You can you Speak with confidence

One of the greatest fears we all have, is the fear of speaking in public. Some research I read a few years back showed that people feared public speaking even more than they feared death. Wow, that is quite an incredible result. It is crazy to think that someone, would rather die, than stand in front of a group of people and deliver a speech. 

This unnecessary fear is an instinctive primeval response, to our inbred fear of standing out from the herd. When we lived in a society, where there was a threat from predators. Anyone, who stood out from the crowd, was at the highest risk of being predated. So yes that fear you feel, when you are expected to deliver a speech in front of a group of people is real. It is primeval deep rooted fear of standing out. My question here is pretty simple. When last did you hear about a sabre toothed tiger eating someone, whilst they were speaking in public?

Time to deliver

I am sure that you have all experienced that incredible fear, as the announcer reads your introduction and signals you to come onto the stage to deliver your speech. As you walk towards the stage, your stomach is in your mouth, your mouth is dry and your hands are shaking. This is a very natural response. The challenge though, is that it is now time to stop worrying and to start delivering. 

This is your moment to shine, a wonderful opportunity to deliver your valuable message. It is your time to influence and inspire the people, who have come to listen to you. As you start to speak, “Your mind clears and you are able to deliver the best most inspiring speech of your life”. I know this is possible for you too, as I was probably one of the most nervous public speakers around and now I travel the world speaking to audiences of between 20 and 2500 many times a week. 

You can do it

I have experienced standing ovations from huge groups of people and also had a few really challenging experiences, where both the electrical power and my energy has failed me. Despite these challenges, I had to continue speaking, with a flashlight to a very unresponsive audience. All these lessons have helped shape me and have honed my skills as a speaker. I want to share a few secrets I have discovered during my travels as a public speaker. I hope these ideas will help you to become a persuasive, influential speaker too.

The talk you deliver, is never about you

Always remember that any talk you deliver is never about satisfying you. It is 100 % about the audience. No matter where you are delivering a speech, even if it is at a family wedding. The most important people are the audience members themselves. Start by putting yourself in their shoes, seats and mind-sets. 

Ask yourself the question, “If I were this audience, what is the most important, urgent message, I need to hear today”? Next take your persuasion objectives and align them with their expectations, needs, challenges and perspective, before you even start to speak. In other words, you must show complete, genuine interest in your listeners and they will sense your authenticity and in turn will show genuine interest in you and your message. 

Never write your speech out word for word

You can never deliver a really powerful speech, which is targeted at each audience’s needs and expectations, if you try to deliver a canned speech, which you have memorised word for word. You need to know exactly what your persuasion objectives are and then you need to build, your delivery around the audience and their needs.

Action Idea: Write your three key points out as precisely as possible. You can also create a mind map or pictures, if you are a more visual person. Once you have your key points clarified and the objectives of what you are trying to achieve is absolutely clear. The next step is to practice connecting all the points together, with a natural flow and pacing. Remember that no-one will know that you forgot something out or that you flubbed a line, unless you tell them.

Always expect the Unexpected

No matter what happens, always act like the interruption is unimportant. If a cell phone rings, a door slams, or any other major interruption occurs. Simply ignore it. If you focus on the interruption, the audience will move their focus away from you, to whatever you move your focus onto. So if someone sneezes and you say bless you. You will have lost your audience and will need to regain their attention, once again. As long as you stay focused on your message, so will your audience.

Death by PowerPoint

There is no worse way of delivering a message, than using too many PowerPoint slides, with too much text on each one. To compound matters, the person speaking then reads the slides to the audience. Nothing can lose an audience faster than that. If you find yourself reading your slides to your audience, save everyone some time and rather email them a copy. They can then read it themselves, without wasting everyone else’s time. 

Action Idea: If you must use PowerPoint, I suggest that you use one slide per five – seven minutes of talking, with a maximum of 10 words on each one. The best option is to use an appropriate picture or photo, to embellish or enhance your message. 

Close strong

When you close, include a message to your listeners, about why they are important. Stay focused on them and how your message will affect them, their jobs, lives or families. Try really hard to humanise your message at the end and people will leave with a connection, which goes way beyond the mere time you have invested together.

Even if you lose your footing and fall off the stage face down on the carpet. Simply say “I will now take questions from the floor” LOL. Speaking in public is not as hard as you believe it is. Enjoy the experience and it can become one of the most fulfilling experiences of your life.

Sales Training

  

Becoming the GO – TO Expert

Have you ever watched a so called expert doing a TV interview and thought “That guy or lady has no idea what he is talking about; they should be interviewing me instead” You are 100 % correct, they should be interviewing you. I want to share some valuable tips with you in this article, to support you to make just that happen.

Becoming a sought after expert

It is not as difficult as it at first seems, to become a sought after expert. The advantage of becoming that sought after expert is that doors will begin to fly open for you when you do. The media will begin to seek your opinion, business leaders will pay to hear your wisdom and you will become the go to person in your specific area of expertise. 

Overcoming the Three Expert Myths

Myth 1

You have to have a formal education with a master’s degree or a doctorate behind your name, to be classed as an expert. The truth is that tons of experts in virtually every field do not have any formal qualifications at all. Your own expert star will rise, based on the results you manage to create, not on where you went to school or the size of your formal education. 

Myth 2

You have to be present to act as an expert. The development of new technologies, such as webinars, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, can very quickly cement your expert status across time zones. The new trend, when assessing someone’s status as an expert, is often assessed by the size of their social media following. As your social media following grows, so too does your status as an expert.

Myth 3

You have to write and get your book published by a traditional publishing house to be regarded as an expert. This may have been true 30 years ago, but things have changed a lot since then. Look at your own circumstances. When last did you buy a book and read it cover to cover? I am certain that most authors would gladly trade their book rights, for a list of email addresses of 50 000 people, who want exactly what their message delivers. A person with a list of eager people, who want to hear their message, have access to an incredible amount of potential customers.

When you can debunk these three myths, you are in a position to start building your own status as an expert in your chosen field. The development of new technologies has made becoming an expert, easier and faster than ever before. 

Action Idea: Follow these few steps listed below and you too can become regarded as an expert in your chosen field.

Study what the masters, who have gone before have said. This is the toughest part of travelling the road towards becoming a master. It is the part of the process, where most of the heavy lifting is done. The more effort you put into this, the better equipped you will be to formulate your own opinion. This is where you learn the intricacies of your chosen topic and develop a general understanding around your chosen area of expertise. So when someone, quotes someone else’s work, trying to trip you up. You are equipped to answer them in an insightful way and even punt your own eLearning courses at the same time.

Find a challenge or opportunity, where you have a different opinion to others. To be recognised as an expert, requires you to have a very strong opinion, which is backed up by facts. Contrarian views always seem to get the most attention. Dare to stand out from the crowd, with a strong opinion. The challenge here is to not be contrarian for the sake of being controversial. Always be certain that you can back your view up with solid evidence or facts. Keep your opinion focused on helping and supporting people to solve urgent challenges and always looking for ways to add value to them. 

Constantly Test your Opinion. Keep refining and honing your opinion, by studying the results you are able to achieve. Keep repeating this, until you are able to test your opinion in many different situations. Once you have repeated this many times, you will become passionate and very confident with your opinion. This constant testing will allow you to refine and even change your opinion, if necessary. 

Get a megaphone. You cannot become the go-to expert, until people know you exist. Start building your network, through trade associations, the local media and social media. All three of these will put you in front of the people you are trying to reach. 

Action Idea: 

·         Engage with trade associations by offering to write articles for them, presenting a webinar or presenting a mini workshop at one of their meetings. The more energy and buzz, you can build around yourself and your work, the sooner you will be asked to be the expert you have become.

·         A similar approach will work with traditional and social media. Be engaging and give people something new to talk about and they will run with it.

Call yourself an expert. The sooner you start to call yourself an expert; the sooner people will sit up and take notice. There is no better way of getting people to recognise you as an expert than, self-proclamation. The secret though is to first ensure that you deserve the title first. Remember that you have studied the field extensively, you have tested your opinion, shared it in writing and in public places. Once you have started referring to yourself as an expert, so will everyone else too. The difference between an expert who charges $ 5000 and one who charges $ 25 000, is seldom more than simple perception. Build the perception around your expertise and you too will become the GO TO EXPERT, who will be earning the big fees.

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10 X Goal Achieving is Easier than you Think

The first time I heard about the concept of 10 X thinking, planning and goal setting,  was, a few years back, from Daren Hardy, the publisher of Success Magazine, in the USA. At the time it seemed like an interesting concept, but not one I thought would work. Since then I have read the 10 X Rule by Grant Cardone and numerous books and articles, by other thought leaders like Dan Sullivan, etc. As all these people have enjoyed massive levels of success in areas, where I wanted to play, I decided to explore the concept a little further. 

Simplicity at Work

Imagine a concept that could grow something, which is really important to you, “10 X” and yet you would end up with a much simpler, easier to manage and more enjoyable process. Would you find value in something like that? 

What is it you want?

Action Idea: Look at your own business and ask what you would like to achieve over the next twelve months. It could be something as simple as growing your turnover or profits tenfold or maybe something a little more creative like, doubling your results, with one fifth of your current clientele or maybe you want to retain your current business, as is, but would like to spend ten times more time with your family. The picture you paint, about what you would like to create in the future is up to you. The only requirement is that the results, you will achieve, must stretch you. You must aim to achieve an outcome, which is 10 X greater than you are currently achieving.

Secret to Working with 10 X Goals

Don’t look at your “10 X” goal, as an end unto itself. Rather look at it, as a means of supporting you to hone and develop a new set of skills and abilities, which will enable you to achieve 10 X outcomes, in the future. The more I explore the concept of 10 X thinking, the more convinced I become that it is not only a way to really thrive, but in this ever changing world we live in, it has almost become a necessity to survive.

 

Stretch yourself

Action Idea: Start to explore your world and look for ways to make 10 X improvements to the way you do things, find ways to achieve 10 X growth, look for ways to be 10 X more innovative and you will have uncovered a formula for becoming the best possible version of you. I believe that future belongs to 10 X thinkers.

The Rewards 

The rewards that will start to flow to you, all start with 10 X goal setting, which supports you to engage in 10 X thinking and 10 X learning. The improvements you will see in your life and business will be far greater than even you could ever imagine.  The power of 10 X goal setting, is found in the fact that, when you start to think 10 X, you are immediately thrust out of your current limited paradigm. As if by magic, limitations and obstacles, which existed before, begin to change and disappear. 10 X goals setting, does not get you out of the box you are in, it thrusts you into a completely new different box altogether.

10 X – Speeds things up

It sounds counter intuitive, but when you engage in 10 X thinking, things become far clearer, which allows you to make far greater progress, in a much shorter time frame. This happens because 10 X goals seem to act, as a really powerful filter, which allows for easier decision making and action. It effectively allows you to sort out all the issues, which are not in alignment with where you want to go. 

This clarity allows you to quickly shift through ideas, relationships, projects, activities etc. and decide if they have 10 X potential or not. You can then ask questions like:

·         Is this process going to support me to go 10 X?

·         Is this how I want to spend my time to go 10 X?

·         Does this relationship have 10 X potential?

·         Is this 10 X – you fill in the blank?

As you start to filter all your relationships, activities and decisions, through the 10 X filter of possibility, you can quickly begin to transform everything in your life. You can then eliminate all those things, which do not support exponential growth and create and attract all the things that do.

10 X Progress

You have an internal Google search engine called your RAS or reticular activating system. This is a neural net of nerves at the base of your skull, which filters out all the noise around you and only allows the crucial information you need to get through. As you know the mind only sees and the ears only hear what the mind is looking for. So if you have not programmed your mind to think 10 X and to look for 10 X ways of doing things, you will never see them. There are numerous 10 X opportunities all around you right now, but because you are not looking for them, you will never see them. 

When you start to think 10 X and set 10 X goals. It is as if by magic, that great people, with the perfect capabilities, seem to appear and they are willing to form strategic relationships with you. Unique technologies and innovative shortcuts, which eluded you for years, seem to just show up. The truth is that they have been there all the time. You have just not been thinking 10 X and did not have 10 X goals, so you did not see them.

10 X is easier, faster and more enjoyable

When I started exploring 10 X goal setting and thinking, it seemed counter intuitive to believe that achieving a goal 10 X larger,  would be easier to achieve than setting a goal of only 2 X, what I was currently achieving. The reason for this is that to go 2 X, you don’t need to change much. All you need to do is work a little harder or longer. You just need to expand on what you are already doing. If you Leverage your current capabilities, you can only grow incrementally, never exponentially. 

To go 10 X on the other hand means that the way you have always done things, will no longer cut it. To achieve 10 X goals, you need real change. You need to change the way you look at things and start to make leaps in your value creation, huge improvements in efficiency, resourcefulness and productivity. This new way of thinking, puts you in the driver seat. Instead of always feeling like you are trying to catch up, you will feel like you are in the driver’s seat.

Evolving technology and other changes are going to force you to change in the medium to long term anyway. So why not adopt 10 X goal setting and thinking, which will allow you to be ahead of the crowd, where you make those same changes in the short term.

Sales Training