Speak Clear Blog

By the look of that kid in the back, I would say so! What do you think?

Jeffrey Davis is the owner of Speak Clear Communications. He is an executive public speaking coach and accent reduction coach in New York City.

Many business professionals tend to simply rehash the obvious when presenting. Sales presentations become a litany of product information, investor updates become awash in figures and PowerPoint, and small group meetings get bogged down in repeated information. Suddenly a thirty minute meeting feels like two hours. No good.

You can beat boardroom boredom (fancy alliteration, no?) by utilizing metaphor. Giving an ad sales pitch about your companies ability to sort and sift data? How about utilizing diamond mining as a metaphor? Sprinkle your speech with words like “sift”, “mine”, “granular”. Start out with an attention getter: “Where do you find a diamond?”. Use the imagery of sifting through dirt to find the perfect stone to represent your companies ability to sift through users to find the perfect ad match. That’s right, abstract the speech a bit, not much, a bit, and use the power of imagery to make an impact on your audience.

At the end of the presentation, your audience will remember you first, the way you speak, smile, laugh, frown, and the images you create second. The content of your speech rates a distant third. So hook them first with human interest and creativity, and hit them with the hard facts later. In the end, we all want to be entertained, stimulated and engaged, so view your presentation as a small performance, and watch your speeches grow by leaps and bounds!

Jeffrey Davis is the owner of Speak Clear Communications. He is an executive public speaking coach and accent reduction coach in New York City.