Speaker turnover in the college market is impressive. We’ve seen it happen far too often. A new speaker spends around $2000 to go to an APCA or NACA conference only to never show up again. What happens? There are many reasons and we will try to blog about them from time to time so others can learn from past mistakes.
One reason is a lack of attention given to the entire process of creating a speech.
We are big on the speech creation process and understanding how it works. Having our process outlined allows us to review each segment and see what we are good at and what we can work on.
Here is our current speech creation model:
1) Research – This is where we dig into blogs, articles, magazines and books to find the most current data and stories relevant to the topic. Just look at my Del.icio.us bookmarks for our Myspace/Facebook talk and you can see how much reading we do on each topic.
2) Package – Once we have a pile of data and stories for the speech, we package it together like a puzzle. I often write each piece on a sticky and then rearrange them on my desk to create a flow for the speech. This section also includes creating any handouts or PowerPoint/Keynote slides. Kevin would call this section the hard work of clarity. Take a huge pile of stuff and pull out only the most important and arrange it to make sense and look nice.
3) Present – The last step is the actual delivery of the speech. How to deliver the content in a tone and pace that will connect best with the audience. If done right, a good presentation makes all the hard work from the previous two steps look easy.
Most weekend warrior speakers I’ve seen are usually only good at one of the 3 steps. They are amazing speakers with no content, or they are horrible speakers with fantastic content. For me, my best speeches are when I go through each step and my worst are when I skip or procrastinated on a step or two.
