I just finished working with a client who had to prepare and deliver an after dinner talk to clients in a museum. Her firm planned to take the clients on a private tour of the museum, feed them dinner, and then she was to stand up and offer them a short talk on investment opportunities in the current turbulent markets.<\/p>\n
We spent a few hours crafting the talk<\/a><\/strong>, and another couple of hours getting her to verbalize it. At the end of the rehearsal, it was still not right, but she had to go. It was Friday afternoon–the weekend called.<\/p>\n As we parted, I made a few suggestions.<\/p>\n A few days after the event, I called her. “How did you do?” I asked.<\/p>\n “I give myself a 7 out of 10,” she said.<\/p>\n “How come?” I asked.<\/p>\n “Well, it was too long, they couldn’t hear me, the room was horrible, I didn’t go to see the room over the weekend, I had to cut it on the fly, which made me nervous and look discombobulated.”<\/p>\n “Great!” I said. “Now you know. After dinner speaking is intense<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> It is intimate. Your audience is on top of you. The rooms are often not good for speakers. There’s noise in the room. The audience is tired and drunk. They want to be entertained–period. They want funny stories and they want them short.”<\/p>\n “It was<\/em> intense,” she said.<\/p>\n “You’ve had an experience,” I said. And I quoted Mark Twain: “Good judgment comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Bad judgment!”<\/p>\n I told her not to be discouraged. Most people fail their way to success.<\/p>\n She said she was not discouraged, and looked forward to trying again.<\/p>\n She’s a trooper.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I just finished working with a client who had to prepare and deliver an after dinner talk to clients in a museum. Her firm planned to take the clients on a private tour of the museum, feed them dinner, and then she was to stand up and offer them a short talk on investment opportunities… Read More »Public Speaking Skills: After Dinner Speaking<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[39,297,344,21,333,300],"yoast_head":"\n\n
\n<\/span><\/em><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/div>\n