Since his speech, "Think Strawberries" has become code for salesmanship. The speech tells the story of how Lavenson turned the 1,400 employees of the Plaza into great, customer-focused sales people. Everybody sells.

Lavenson’s speech is here 

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Parallels of good scripts 
and good speeches

Communication lessons from Ken Burns:

The thought of writing a speech produces a similar reaction in many professional communicators as a deer caught in headlights: dazed and confused, with no way out. "Couldn’t we just call in the hired guns?" Granted, speechwriting is a specialization of public relations; top speechwriters command top dollars.

Speechwriting is hard. And like everything else in life, some professional communicators are better at it than others.

That’s talent.

Then there’s practice. Professional communicators can get better at writing speeches. But you have to write speeches. The more speeches you write, the better you get.

Then there’s practice. Professional communicators can get better at writing speeches. But you have to write speeches. The more speeches you write, the better you get.

Jana’s 24 speechwriting tips

1. A great speech takes time to write. A 30-minute speech can take between 80 and 100 hours to write. If you don’t put in the sweat time, it will show. That’s 80 hours to get a speech to the 80-percentile mark. It’s incremental improvement—the last 20 percent—that separates good speeches from great ones.

2. Park your ego. It is not unheard of for a speech to go through many, many drafts. Even 30 drafts is not out of the ballpark for a really important speech. Don’t take it personally. The speech has to sound like the person who will deliver it. If a suggestion helps the speech, just go with it. If it doesn’t, protest and resist as long as you dare.

3. By definition, a speech is about two things: the words and the speaker. There is no PowerPoint presentation, no television clips, no laser pointer. Many speakers use these as crutches. Used sparingly, these elements may enhance your speech; overused, these elements will detract from your message.

4. A great speech is about connecting with the audience. The whole reason to write and deliver a speech is to create impact and emotion. The speech’s content and delivery style have to be memorable. Otherwise, just write an e-mail or a letter. Good speechwriters get the audience nodding in agreement.

5. A speech is like surfing. The structure of every speech is different, but they all follow the same general pattern: bring the audience up, bring the audience down, bring the audience up. At the end of the speech, the audience has to be up.

6. Ways to connect with the audience include: stories, anecdotes, (self-deprecating) humour, witty observations, the rhetorical question, juxtaposition, metaphors, and parallel sentence structure, among others. Many speakers avoid putting in anything personal in a speech, thinking it is improper, trite, or not profound enough. Audiences love stories and anecdotes; they reveal the speaker’s humanity. Avoiding stories and anecdotes is a mistake, and the final speech suffers for this.

7. Take a clear stand. Like the old saying goes, "if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing." After listening to the speech, what do you want the audience to do with the information?

8. Talk to yourself; talk to others. The best way to start writing a speech is to shut your door and talk out loud to yourself. Hammer out the words in the air first, then write them down. Use your colleagues as sounding boards, too. Discussing the concepts in the speech helps to crystallize your thinking.

9. Less is more. If you cram too much content into a speech, you are actually diluting your Key Messages. The greatest speeches have a single theme and no more than three Key Messages.

10. Strive to craft three to six memorable quotes for every speech. If you can get people in the audience or the media to quote phrases from the speech you’ve written, pat yourself on the back.

11. A speech is written for the ear, not the eye. The words in a speech will be heard, rather than read by the audience. If a speech reads like a juvenile text, you’re probably on the right track.

12. Strong, simple words are the speechwriter’s friends. Many-syllable words tend to make speakers stumble. Long, laborious sentences don’t work well in a speech either. English is the richest language in the world, so use great words like: hope, character, possibility, integrity, dreams, potential, bedrock, faith, pride, belief, promise. Avoid "maximizing organizational synergies to their greatest potential"—at least in a speech.

13. Lots of nouns and lots of verbs. Write lots of action verbs and use the active voice. The passive voice sounds stiff and stilted in a speech and doesn’t help the audience connect with your message.

14. Smooth transitions. How you link from one sentence to the next, from one idea to the next, from paragraph to paragraph is critical. Transitions have to be smooth and natural.

15. Pay particular attention to the last word of each sentence. The audience remembers this word more. If there is a way to re-write your sentence so that the most important word—the one you want to focus on—is at the end, do it. "Your talent is out greatest asset" doesn’t work. What does work is, "Our greatest asset is your talent!"

16. The most important segments of a speech are the beginning and the end. These are "high attention" times, so don’t waste them. DO NOT start a speech by re-hashing history; your audience doesn’t care. DO NOT start a speech by reminding the audience of the definition of your subject matter—or worse, quoting directly from Webster’s Dictionary. For the beginning, knock them right between the eyes; for the end, leave your message ringing in their ears.

17. Repetition and re-phrasing are necessary, not redundant, in a speech. Because the audience cannot go back and re-read the text, as the speechwriter you must repeat and re-phrase your key messages.

18. Don’t cram too many numbers in a speech. Too many numbers make the text laboured and that makes the audience tune out. Better to use ballpark figures ("half," "one-third," or "three-quarters") and keep numerical data to a minimum. Numbers don’t do well in a speech.

19. Don’t be afraid to use the "pregnant pause." Speakers at the podium dread silence. Yet the pregnant pause is a great device when you have said something particularly important; the pregnant pause gives your audience time to digest what the speaker has just said. That is as important as getting to the next point in the text.

20. Don’t end a speech with "thank you." The audience is there to hear what your speaker has to say. They don’t need to be thanked for that. They should be thanking you.

21. End the speech with a "call to action." Again, what do you want the audience to do now that they have listened to you?

22. Never give your speech draft to the speaker without listening to it, in its entirely, at least once. After you have written a serious draft (it might be draft 3 or even 11), put it on tape yourself and listen to it. You’ll probably re-write sections of it after living with it for a week or so.

23. Study great speeches. When you see a great speech delivered, get a copy of it and study it. What makes it great? Highlight Key Messages, great word choices, rhetorical devices you find effective. Circulate it to your clients as an example of a well written speech so they know what a great speech looks like.

24. Build your own speech archive. The internet makes it so easy to cut-and-paste great speeches. In no time at all, you’ll have lots of great examples to study and follow.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004