teach marketing, but this example for public speaers is fantastic...
I'm sure you've heard about the surveys showing that more people
are afraid of giving a speech than dying.
Perhaps most dreaded of all is dying while giving a speech! But
that will never happen to you if you remember this Bullet.
In four easy steps, it will teach you how to craft a powerful
speech on any topic, a talk your listeners will enjoy and respond
to favorably. As an extra bonus, this method will also help you to
write a winning headline whenever you need one.
This four-step formula was created by Richard C. Borden. Many years
ago, Borden was the Administrative Chairman of the Department of
Public Speaking at New York University. He was also one of the
nation's most popular speakers and sales trainers, as well as an
author of books on selling and public speaking.
To give a great speech, Borden recommends that you imagine your
audience shouting out these four emotional outbursts as you give
your talk (this will become clear in a minute)...
"Ho hum!"
"Why bring that up!"
"For instance?"
"So what?"
Let's see how this works in practice . . .
Let's imagine that you must give a speech or important
presentation. You are dreading it, but there's no escape. So you
enroll in a course that teaches the Borden method. At your weekly
classes, you practice by standing before the group and giving talks
on various subjects assigned to you.
Each time you do, as you take your place at the front of the room,
on cue the entire class shouts at you, at the top of their lungs,
"Ho hum!"
If you were nervous before standing up to speak, hearing this
thundering "Ho hum!" hurled at you by forty to fifty bored people
will instantly turn you into a quivering mass of jelly.
But the experience teaches two valuable lessons . . .
First, you learn--in your gut, as only actual experience can
teach--this truism of life: Fear is a cowardly bully. Stand up to
it, and it runs.
Second, this experience indelibly stamps in your awareness the most
critical principle of giving an effective speech: Your opening must
electrify your audience, shake them awake, or, as we Borden
students like to put it, "crash the ho-hum barrier."
In his book, Public Speaking as Listeners Like It! Borden gives
this example. Let's say you've been asked to speak on traffic
safety.
Don't start out with . . .
"The subject which has been assigned me is the reduction of traffic
accidents." Ho-hum indeed! How much more interesting to start your
speech with . . .
"Four hundred and fifty shiny new coffins were delivered to the
city last Thursday."
That's a grabber that will instantly interest your audience as they
wonder, "Why?"
* * *
OK, so let's say you've got an interesting opening sentence that
survives the "Ho hum!" challenge. You're just getting started in
the Borden torture chamber!
Next, the entire class shouts at you, "Why bring that up?" which is
your invitation to expand upon your attention-getting opener.
Next, the class shouts, "For instance?" demanding at least one
specific, persuasive example of the point you're making.
Finally, the class screams, "So what?"--what do you recommend we do
about this?
Let's see an excellent example provided by one of the greatest
copywriters who ever lived, Bruce Barton, cofounder of Batten,
Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO), a leading Madison Avenue ad
agency where I used to work alongside John Caples. (That name, by
the way--Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn--was once described by an
advertising wag as sounding "like a man with a suitcase falling
down a flight of stairs." I love that description!)
Here is an example from a talk by Bruce Barton that Borden cites in
his book. Barton was a firm believer in self-improvement, and in
this talk he was urging a group of young men to make more
productive use of their spare time. (Though they were not part of
Barton's talk, I'll overlay the four Borden questions at the right
places to show, as Borden did in his book, how well Bruce Barton's
talk illustrates the Borden method.)
1. Ho Hum!
Barton begins his talk with an intriguing observation about the
potential value of spare time...
"Last month a man in Chicago refused a million dollars for an
invention he had evolved in his spare time."
2.Why Bring That Up!
"You are interested in this because it confronts you with the
possibilities of your spare time. Did you ever stop to think that
most of the world's great men have achieved their true life work,
not in the course of their needful occupations, but--in their spare
time?
3. For Instance?
"A tired-out rail-splitter crouched over his tattered books by
candlelight or by fire-glow, at the day's end; preparing for his
future, instead of snoring or skylarking like his co-laborers.
Abraham Lincoln cut out his path to later immortality--in his spare
time.
"An underpaid and overworked telegraph clerk stole hours from sleep
or from play, at night, trying to crystallize into realities
certain fantastic dreams in which he had faith. Today the whole
world is benefiting by what Edison did--in his spare time.
"A down-at-heel instructor in an obscure college varied the
drudgery he hated by spending his evenings and holidays in
tinkering with a queer device of his, at which his fellow teachers
laughed. But he invented the telephone --in his spare time.
4. So What?
"Gentlemen, you, too, have spare time. The man who says: 'I would
do such and such a great thing, if only I had time!' would do
nothing if he had all the time on the calendar. There is always
time--spare time--at the disposal of every human who has the energy
to use it. Use it!"
Have a GREAT day!!
Paul Evans
www.instantspeakingsuccess.com
7020 Fain Park Dr. Suite 5, Montgomery, AL 36117, USA
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