or qualities. It’s the most powerful way to influence or reframe an audience’s perception of you. When they might underestimate the utility of your experience, education, or background, this is the ideal way to introduce yourself.

BE DRAMATIC

The best way to introduce yourself to an audience is through a dramatic account of an accomplishment or result you achieved in the face of significant odds. That’s the basis of your heroic achievement story. Engage your audience and inspire confidence as you share the salient details of solving a problem they can relate to. Make sure to highlight which of your personal qualities were critical in your achieving results.

Stories teach, they don’t preach. Even better, stories remain in the brain. Long after you’ve left your audience, your story will live on in their minds. That’s key to getting the commitments you need from an audience and getting those commitments to stick.

TIPS FOR A MEMORABLE HEROIC ACHIEVEMENT STORY

•Tell the story in chronological order.

•Set the scene. Describe the setting and what specifically made the situation or conditions difficult for you, your company, or a client.

•Add details about the problems. What particular risks or consequences did you have to confront?

TIPS AND TACTICS

Explain how you resolved the situation. Make sure you reference how you did it, not just that you got it done. What solution did you use, invent, create, or select? Then, describe the excellent result, as well as how you achieved it as quickly as possible and at the smallest possible expense.

Then tell the audience your name and job title or the focus of your work, if they don’t already know that.

Highlight a key benefit or quality that makes you and your story universally appealing. Since heroic achievement stories are about specific events, this last sentence is meant to telegraph the greater meaning at the heart of your story.

Your heroic achievement story does not have to be directly related to the industry or specific problem your audience is facing. Remember, this segment introduces YOU as a human being—so choose a story that demonstrates your personal qualities or your values. Your ideal outcome is to help the audience see you as a unique, valuable, and one-of-a-kind individual who brings your personal best to any situation. Highlight your best character traits in action.

GUIDELINES FOR A GREAT STORY

•Be brief

•Be bold

•Be brilliant

FORMULA FOR YOUR HEROIC ACHIEVEMENT STORY

1.Set the scene and reveal the conditions.

2.Create conflict using action words—build suspense.

3.Resolve the conflict with maximum effectiveness and minimum cost.

4.Formally introduce the hero (you) and broadcast the moral.

EXAMPLE #1

“Off the coast of Singapore on a sweltering August morning, I stood waist high in a well of crude oil and sand, waiting for our company’s helicopter to drop the one part that would get our client’s plant up and running. By midday, we installed the part, and the client was in operation. We actually retrofitted our device into a competitor’s system on the spot to minimize cost and downtime. All this happened within 24 hours of their call for help. I’m Jim Mariz, a sales representative for Gergen Oil Tools. My job is to do what it takes to keep our clients’ production up.”

LET’S TAKE THAT EXAMPLE STEP BY STEP

Step 1: Set the scene and reveal the conditions

“Off the coast of Singapore on a sweltering August morning,”

Step 2: Create conflict using action words—build suspense

“I stood waist high in a well of crude oil and sand, waiting for our company’s helicopter to drop the one part that would get our client’s plant up and running.”

Step 3: Resolve the conflict with maximum effectiveness, minimum cost

“By midday, we installed the part, and the client was in operation. We actually retrofitted our device into a competitor’s system on the spot to minimize cost and downtime. All this happened within 24 hours of their call for help.”

Step 4: Formally introduce the hero (you) and broadcast the moral

“I’m Jim Mariz, a ...