Speak! To Grow Your Business!

Our guest speaker this week was Maria Gallo who is a public speaking coach and does corporate training on the effective use of public speaking in business.  In business today you need to communicate to motivate to lead.  Today's technology encourages us to use our writing skills instead of our verbal skills.  The fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of death especially when you are speaking in front of people that can affect your outcome or judge you.  Social media can be outsourced but speaking face to face cannot. The first stage of speaking for your business is networking - which is not just handing out 5 cards and going home.  People do business with people they like.  The second stage is presentations and 60% of your audience is visual so screens are important.  A presentation should be a gift of information without any expectation in return - similar to "Service Above Self".  The final stage is "The Pitch" or the ask.  If networking and presentations are done well then by the pitch the audience is very interested.  And always keep in mind that in the first 90 seconds your audience wants to know what their benefit is.