You can listen to the Signature Speech Secrets call using the audio player below [hint: keep this window open as you browse the forums - the show will stream continuously]



The full text of this call is provided below as well. Special thanks to JoCarole Carpenter of Shore Office Services for volunteering the many hours it took to transcribe this event for us. Thank you JoCarole!!

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Lee: Hi everyone, who would be thrilled to have more VA clients then you knew what to do with? Do you wish you had a list of prospective clients that you could send an email to and say “Hey, I can help you with this” and they hire you on the spot? Well, that is what our guest tonight is going to tell you exactly how to do. We are so excited to have Felicia Slattery with us today who is not only a communications expert and wildly successful home based business owner but she also is a champion of the VA industry. She said she couldn’t run her business without her team of fabulous VAs.

Felicia lives her life with energy, passion and enthusiasm because she realizes each moment is precious. After nearly losing her life during childbirth in 2004, she began to put her communication and public speaking talents to use to create a positive impact on the world.

Her passion for communication is contagious because she knows that one important message delivered with power can transform a life. Felicia is an honest to goodness expert and holds two masters degrees. One in Adult Education and Training and another in Communications. Her clients typically experience major boosts in prospects, clients and cash flow simply by discovering how to make money by communicating who they are and how they can help others.

Get ready to take notes and take action and please help me welcome Felicia Slattery to our great VAF Bash Event.


Felicia: Thanks a lot, how are you doing tonight?

Lee: We’re great Felicia

Felicia: Good, well, I am excited to be here, thank you so much for having me and for being the hostess for the call. And I want to thank everyone else for joining me on the phone as well. I know this is a little different than your usual format and I want to thank you for indulging me. I am a professional speaker and so I talk, I don’t type, that’s what I do. (laughter). So I am glad that you were able to find your way here and you are either listening live on the phone or you are listening live on the webcast or maybe you are listening live because you’re live right? And I’m live! But you could be listening later to the recording. Whatever the case may be I’m grateful that you are here, I am glad that you’re here.

We have a lot of ground to cover tonight. Because we are going to be talking about something that is near and dear to my heart and really one of the key factors in my business success and that is my Signature Speech. We will talk about exactly what the Signature Speech is, okay? And then I will talk about why you want to have one. Because I know as a VA a lot of you like to be kind of behind the scene people. You want to be behind the speakers and the authors and the writers and the coaches and the consultants and I totally get that. But there might be a reason for you to have your signature speech ready too so we’ll talk about that specifically as it relates to you being a VA. And then we’ll also talk about what you can do tonight before you go to bed, now I know that it is a little late if you are listening to the recording live but there are some things that you can do right away to get your own signature speech started and of course I will share with you some resources along the way and invite you to learn a little bit more.

So if you are listening on the webcast there is a button right there on the page and that button will take you to some free information about the signature speech and it will give you some audio information, a little bit more than I am able to have time to cover here tonight and if you are not listening on the webcast it’s at signaturespeechsecrets.com. So I will invite you to go there if you would like to sign up to get some more information about this really cool topic that will help you truly blow the lid off of your business. If you want to have more clients than you know what to do with the signature speech can help you, seriously, just delivering this thing one time to an audience filled with your regular target market you don’t have to work hard to sell or market at all and I know a lot of people like us who are home business owners we don’t like to sell, ugh, we’re not sales people, we’re not marketers, you guys are assistants, you are brilliant with systems and processes and keeping people organized and doing all the cool things that you do for folks. But you’re not necessarily someone who wants to get out there and sell and market and do all that stuff but if you’ve got your own business and don’t have a sales staff. Raise your hand if you have a whole staff of people doing the sales and marketing for you in that department. Okay, right, I didn’t see any hands go up. Why? Because we’re all doing it ourselves right? So you have to kind of learn some of these skills and tools and I love the signature speech very specifically for that.

Let me just tell you a little bit about who I am. As Lee mentioned in the intro, I’ve been running my business for several years now. I started when my little girls were one and three years old. And as you know if you are running your business out of your home you need to figure out , well I’m starting this business how are people going to find out about me right? What does that leave? If you are not going to leave the house a whole lot, well, that leaves the Internet and for me. I thought, I’ve been teaching public speaking, I was a college professor I taught Communications and Public Speaking since the late 90’s and as I was kind of getting my business rolling I thought there’s got to be a way that I can incorporate some of this stuff to get new clients for myself.

And as I developed my business I started speaking and again I was busy. So I would go out into my community maybe once a month and I would do teleseminars real similar exactly as we are doing right here and I would talk about one topic. And the topic was credibility and cash flow and I would take my credibility and cash flow talk and I would do it over and over and over again. Here I am three years later with that same talk still being invited to deliver that same credibility and cash flow talk that I started delivering three years ago. So it’s the same speech, I just keep on delivering the same thing over and over and over again to different audiences because it’s all different people. So that’s kind of how I really started to develop my business and that is how you can start to develop your business too.

So let’s talk about, before I go any further, I’ve been throwing around the term signature speech, signature speech. I want to make sure that you are clear on exactly what the signature speech is. Okay, because a lot of people get confused and this is actually one of the most frequently asked questions I get; and people will say “well, so your signature speech, is that anything like your elevator speech?” First of all I have to tell you as a communications professional I do not advocate an “elevator speech, a canned pat memorized 30 second thing”. If you are not familiar with the term elevator speech the idea is if you meet someone in an elevator conference the thing is if they say what do you do; you should be able to explain what you do in the time that you get on the elevator and they ask you that question to when the elevator gets to your floor and you get off. So you got about 10 to 30 seconds in there. I don’t like those memorized canned things because they sound memorized and canned. And that’s kind of the opposite of a communications situation where you’re talking to an individual person, one to one, face to face. So you have a conversation and not spit out memorized junk to them.

Anyway, your signature speech is not your elevator speech. But it is a typically 30 minute to 60 minute presentation. A presentation about your area of expertise that you deliver typically for free to groups of your ideal target market in order to add more prospects to your funnel. Okay, the signature speech is the most powerful lead generation tool you can possibly use and in fact if you use it properly it can become a sales on the spot tool without having to do any kind of selling, arm twisting, manipulating, maneuvering, anything yucky and negative that we don’t like. Okay, the signature speech is a persuasive presentation now I know I said the word persuasive and I just said it a minute ago you don’t have to sell anybody or twist anyone’s arm and you don’t. Because when you look at the definition of persuasion it’s very simply “to motivate an audience to do something”. And in this case, what do we want them to do? Well we want them to hire us, right? We want them to buy our services and so if that’s what we want then.

By definition there are three purposes for public speaking. To entertain, to inform and to persuade. Well, if you want somebody to do something at the end of your speech, you must follow a persuasive organization pattern. That’s what the signature speech does. I promise I am not going to get overly academic on you and there will not be a quiz at the end. (laughter) But that’s what the signature speech is, because by definition we want someone to do something, we want them to hire us when we are done talking. Then by definition you need to have this as a persuasive presentation.

Okay, so now that we’re clear on what the signature speech is a lot of times people will say to me “yeah but is there really an audience for me, am I really going to have a place to go? I mean I don’t know if the speaking thing is really going to be up my alley”. And I always say, “if you are in business and you have clients then the signature speech can work for you” and that’s the bottom line. Because you’ve got to get new clients into your business and so we’ll talk a little while later about what are some of the things you can be discussing in your signature speech. But keep in mind if you’ve got clients and you’re helping people do something then you very likely get some frequently asked questions.

People when they find out what you do, they ask you the same kinds of questions over and over again. Especially with the virtual assistant industry as new as your field is, I’m sure when you say “I’m a VA in fact you probably don’t even use the term VA in the community because people will think what Veterans Affairs, Veterans Association, what are you talking about? (laughter) So you might say, you know, I’m an assistant and I work remotely for people or something like that. I’m sure people have questions for you and what does that mean and how does that work, and what is that about, are you the same as an employee? I know the questions can go on and on and on.

Well you put together a speech that answers those questions and provides some value to the audience, boom you have your signature speech ready to roll okay, so yes there is going to be an audience and let me tell you there are organizations every single day of the week that are getting together that have speakers come in and these groups don’t have budgets okay?

The signature speech is something that is to be used as a free marketing tool for you so instead of spending money for things like “Pay Per Click” advertising or for an ad in your local newspaper you’re going to go and deliver your speech; but you don’t have to pay anybody anything. This is a free marketing technique for you, free advertising tool so to speak. And these groups they very often don’t have a budget to pay people like me. I’m a professional speaker and I charge $6,000 for a keynote presentation. Those groups don’t have that kind of money. (laughter) The kind of people who are meeting regularly, they are networking groups, they’re business groups, service organizations like Rotary and Lions. All of these groups they want to have speakers come but don’t have a budget so they are looking for people who are willing to come and speak to their groups and provide some kind of information, something of interest, of value, and willing to do it for free.

And I’ll tell you even though I am a professional speaker and I do have my professional speaking rates I still will deliver my signature speech to audiences of my ideal target market yet every single day of the week if I can. Because I know that I am going to make money from that. Okay, so I deliver my speeches for free and so I would encourage you to do the same. So look at it like you’re placing an ad to speak but you don’t have to pay anything. Okay, so that’s kind of like a cool opportunity for you. And instead of being at, say, a networking meeting where you have to go around the room and shake people’s hands like you would at a chamber of commerce meeting, for example, you can’t make that many quality connections at networking meetings. And have those people know who you are and want you do and everything they might want to ask you. You just can’t do that with every single person at a networking meeting nor should you try but what the signature speech does is it puts you in front of everybody in the room at that networking function. And so as the speaker you are the person who everybody is listening to. So you do, in essence, get to network with everyone in the room all at the same time.

Is there anybody who is listening right now who is not busy? Okay, just checking, okay no hands went up. Okay, once again, we are all busy! (laughter) so this signature speech is perfect for you if you are busy because you are putting your message in front of the room. It can be 10 people, 20 people, and 50 people, usually they’re not much bigger than 50 people at networking meetings and so they are not huge crowds. They’re not in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands. And really easy, accessible groups to talk to. And all of those people are learning about you and your services right there in that moment.

Another cool thing that I love love love about the signature speech is, I talked about a little bit earlier about how people don’t want to be salesy, they don’t want to do a ton of marketing and can’t I just help my people? Can’t I just do that? Well the signature speech allows you to do that, you really don’t have to market yourself. One of the coolest things about the signature speech that I just love love love is when that organization hires you, hires you, *quote* hires you because they are not paying you typically but when they invite you to come and speak to their group, they’ll ask you for a biography and a picture and maybe a couple of bullets about what you are going to talk about and they will promote YOU to their group. So even if not everyone can make a meeting, I am sure that you can’t make every single meeting, every single networking function that you are a member of but you still get the posts about it. You still get the Facebook event information, you still get the emails talking about “by the way don’t forget we are having a special guest speaker just exactly the way this situation happened for me tonight that your organization said “hey come and listen to Felicia Slattery talk about her signature speeches” so even if people aren’t here now they know my name and they know that I teach people something about some kind of speaking which is exactly true and that’s what I do in my business.

So if they are interested in learning more about that they can find out about me quickly and easily by popping my name into Google. There may very well have been a link. I am not on your email distribution list so I am not totally sure what you saw. Maybe you got my link, I don’t know. But for sure you saw my name and what I talk about and that’s marketing, that’s getting my name in front of people who I might not otherwise have gotten my name in front of. Which is just a really great opportunity for you when you can do the same thing and nobody is going to charge you any money for it. So it’s a really super super powerful tool.

Alright, let’s talk about why you want to have your signature speech ready to deliver at a moment’s notice. Now I hope it’s okay with you, I tell a lot of stories, because that’s how we learn and we tend to remember things by telling stories so I want to tell you a little story about my own experience with delivering my signature speech.

I was at my very first live event in the Internet Marketing area in July of 2008. Okay, so coming up here in two years here but not quite and at that point I had been delivering my signature speech in my community and online different groups for about a year, okay, and I am at this event and it happened to be here in Chicago, that’s where I live so for me it was, oh gosh, this big event, with all these big name Internet Marketing people are going to be here, oh wow that’s really cool. I am going to go and, you know, sit and learn here from these folks. I was there as an attendee and I am sitting in the audience and it was a situation where there was an extra bonus session that they were putting together in the evening and because it was an extra bonus session they were getting the audio and the visual and AV people all worked out and they were getting the speakers miked and so forth; and it was taking a little bit of time to get things together and since the whole audience was already sitting in the room the speakers of the event said “you guys don’t need to be waiting for this, you know what, while they’re monkeying around with all that tech stuff we’ll take some questions from the audience” . So people were excited, hey that’s cool, these folks are going to take some questions, great! So people started raising their hands and and asking questions. Well one woman raised her hand and she asked “how can I be credible online?” Now I told you a little while ago that the title of my original signature speech was called “Credibility and Cash Flow”. This is something that I teach and I know inside and out, I know a lot about that and so I thought “oh my gosh, I know the answer! I know the answer to that question so I listened to this group. I want to say maybe there were seven or eight speakers who happened to be on stage and again it was a very informal situation and it was in between sessions and I never would storm the stage of any speaker ever. (laughter).

This was a very informal situation and I listened to them and they each gave their answers to “how someone could be more credible”. Like they were okay but they weren’t the answer. They didn’t give the information that I had, that I knew that I could deliver. And I thought well heck #1 I am a professional speaker, so I know that I could do okay with this and #2, I know this answer, I can help this woman and possibly the other people in the room. And so I kind of like half raised my hand a little sheepishly and I’m not really a sheepish person. I kind of half put it up and I said I can help with that.

(Continued in next post...)

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These are Internet Marketing folks and if you’re not familiar with them or haven’t been to any of their events most of these people are very friendly people and totally open and said “well come on up, sure, give her a mic” so they handed me a microphone and all of a sudden I’m in my element. I got a microphone on and I’m on the stage and I’m in heaven. (laughter)

What I did was I delivered two minutes of my signature speech because again I had been delivering this speech over and over again for the last year. I knew it absolutely at this point drop dead cold by heart not that I ever recommend you writing a speech down word for word but I knew the essence of my speech; so I gave two minutes of my speech. Everyone in the room was taking notes and at the end of this these speakers had organized themselves for this little informal Q and A; they were all standing side by side kind of in a line across the front of the stage and I had one microphone.

And I don’t know if you know who Joel Comm is. Joel is the author of the Adsense Code and Twitter Power. If you have an IPhone he developed the iFart application. He is a multi millionaire in the Internet Marketing field. He’s down at the other end and he has this microphone and he’s leaning forward because I am now all the way on one end of the line and he is at the other end. He is leaning all the way forward and he puts the microphone close to his mouth and said “who are you again?” (laughter). Wow, it was so cool because all of a sudden I went from a person sitting in the audience who was just another attendee to an expert that these people needed to know and literally within three weeks of that moment I was on stage as a featured speaker at an Internet Marketing event and I have not been off those stages ever since.

In fact I have to say no because most Internet Marketers are really not my target market. People who do service oriented businesses are my market. The kind of people who want to make money by selling websites or pushing buttons from their computers those aren’t my people. You guys are my people who do a service and want to help other folks. So in any case I’ve been on stage ever since. Why? Because my signature speech was ready to deliver in the moment that I needed it. You never know when that opportunity is going to come knocking at your door. You never know when somebody is going to raise their hand and ask a question that you can help with. And you want to make sure that you sound polished, professional, poised and confident. You want to sound like you know what you’re talking about, because that’s when people’s ears perk up and they say “wow, this is somebody that I need to listen to because she clearly knows what she is talking about”.

So you never know when opportunity is gonna knock. I have so many different stories I can tell about how this has been a really powerful way to get yourself in front of people. You don’t know when an event planner is going to pick up the phone to call you. Very often for these organizations don’t have a budget and they are looking for someone to come in and speak for free. They are very often volunteers of these organizations and their job as the program chair, they have to get on the phone and they have to find somebody to come and speak to their event. Well, they’re going to start calling names that they know of and start asking some questions and who do you know that we can have speak. They are going to keep going until they find somebody to say yes. If your phone rings, ring ring, they pick up the phone and say “Hey, I heard you are pretty good at organizing, can you come and talk to our rotary club about how we can better organize our computer email? “ (for example) You don’t, in that moment, want to pause “Well, I don’t know how I would put that together, can I get back to you? Let me think about what I might say?” “And I’ll let you know if I could do it”. Do you think that person is going to hang up and say “okay great”, I am going to wait until that maybe answer is a yes?” No, they’re just gonna keep going until they get somebody to say yes so you want to be that person to say yes, I would love to talk about organization and helping people who run businesses be organized and let me tell you, here’s what the benefits will be and what they are going to learn and can I send you bio and my picture, I’m ready to roll right now. You are like the super hero to that person. Okay, so you want to be ready when that phone rings. You want to be ready, to be able to say yes and give them ‘on the spot what does your speech cover and what is it about’. So you really need to have this thing absolutely ready to roll.
You can also use it, one of the cool things about the signature speech, when you go to live networking events because remember when I was talking about the I don’t love the elevator speech thing? Well when people ask you what you do, one of the things that I always try to do is; I try to talk about the event first, kind of do a little small talk before we get into that ‘so tell me about you question’ and then when we do I try to have them talk a little bit about themselves first so that I can put the context who I am and what I do based on who they are and what they are interested in.

And so anyway, one of the things that you can do with the signature speeches as you are introducing yourself you can say that you have a speech that you deliver to groups of, whoever they are, X Y and Z, and that you deliver the speech for free. I’m telling you, when you introduce yourself that way, people’s eyes brighten up and they say “you’re a speaker?” and they get so excited. And I can’t tell you how times I have been led by the hand to somebody else in the room yelling “Bob, Bob, Bob come here, listen this lady, she speaks, she gives talks to business owners, for free! Have her come and talk to the blah, blah, blah group, right? I can’t tell you how many times that has happened to me.

And so the same thing can happen to you when you introduce yourself as whatever it is that you do. And I also speak to groups of whomever, so I would say that I speak to groups of small and home based business owners of how they can bring in more cash flow just by being more believable, more credible and how they can communicate that credibility. People get really excited about that. So anyway, those are some reasons why you really really really want to have this signature speech ready to go, ready to deliver at a moment’s notice cause you honestly never know when you are going to have the opportunity to do that, right? And you want to be able to seize the moment, you want people to say ‘wow, she really knows what she is talking about’, this is really exciting stuff.

Alright I know now that I am moving quickly here and I want to find out from you, if you have any questions for me. So right now I do want to remind you if you are listening on the webcast you can go ahead and put your questions right into the webcast. If you are chatting that is fabulous but I cannot monitor the chatting and monitor the Q and A window at the same time in the system I am using. I have to log out of one and log into the other so I am going to look at my Q and A box that I see so if you have any questions right there go ahead and do that. If you’re on the phone line with me all you have to do to raise your hand is press *2. And when you press *2 I will see that you have a question and I will be able to call on you by name or location and answer your question that way and also at this moment.

I would like to invite you to visit www.signaturespeechsecrets.com or if you are on the webcast that big red button takes you to my website where you can sign up to get more information about the signature speech which of course will give you access to my bi-weekly, that’s every other week, ezine newsletter called “Creating Connections” where I provide lots of useful information, valuable tips and tools all about communications and your business. And how you can use your communications to get more prospects, more clients and more cash flow. That’s what I am about. So I want to see if we have any questions coming in, no more questions coming in. JoCarole’s here from Toms River, NJ….. Hi JoCarole from ShoreOfficeServices, glad you’re here.

So anyone here if you have questions, please do feel free to ask, I’m here to answer your questions and help you as much as possible. In just a little while I am going to tell you a little secret about that big button so if you haven’t already been there and signed up to get the information I would encourage you to do so cause there’s a little surprise on the other end so in any case I am going to continue forward and talk to you a little while more about how do you develop your signature speech. Okay and I will give you just a few tips, about 4 or 5 different tips about how you can get started, if you want to get started on this tonight. Because again this is a super super powerful tool if you’ve got just a limited amount of time you really want to get up and have this available and ready for you because you will be shocked, and amazed and thrilled at the results you get.

Alright so let’s say that you want to put this together. Now by the way this is something that I teach, when I taught this on a telecourse it is a six week course. Each session goes typically 90 minutes to two hours plus there’s the content that I provide ahead of time so there’s well over 20 hours of content with me teaching the signature speech so literally I am scratching the tip of the iceberg here. But I want to give you some useful tools, it is important to me; that at any time anyone comes to listen to me that I give you something that you can use right away because I am not here to sell sell sell. I want you to have some value so the first thing that I want you to do when you are thinking about putting together your signature speech, very first thing, most important is ‘consider your audience’.


Step # 1 - Consider your audience


What do I mean by consider your audience? Well, ask yourself who are the people that you serve? Do you serve a particular niche; do you serve a particular person, type or group of people? If you do then that’s important for you to know so think about that very clearly and very carefully. Okay, who are the people that I serve and what do they want to know about me and what I do in my business. That is absolutely the most important place to start and here’s why. If you write a speech, just kind of in general, to whoever about your business but you’re not focused on the exact audience or market that you serve then you are going to miss out on some important pieces. When you are thinking about any audience, you need to be speaking to them in their language. Which means that you need to know a little about who they are and a little bit about what they value. What’s important to them, so for example I know that as a small business owner most of us are working out of our homes and one of the things that you value, that I value, is the freedom and flexibility to do what we want with our businesses when we want to do it.

I came down and picked up the phone after I put my two little girls to bed tonight. They are now, I told you when I started tonight, one and three, and they are now 5 and seven. Gosh where does the time go to? And so, you know, I put them in bed and I came down and I was able to pick up the phone do this call.

I left my house today, Wednesday is the one day of the week that I work from 0830-900 or so in the morning until the afternoon straight through because I have a daughter.

My youngest is just finishing up preschool and so I have to pick her up everyday I leave my house at 1030 to pick her up at 11 o’clock at preschool. So I have big chunks of my day that other people might consider work; hours that I’m not working because I’m doing the mom thing. I know not everybody has young children but whatever your reason is to have freedom and flexibility I know that you want your schedule to be just that. For whatever reasons it is that you have, so it’s really important that I make sure as I’m speaking to you that I address those concerns, okay?

So earlier I talked about, and I’m pulling back the curtain a little bit and showing to you where I talked about “is anybody not busy?” Of course we’re all busy people right? And so if you are a busy person and you are looking for a way to market your business here is the signature speech because I know that the people I talk to by definition are very busy people. Those of us who are working out of our homes, we are wearing multiple hats. Not only are we doing everything that is related to our business but we are most of the time doing everything related to running the household. And taking care of family members who ever those family members may be. They may be ‘fur kids’, do you have dogs or cats? It could be a spouse, it could be children, it could be older parents; whatever your situation is that you are involved in. you know we are all busy people so I know that is something that is important.

When I talk to my audiences they need to know what they are hearing is that it is time effective for them, okay? I also know that cash and cash flow are important so when I talk about signature speech bringing in more prospects which leads to more clients which leads to more cash flow I know that peoples’ ears perk up cause they know this is good, this is what I want. I want to have more folks coming into my funnel so that I have more clients so that again I have more time to do the things that I want to do because I am making the money that I want to make to live my life.

So all of these things are important so if you were talking to an audience of home and small business owners remember freedom, flexibility, cash and cash flow, and talk to those values. If you’re talking to a different audience but I think most of you being virtual assistants that’s probably most of your audience. You’re probably not talking to major big corporations because they are hiring assistants for the most part, I would think, to work within the office structure and you are independent people. You are not corporate folks. Maybe you used to be a corporate person but you’re running the show from your home now and so you’re probably serving lawyers or real estate agents or authors or speakers or other small homebased types of business owners who don’t want to have staff or don’t have the place to have staff or simply are trying to maximize their budgetary needs. Whatever the case may be you need to know that these are the things that people like and value.

Okay, freedom of flexibility, time, cash and cash flow. Super important so when you know who your audience is, this is Step # 1 in developing your speech. You really really need to think about who these people are and what is important to them because once you are speaking their language they will listen to you to. If you are not speaking their language it will be impossible for them to hear your message. I’ll say that again, “if you are not speaking their language of your target market; it will be impossible for them to hear your message, okay?

So, let’s move on and talk about once you know your audience. Now as you are developing your speech you want to think about what are some of the most frequently asked about questions that you get in your business. Answer those, put them together, put the answers of those things together and have three to five main points. You don’t want any more than five, that’s way too many and beyond that it gets way too confusing, so three to five main points.

(Continued in next post...)

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So today I shared with you that we were going to talk about three things:

• 1) What the signature speech is
  
  2) Why you want to have one ready to deliver
  
  3) How you can get started

Step #2 – Put together the frequently asked questions


So we’re on the second part. How you and I have broken this down into a few pieces as well. And we are on #2 which is put together the most frequently asked questions and answers, because people ask me all the time, what is a signature speech? I don’t understand what that is, okay, I will tell you. But do I really need to have one of these things. “Yes you do”. Okay, I get what that is and I know I need one, so how do I put it together, and answering that question so now I am modeling for you exactly what I would like you to do with your signature speech.


Step #3 - Think about how you are going to start


I didn’t say think about how you are going to start before you put together the body content why? Cause who cares how you start if you don’t have the rest of your speech. So you do your introduction after you do the body. Okay, so then think about how am I gonna start? That’s called an “Attention Getter” in public speaking terms.

Your attention getter is that literally you have 10 seconds to make an impression. Do not waste those 10 seconds by saying “Hi, my name is Felicia Slattery”, especially if your name isn’t Felicia Slattery, it’s okay to laugh, go ahead. (laughter) or roll your eyes whatever. But anyway, don’t ever start with “hi my name is”, that’s possibly the worst way to start your speech in the history of all ways to start a speech.

Okay so be creative, your job in that first 10 seconds is to peak your audience’s curiosity and have them go “Ooh, what is this going to be about? This is going to be cool, really interesting”. You want them to be thinking about your topic okay. Most honestly and frankly, I am going to rip the band aid off here. The people in the audience don’t care what your name is. They really don’t, they don’t care what your name is and who you are. They want to know WIIFM, “what’s in it for me?”

So you need to give them a reason immediately right off the bat when you first start speaking so they listen to you. Why should they be listening to you? Then a little later tell them your name, tell them about you, okay. Another reason you don’t need to share your name immediately is just because what happened here this evening, I was introduced, okay. You are typically not going to go to a networking function or even as a guest on a teleseminar such as this and just start talking.

Okay, someone is going to introduce you to the audience and so again this is another reason that you don’t need to say your name if someone has just said “Welcome our speaker Felicia Slattery “ yay. I don’t need then to say “hi, my name is Felicia Slattery, five seconds after they said Felicia Slattery right?

So I always start, there’s a couple of different ways that you can start, but I start with a series of compelling questions when I am doing my credibility talk and it gets people interested, it gets them engaged right away, okay, so start with something compelling, think about how you are going to jump into that speech with your attention getter. Alright, so that’s #3.


Step #4 – Finish Powerfully


Think about then, because you have your introduction, you have your body and now how are you going to finish that speech? It’s important to remember that at the end of your presentation you want to provide some sort of Call to Action. You want people in the room to do something. Okay, so tell them what you want them to do and make it very easy for them to do it, okay? It’s really that simple, just tell people what you want them to do and tell them how you want them to do it. And that’s really just the steps you need to know to put together for your signature speech.

So know your audience, put together your three to five FAQS, work on #3 and figure out how you are going to start and #4 finish powerfully. Finish powerfully by telling them what to do. Be very specific about Your Call To Action and that’s exactly what you need to do to get started with your signature speech.

And I see I got some questions so I am going to answer some of the questions that are on here, thank you so much for asking. And if you are on the phone line and you would like to ask a question you can hit *2 to raise your hand and I can unmute you and ask your question there. So I am going to go to Shy VA who won’t say her name, that’s so funny.

Felicia: And she asked the question “how do you recommend that we get over the fear of speaking in public?” Thank you for asking, that is one of the most frequently asked questions from people who are a little nervous about this whole thing. Alright, so how do you get past the fear of speaking?

Well #1 realize it’s just like everything else, public speaking is a skill. I am going to presume that you know how to drive a car, the first time I drove a car when I was 15, 16 years old in Drivers Ed I almost hit a parked Ferrari ‘parked’ (laughter). Okay, why? Because I didn’t know what I was doing. For some reason my parents didn’t want to get in the car and teach me anything ahead of time, I don’t know why, but anyway I almost hit a parked Ferrari when driving a car. Now obviously, all these years later, I’m about to hit 40 so how many years is that after 15 and 16? Somebody else do the math for me, see I don’t do math, I have a VA to do that for me (laughter). I’m a great driver, I don’t have tickets, I have low insurance rates, I don’t even think twice about driving and why? Well because I practiced for a lot of years, many many many years okay? Decades in fact, so it’s a skill that I have come to learn how to do. Are there people that are better drivers than me? Sure they’re in NASCAR.

There are going to be better speakers than you are but can you get to be a really good speaker? Absolutely! You can be a great speaker and you don’t have to be a professional grade, professional level speaker to be delivering your signature speech because we already talked about how there are audiences every day that are hungry to hear information every day you can teach them.

If you are providing value to your audience giving them steps, giving them pieces, giving them tips, tools, techniques, links, websites, ideas, resources, whatever you are giving them, people are grateful to have that information, never take for granted what you know. So first put that into perspective that, you don’t have to be the next best greatest Zig Ziglar. You don’t have to be one of the best professional speakers in the history of all time.

You just have to share with people how you help them. That’s #1 putting it in perspective. #2 is practice the thing a lot. (laughter) practice, practice, practice. When you practice your speech, you know how long your speech takes, you know exactly how (this is going to sound weird), but you know exactly how the words sound when they are coming out.

There is something in our bodies that is called ‘muscle memory’. People who are personal trainers and athletes know about this muscle memory. Well your tongue and your face is made up of a bunch of muscles and when you speak you use those muscles in your tongue and your face right? Well muscle memory is when your brain kind of takes over and you are looking out at the crowd and you are speaking and your brain is going ‘that guy over there just yawned, am I not doing what I am supposed to be doing? And in the meantime as you are thinking this and your brain is talking to you, your mouth is still moving and words are coming out, okay?

You’ve probably had this experience before. Muscle memory where your body just kind of takes over and does what it’s supposed to do while your mind is kind of in another place. I don’t recommend keeping your mind in another place during your whole speech but what will happen is the more that you practice this the more comfortable you will be and your body will be able to just take over. And so you will feel less nervous when you are prepared. Be absolutely prepared prepared prepared and that will help you to get over the fear then my shy VA friend. The best way to get past it is to just do it over and over and over again.

I’m not someone who has been to Toastmasters’ meetings but as a professional speaker and knowing quite a bit about my field of course I am very familiar with Toastmasters and I would recommend if you are nervous. If you are afraid of public speaking but you think that this might be a cool thing to try; there are Toastmaster organizations in every community, find your local Toastmasters community and join that group.

My Toastmaster friends laugh and say ‘yeah that’s right’ when I describe Toastmasters as kind of their 12 step program to get out of things. Well Toastmasters is a 10 step program to get into public speaking. And literally it take you little baby steps, baby steps, baby steps, but you get back week after week after you get with these organizations. The Toastmasters group, they give you the opportunity to practice speaking in front of the group and they give you specific assignments and very short speeches and there are multiple opportunities to speak at each session plus it’s a friendly group of people. You get to know them really well so it’s really a supportive community, support group of folks and by the way it’s a great way for you to also market your business to the people in the room. Because very often the people at Toastmasters are small business owners and they want to speak more for their business and practice. So a lot of those folks could become good clients for you. So more than one reason to go to the local Toastmasters group to practice.

You don’t have to work your way all the way up to ten and get your certifications. They have these different levels. Forgive me for not knowing all the different levels they have. You don’t have to get those; you don’t have to work towards that if you don’t want to. But just joining the group and going week after week, you go for a couple of months, you practice your speeches, you get a chance to get in front of folks and the more you do it the more you become comfortable with it. It’s really that simple, the more you do it the more you become comfortable with it just like anything else.

The reason you get afraid to speak is your body’s fight or flight response kicks in because your body knows and your brain knows this is not something that we do all the time. We don’t typically stand in front of a whole group of people and have them on our minds, what they thinking of or judging us? This is not something that we do on an everyday basis most of us. So that’s why you get nervous, that’s where people really get very scared and they don’t know what to do. That’s a very normal response, that fight or flight response, those butterflies in your stomach. Know how your body responds to that; for me my mouth gets dry.

As we are talking here and we are only on the phone, but my mouth gets dry so I went and got myself a glass of water which is almost empty and I am going to take another sip. Okay so in front of a live audience people don’t mind if you take a sip of water so your lips don’t stick to your teeth. (laughter).

I had a girlfriend and she was a national champion speaker and a state champion speaker in high school, we were national champions together in college. I mean, we’re champions right? Her neck and face; she had really fair skin she would break out in red everywhere from her chest all the way up to her face. She would get all flushed, that’s how her nerves would come into play.

So she wore her makeup well and she made sure that the outfits that she wore covered her neck and her chest so she wore like mock turtle neck kind of dresses and things like that. So the flush, that redness wouldn’t be so obvious to an audience. So know what happens to your body and be ready to deal with it okay. So just a few things to help you get over the fear but practicing and being prepared are two of the biggest.

Heather from Ontario wants to know….

Heather: “Is it is a bad idea to record your signature speech so that you can offer it as a free teleseminar?”

Felicia: Heather, that’s a brilliant idea! And one of the many numerous ways that you can leverage your signature speech. I tell people all the time, once the speech is written; there is truly no end to how you can use it. So you can record your whole signature speech and offer it is a free teleseminar on your website like at signaturespeechsecrets.com. That’s me talking about the signature speech giving a signature speech. You can do the same exact thing for your business as well, so you can record yourself by yourself. You can record something similar to this where you are actually in front of people so to speak.

I know this is a teleseminar so I am not literally in front of you but I have an audience; I have people asking me questions so you can do the same sort of thing. Invite people to come to a teleseminar, pick up a line at freeconferencecall.com, it won’t cost you a dime. It won’t cost your participants a dime and they can come and listen, ask you questions, give you feedback, whatever and you can record that you put it up with an offer on your website and boom, now you are giving away your free signature speech as content and building your list of prospects that way. So I think it’s a fabulous way to do that and would recommend that once you develop it, yes.

Michelle Flynn in Australia:

Michelle wants to know “do you think that being bubbly helps when addressing an audience?

Felicia: Well hello good day. I went to a networking event last night, it felt good to connect. Oh my dear, absolutely! In fact when I talk about my credibility in my credibility talk, the bubbly thing, I talk about one of the three C’s of credibility. It is ‘charisma’ and how you can be seen and communicate your charisma to an audience by being enthusiastic. Woo Hoo! And being likable. When you’re excited about your topic you draw other people to that excitement. And it doesn’t matter what your topic is. You could be talking about organizing papers, you could be talking about saving money on taxes, they are interesting topics but they are not the most exciting, they are not motivational or inspirational.

But if you’re excited about it you can get an audience excited about it as well so yes being energetic and being enthusiastic is absolutely a big bonus, a big plus!

Now on the other hand I am glad that you asked this question because as you can tell I am someone who is very enthusiastic and I get very excited. If you do not have that bubbly effusive kind of personality where you really are kind of out there and people are like ‘wow, she has a lot of energy. If you are not like that person, if you are a little more reserved that’s fine too. Be passionate about what you do for others.

You don’t have to be bouncing off the walls bubbly excited but you do need to be passionate about what you do and have that passion shine through and one thing I would say; if you’re not a particularly bubbly person by nature smile make sure you smile okay? Start your speech with a smile, smile a couple of points in the middle and end your speech with a smile. It’s absolutely crucial that you smile to your audience because they will see you as likable and approachable. You need to be likable and approachable, if someone wants to give you their money they have to be able to approach you to give you that money right?

So smiling is absolutely crucial so if you don’t have that super bubbly personality its okay you don’t need to have that. But you definitely want to make sure that you are smiling, that is important. So thank you for asking that question, Michelle.


Lee’s got a question

Lee: “what’s a great time length for your signature speech? Should you try to keep it at 30 minutes?”

Felicia: Lee, the answer is it depends. So when I came to talk here to our group tonight I knew that we had about 60 minutes so that’s about how much time I knew I was going to have, okay? Sometimes when I talk about signature speeches I only have 30 minutes, sometimes I have 45 minutes, it depends on the organization.

How do I alter my length?

Well there are a number of different things that I do but I pretty much look at the stories that I tell and instead of getting into really great detail as I might if I have a longer period of time, I’ll still tell the story I’ll just leave out some of the details that make up the story so instead of a five minute story I’ll tell it in one minute. For example, you have to make sure that the same speech can fill up 30 minutes or 60 minutes. And here’s a tip, one of the easiest ways. You write a speech that is about 45 minutes long, ask questions, have people ask questions and answer their questions on the spot.

When you can answer people’s questions on the spot it showcases your expertise and it shows that you are really someone that knows what you are talking about. You’re not just sticking to the prepared remarks. You are able to answer off the cuff and if somebody has a specific situational type of thing and says “you know in my business we do ‘blah blah blah blah blah.” Would that work for me or would you suggest X, Y or Z? Answer that question for those people and that can really help you as well.

Okay, I am going to see if anyone has their hand raised on the phone line. I don’t see any hands on the phone line, that is *2 to raise your hand. You’re all doing a great job in the Q and A box. I hear you are good typers so that’s good. (laughter).

But right now I would like to remind you as I promised I would mention to you there is a little something special for you when you go and sign up at www.signaturespeechsecrets.com - when you sign up to get that signature speech secrets you will get a recording that will talk about some of the things that I am covering here.

I want to thank you all so much for being here. I know that you are busy and I am grateful that you chose to spend your time listening - thank you for being here.

Again this is Felicia Slattery and I want to say thank you so much and good night everybody!

Lee: goodnight Felicia

End of call

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