Everyone is blessed with a certain level of persuasive skills. Whether it’s a salesperson convincing a customer why they should buy a product or a mother convincing her child why he needs to sleep early – persuading is something that revolves around our lives whether we realise it or not.
This applies to persuasive speeches as well. These are speeches made with the intention of selling an idea, message, service or product to the audience. Some forms of persuasive speeches include sales pitches, legal proceedings and debates.
Here is a definitive step by step guide on how to frame and execute an excellent persuasive speech:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Selecting a topic
- Organize content
- Know your content inside and out
- Storytelling techniques (Hero’s journey)
- Make use of ‘you’ and ‘because’
- Reinforce your message
- Adopt the Golden Circle Approach
- Provide solutions to the problem
- Summing it up
1. Selecting a topic
People are naturally interested in stories that have a hook. For a speech, this is none other than a topic. Every speaker wants their audience to be engaged and hence, the first step to achieving this is to select a good topic that will capture the attention of their audience.
Here are ways you can identify a good topic for your persuasive speech:
a) Brainstorm
A well-chosen topic is key to the success of a good speech. Brainstorming is a method that helps you generate topic ideas. It also should feel less stressful than other methods. Once you’ve come up with a list of potential topics, it all boils down to identifying what you think is good, depending on several factors such as who your listeners are and what their interests are.
Once done, start the process of elimination and remove the topics one by one till you find the perfect topic to speak about. Brainstorming is a creative process. If you don’t put in the effort to be creative, your presentation will never touch the minds and hearts of your audience.
b) Tailor the content of your presentation to your audience’s needs
Understanding who you are speaking to can help you sound much more persuasive. This helps determine how you can make your tone suitable for them and the content much more relevant and relatable to your audience.
For example, if you are speaking to a young audience, you should find out how they speak and their capacity of understanding. If you will be speaking about difficult topics like insurance, it doesn’t make sense to use a lot of technical terms or jargons especially since they definitely wouldn’t understand what you’re saying most of the time.
Furthermore, if you come in to the talk without any effort to adapt to your listeners, it will be a surefire way to lose their interest. And if they do not see a need to listen to their show, how are you going to sell your idea in the first place? Make an effort to show that the speech was tailored especially to them. This will increase your credibility as a result and show you’ve done your homework.
Questions to get yourself started:
- Who will be attending your presentation?
- What are their goals?
- What motivates them?
- What values do they most care about?
- What are some examples that are relevant to them?
- How can I customize the slide images to resonate with their industry or line of work?
- What are the words I can use that are relevant to them or are used daily in their conversations
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