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Several years ago, one of our coaches attended a speech
by the president of a major industry association. This
industry bigwig
was speaking about the state of his business. After
being introduced, he spent the first five minutes of his
20 minute speech thanking people for inviting him.
That’s a quarter of his speech! And it went downhill
from there.
It was a nightmare.
The problem, of course, is the “Thank yous” are wasted
time for the overwhelming majority of the people
listening. They want to hear what you have to say, not
who has helped you along your way.
We used to tell people to dump all “Thank yous.” You’re
there for your audience. Give out your “thank yous”
personally in private. That should be enough to show
your gratitude.
But we’ve modified that advice based on the fact that so
many people ignore it. The fact is that speakers want to
give some “thank yous”.
So here’s what we say now:
Thank people for 10 seconds. Pause. Then
begin. If you can’t thank everyone in 10
seconds, you simply have too many people to thank. You
pause because it gives the audience a clear sense that
the real speech is about to begin. The pause says “So
we’ve got that out of the way. Now let’s start.”
We love marketing guru Seth
Godin’s idea on this subject.
He recommends taking photos of all the people you want
to thank and projecting them up on the screen in your
auditorium prior to your speech. It will save you from
having to formally thank them during the speech itself.
As much as we love this creativity, it’s not very
practical for most speakers.
At
Speechworks we help our clients learn how to communicate
in a way that connects and persuades. If you’re
interested in becoming a great communicator give us a
call at 404-266-0888 or check out our website at
www.speechworks.net. |
