Why Every Talk Should Have a Clear Goal

• 00:04 What is the goal of your presentation and your speech?
• 00:09 By the way, throughout this whole course I'm going to use the term speech,
• 00:14 presentation, talk, PowerPoint, almost interchangeably.
• 00:17 I really mean anytime you're speaking to two or more people,
• 00:21 and sometimes even one, and it's not just idle chitchat.
• 00:25 It's not just at the water-cooler talking about last night's game,
• 00:29 you're trying to communicate something very specific.
• 00:32 So the first thing you've got to do if you want to be an effective speaker,
• 00:36 you've got to have a specific goal.
• 00:38 It's like that in any other aspect of business or life.
• 00:41 You are not going to succeed unless you have something specific in mind.
• 00:46 It can't be just getting through it alive or
• 00:49 not looking like a fool, that's too lower than ambition.
• 00:53 So you need to have a specific goal in mind.
• 00:56 It could be getting that sale, getting that contract,
• 01:00 getting hired, getting budget approval.
• 01:02 What is it you want people to actually do?
• 01:06 Coming up to you afterwards asking for your car for
• 01:10 more information about your service, or your product, or your business,
• 01:15 getting funding for your startup.
• 01:17 What is your goal?
• 01:18 You need to have a very, very clear sense of exactly what your goal is.
• 01:24 Then and only then can you figure out what to say.
• 01:30 Okay, so let me just cut right to the chase the number one problem every single
• 01:35 one of my clients has everywhere in the world.
• 01:37 And I work with people from six continents in every kind of country,
• 01:41 every kind of language.
• 01:43 The number one mistake everyone makes is they dump way too
• 01:48 much data in their speech.
• 01:50 Their presentation is sort of, here's everything I know on this topic.
• 01:54 Here's everything we've done for the last quarter.
• 01:57 Here's every sales figure for every week for the last two years.
• 02:01 Here's a PowerPoint with 29 bullet points per slide and it's 72 slides.
• 02:07 So if you want to just hop right up to the advanced level now, and that's been years,
• 02:11 and years, and years of trial by air, all you have to deal with is this one thing.
• 02:15 And that is eliminate the massive, massive,
• 02:19 massive amounts of data most people try to convey in their speech.
• 02:24 Here's what I recommend.
• 02:25 Brainstorm on every single message point you would like to convey to this audience,
• 02:34 then put it in priority and narrow it down to the top five.
• 02:39 I'm a big believer that anytime you're giving a speech,
• 02:44 you should really focus on just five key ideas, five messages.
• 02:49 Well, why is that?
• 02:51 It's because I actually test audiences all over the world.
• 02:54 Here's what I found.
• 02:55 Every time I go to an organization to do a public speaking training, or
• 03:00 give a speech in front of a large crowd, I always ask people.
• 03:04 So can you think of the best speaker you've seen in the last five years?
• 03:10 Now, can you tell me every message point you remember from this fantastic speaker?
• 03:18 Not that they were funny or they walked around the stage a lot, but I want to know
• 03:24 how many messages do you actually remember from this fantastic speaker?
• 03:30 Now, sometimes I ask this question, people say, TJ,
• 03:34 I don't remember anything, but he was funny.
• 03:36 Sometimes people remember one message, okay, usually two, sometimes three.
• 03:43 Every once in a while someone will remember four messages.
• 03:47 And once every six months, someone will remember five messages
• 03:52 from the best speaker they've seen that year, or perhaps their lifetime.
• 03:58 Now, all the many years I've asked that question that people have never actually
• 04:04 had anyone remember more than five points, five main messages from a speech.
• 04:10 So that's why I urge you to focus on just five points.
• 04:15 Now, if you just follow this one tip, you're instantly
• 04:20 going to get to a very advanced status as a public speaker,
• 04:25 as a presenter, as a communicator.
• 04:28 And emotionally it's hard to do because people feel like,
• 04:33 gosh, TJ, if I don't tell people every single thing we do,
• 04:38 Smithers here might say I left something out.
• 04:41 Janet might complain that I was superficial.
• 04:46 Harold over here will complain that his pet project wasn't mentioned.
• 04:50 You know what, I better play it safe and just dump all the data until everything,
• 04:54 and put every point in there, and then everybody will think I'm smart.
• 04:59 Now, you know what everyone thinks when you do that?
• 05:04 TJ is really boring now, let me just check my email.
• 05:08 That's the only thing people are thinking.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.