Every Speech Must Have a Reason

If you want to win the attention of your audience and keep them captivated from beginning to end, your speech or presentation must be carefully crafted with a clearly defined purpose or reason firmly in mind. Without a crystal-clear focus to guide you through the planning stage, your speech risks becoming a murky mish-mash of ideas that is more likely to lose your crowd than keep them interested and attentive.

To produce a purposeful and meaningful presentation, begin by convincing yourself that your message is important, that it offers value to the listener and has the power to excite, enthuse, inspire, and/or motivate your audience. Using that professional mindset as your standard, you can then set about crafting and organizing a high-quality presentation. That’s what your listeners expect, and that is what they deserve.

Here are a few questions to help you create focus:

• Who is your audience? The more clearly you can define who your audience is, the better you will be able to refine and personalize the focus of your message.
• What is the purpose of your speech? Is it to inform; to educate; to inspire; to entertain? Your speech might contain a variety of those elements, but whichever element is the primary purpose for your speech, that’s the one that should be most emphasized.
• What is the key message you want to leave your audience with? Often, when speech planning, it is good to begin with the end in mind. That way, every segment of your speech can be designed to support the key message. Then you can end with a powerful closing statement to reinforce the importance of your key message.
• What action, if any, do you want the listener to take as a result of your presentation? Many speeches include a call to action. If your speech includes a call to action, you can introduce it in steps, throughout your presentation, and then include a strong, clear call to action statement in your closing comments.

Ultimately, your goal with every speech is to craft a captivating presentation designed to leave each listener with a sense that they have received something of value. In order to fulfill that expectation, your speech must be clearly focused, well-organized, purposeful, and meaningful. In other words, the success and power of your presentation is in the planning!