Services Training
Some people think that speaker training is all about loading the trainee with gestures, pauses, and all the elements of stage acting. Wrong.
More than anything else, speaker training is about getting the speaker so comfortable with a text that his or her enthusiasm for the subject and natural charm can come out.
Most business people are very good extemporaneous speakers, a skill that requires a fast mind and a heightened sensitivity to the audience. On the other hand, speaking from a text requires practice, practice, practice — practice until the text is so familiar that the speaker can stop thinking about the next word or sentence and start thinking about the idea being put across or the sale being made.
The first task in speaker training is getting the speaker to where he (or she) is prepared to make that connection with the audience.
Services Writing
One of the tricks of effective writing is coining memorable phrases. Soundbites. Here are some tips:
Names: Think of the New Deal, the Iron Curtain, the Evil Empire. By giving your idea or initiative a name, you give people something to remember.
Images and Metaphors: Look at those names again. ”New Deal” and “Iron Curtain” each incorporated an image and metaphor into the name. People are more likely to remember words the conjure a vision in their imaginations than an abstraction.
Popular Culture: ”Evil Empire” was a reference to Star Wars, which had recently been released at the time Ronald Reagan slapped the name on the Soviet Union. People are also more likely to remember references to popular culture if only because they know popular culture so well.
There is nothing magical about crafting language that is memorable. The trick is having ideas and arguments that are worth remembering.