If you are professional speaker, a sales trainer, a corporate trainer or a service professional who wants to get more clients or customers, the one skill you need to learn is persuasive speaking. Although most attribute this skill to having to talk in public, the fact is that non-pros need to learn the art of persuasion during their professional (no matter what they do for a living) or personal life. However, for this article; we will deal with the realities of using it with public speaking.

As a professional speaker, not all of your talks will be designed to be humorous or entertaining in that fashion. Sometimes your talk may be on serious subjects to elicit donations or certain actions from people in positions of influence.

It seems the jury is out on this one, with opinion divided on whether or not it is okay to laugh at your own jokes. Maybe it’s just me (although I doubt it given the number of comedians and humorous speakers who also laugh at their own jokes), but I believe the aim of a speaker is to connect with the audience, and sharing a laugh is the perfect bridge to achieve that.

New speakers make the mistake of focusing all their creative efforts on the body of their talk, and maybe the opening.  But the ‘close’ is just as important as the ‘opening’ of your talk.  In fact, your audience may remember you more from your close than from your opening.  If you think about it, the close is probably even more important than the opening. If your opening wasn’t the huge success you’d hoped for, you have the rest of your talk and your close to remedy the situation. 
 Think of your …

Biorhythmic differences aside, generally speaking, the majority of people are not at their peak first thing in the morning. What does this mean for you as a speaker, especially if you’re expected to “warm them up” with your witty repartee?

Well, it means that you have to make allowances for early morning audiences and make some slight adjustments to your talk. You will rarely find an early a.m. audience to be a rowdy raucous bunch of lively participants. In fact, your wittiest one-liners may well fall flat and be met with …