Four Techniques for Better Storytelling

Four Techniques for Better Storytelling

Patricia Fripp keynote speaker and executive speech coach
Patricia Fripp keynote speaker and executive speech coach
By Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE, Executive speech coach, Keynote speaker

Everybody loves a good story. No matter what our culture, we grow up feeling that hearing a story is somehow a reward. Stories are how we learn values and our family’s legacy. When we’re in school, stories make history come alive. In business, we quickly discover that stories help us explain complex issues and are the best way to train or persuade.
Wise leaders, managers, and sales professionals do well to develop an arsenal of great stories that provide clear, dramatic examples. Good stories help differentiate us from our competition.

Steve Ball of Microsoft was in charge of finding the right music to be the boot-up sound for the Vista operating system. He brought in three professionals from the worlds of music and Hollywood for six seconds of sound! Steve explained the importance, saying, “Part of the sound was also used in our email program. That translated into this sound being heard more than any other music ever heard, including the Beatles.”

The professional that was chosen was Robert Fripp, legendary guitarist and a founding and ongoing member of the rock group King Crimson. Steve explains how the project leaders came to the decision: “All the artists created a sound that would have worked. However, in his presentation, Robert told the best story of how his music best represented Vista.”

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Good Story, Committed Speaker, Great Speech Coach

Good Story, Committed Speaker, Great Speech Coach 

Patricia Fripp speaking at MDRT 2011
Patricia Fripp speaking at MDRT 2011

By Patricia Fripp

When I first met John Nichols at my speaking school he was so much fun to have in the audience. He was so obviously thinking about how to apply the techniques to his presentations. He has a heck of a life story…he legally died…as well as a wildly successful career selling disability insurance. He hired me to help him take his good presdentation and make it great. This year he had to opportunity to deliver a keynote at the main stage of Million Dollar Round Table. The greatest audience in his industry. He has spoken before not in this keynote slot. He hired me to listen to his run through. We addd a few tweaks. Can you imagine my pride to receive this email…

“Thank you!! This is what one attendee wrote, ‘John spoke Main Platform at the 2012 MDRT Annual Meeting in Anaheim. Understand that they review over 2,000 speakers each year and only select 18. John absolutely hit the ball out of the park. His story is incredible and he delivers the message in a compelling way. He had the 6,500 people in the audience in his hand. When he finished, they LEPT to their feet to give him the loudest ovation of the meeting! John is a top shelf speaker but also a first class guy! June 13, 2012’
 
 You are the best!!” 

One of the reasons John was such a wild success is he does not short change the process. As Michael Caine says “Rehearsal is the work, performance is the relaxation.” If you want to learn what John heard in my public speaking seminar why not invest in the Speaking School Value Pack.

 

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Creative Ways Your Clients Afford You as a Professional Speaker

Creative Ways Your Clients Afford You as a Professional Speaker
Or How the American Payroll Association Made 1 + 1 + 1 = 9
By Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE

Keynote speaker Patricia Fripp
Keynote speaker Patricia Fripp

In a perfect world, our clients would have an unlimited budget to hire keynote speakers for every meeting and convention. Since it’s not, here are some tips to help them get the most for their meeting dollar and help you stay booked. Here is a project I worked on with the American Payroll Association that could be a model for you—or at least expand your thinking about how to offer your services.

APA’s Executive Director, Dan Maddux, had a week of speaking and seminar slots to fill. Instead of assigning each slot to a different speaker, Dan chose to maximize the contribution of a few top people, using three of them in three different ways. That’s how Dan made 1 + 1 + 1 = 9. Three speakers, used three ways, equals nine slots filled. Here’s how Dan maximized APA’s budget and Diane, Susan, and I stayed at a lovely hotel for a week!
As speakers, we have to be creative and make these recommendations to our clients.

Save on Hotels and Airfare
Cutting the number of speakers might or might not reduce the total nights lodging needed, depending on the schedule. However, clients definitely save on transportation—for instance, three round-trips versus nine.

Speakers May Add More Value
Not all speakers will deliver extra presentations for the same rates—they won’t. However, I have always found it appreciated and profitable to offer, “After my keynote, would you like me to deliver a breakout session?” Or “Would you like me to moderate a panel?” Even, “You mentioned your chairman is a bit nervous. Shall I spend a little time and coach him on his presentation?”
I am certainly a speaker who will offer clients a reduced daily price for three consecutive days at one hotel, rather than three separate dates months apart.

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Develop Your Storytelling Abilities

Develop Your Storytelling Abilities
by Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE

Patricia Fripp & Darren LaCroix at Lady and the Champs
Patricia Fripp & Darren LaCroix at Lady and the Champs

When we think of Hollywood, what we usually remember most are the moving, dramatic, and funny stories that movies tell. The screenwriter Robert McKee says, “Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

All actors recognize the value of great stories and the importance of making them come alive. I teach business leaders and sales professionals to use stories to train, lead and sell.

Some people are born street-corner, back-fence raconteurs for whom storytelling is as easy as a smile. Whenever a group gathers around the coffee pot for the midmorning ritual, everyone is eager to hear their latest personal stories. An audience of one or a thousand will always prefer a trivial story brilliantly told to a brilliant one told badly.

Executive speech coaching  is exciting part of my business. Often, a corporate speaker brings me sheets of statistics and says, “Here’s what I want to talk about.”

“Why should your audience care about all this?,” I ask. “Where is the excitement? Where is that currency of human contact, the STORY?” Then we set about turning the numbing data into stimulating descriptions of what it all MEANS. More than any words you say, people will remember what they “see” in their minds while they are listening.

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A Great Acceptance Speech Example from Bruce Phipps

Bruce Phipps delivering his APA Man of Year award speech
Bruce Phipps delivering his APA Man of Year award speech
Bruce Phipps on iMag APA Man of the Year 2011
Bruce Phipps on iMag APA Man of the Year 2011

A Great Acceptance Speech Example from Bruce Phipps, American Payroll Association 2011 Man of the Year.

Every year I help the American Payroll Association’s Man and Woman of the Year prepare their speech to be delivered at the APA national convention called Congress.
The Man and Woman of the Year deliver an eight-minute speech the year after they are named. When you have to deliver a short speech every word counts.

Even if this is not a position they would have asked to be thrust into, they have become role models to the over 21,000 APA members. The audience size listening to their presentations are 2,000 people.

It is appropriate to say “thank you”, share an overview of your career, acknowledge mentor and supporters, tell of your involvement in the association, and anything amusing as it relates to your career.

Please notice how I recommend you write your speech. Down the page one sentence or thought at a time. This is easier to “internalize” your presentation as you get it “into your body”. When you take your notes to the lectern it is easier to glance down and not read.

Take it away Bruce…
“It has been my distinguished honor to have been your 2011 Payroll Man of the Year.
Words cannot possibly describe the incredible year I have experienced.
Like many of you, Payroll was not my initial career choice.

My first job was as a bank teller for a small bank in the community where I lived.
In 1975, newly graduated from High School, and not knowing what I wanted to do with my life it seemed to be my best option.

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Create Clear, Concise, Creative Keynotes: 5 Ways to Make Every Word Count

1. Be conversational. A good speech, especially for today’s audiences, needs to sound conversational. However, there is a difference between a conversation and a speech that sounds conversational. An actual conversation involves back and forth. In a conversational speech, you imagine a crisp, concise conversation with your audience, avoiding unusually long pauses, run-on thoughts, and digressions of real discussions. Instead of words like “whatchamacallit” and “What was I saying?” you select the most appropriate, specific language, especially for your opening.

2. Script your opening phrases. Many content experts are not as pithy as we would like because they have become too confident about their material. They have their PowerPoint together, they have years of expertise, or they wrote a book on the subject. However, often they have not sat down and scripted the opening in short, specific phrases that intrigue us and invite us into the speech. However, once you get off to a good start, it is amazing how much this pithiness will carry through the rest of the presentation. Quality spreads.

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Improve Public Speaking with Three Techniques for Better Storytelling

Presentation skills guru Patricia Fripp
Presentation skills guru Patricia Fripp

Improve Public Speaking with Three Techniques for Better Storytelling

By Patricia Fripp, Presentation Skills Guru

Everybody loves a good story. No matter what our culture, we grow up knowing that hearing a story is somehow a reward. Stories are how we learn values and our family’s legacy. When we go to school, we discover that stories are a way to make history come alive. In business, we realize stories help us explain the complex and the best way to train our associates.

Wise leaders, managers, and sales professionals are well served to develop an arsenal of great stories and good examples. Good stories help differentiate us from our competition.

Steve Ball of Microsoft was in charge of finding the right music to be the boot-up sound for the Vista operating system. He brought in three professionals from the worlds of music and Hollywood – for six seconds of sound! Steve explained the importance, saying, “Part of the sound was also used in our email program. That translated into this sound being heard more than any other music ever heard, including the Beatles.”

The professional that was chosen was Robert Fripp, guitarist and founder of King Crimson. Steve explains how he came to the decision: “All the artists created a sound that would have worked. However, Robert told the best story of how his music best represented Vista.”

Sometimes, the most unlikely people tell great stories. Often a coworker in the break room will have you in stitches as she regales you with tales of what happened taking the bus to work. Then the head of Finance walks in, and halfway through his story everyone says, “It’s time to get back to work!”

Why is it so few have the skill? How often have you heard someone tell a rambling story that seemed to go nowhere, or you are left wondering, “What was the point?” These three techniques will help you turn simple stories into examples that will be remembered and frequently repeated.

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Public Speaking: Your Presentation Starts Before You Walk on Stage

Whenever you open your mouth, whether your audience is ten people or a thousand, you naturally want to get a specific message across. Whenever you set out to present, persuade, and propel with the spoken word you want to keep the audience engaged…from the moment you walk on stage or to the front of the room. Your goal is to have a long term impact and speak to be remembered and repeated.

IN ADVANCE

Your presentation really begins long before you open your presentation. You need to know who your audience is and what they do. Ask “What is a day in their life?” If possible in advance interview a cross section of your audience. Why you were invited to speak? What connection do you have to them? Why would they care about your subject? With this information you can tie your key points to their lives, jobs and goals.

SCHMOOZE FACTOR

Get to your meeting room early. Get organized and test your audio visual. Then walk around and engage your audience. Yes, just talk to them. Introduce yourself, ask them how they are enjoying the conference, congratulate them for sitting up front, ask about their experience with your subject, have fun with them if they are sitting in the back, “Are you going to leave early if the speaker is no good?”
Once you have connected with them they will feel obligated to give you their attention at the beginning. Then get off to a good start so that the audience will stay engaged.

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Female Relationships and Your Health

Patricia Fripp keynote speaker & speech coach
Patricia Fripp keynote speaker & speech coach
Female Relationships and Your Health

“It is very difficult to be a dynamic success if you don’t feel well.”
Famous quote by me…Patricia Fripp
My friends have always been great supporters and encouragers. They also keep me up with what I should be reading or aware of in the news. Or at least best selling author and in-demand keynote speaker Susan RoAne does! Five newspapers a day!

As a woman who has always been single by choice, one how has a strong emotional connection with my male and female friends, and my brother Robert Fripp I enjoyed these comments sent to me by buddy Susan RoAne.

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Who Do You Trust? Do You Sound Persuasive?

If you want to be trusted it helps if you are a powefully persuasive.
Patricia Fripp and Darren LaCroix can help you in our June Story and Structure Speaking School and Coaching Camp. June 15-17, 2012 in Las Vegas.

When it comes to trust I am sure you will find Richard Edelman’s article as interesting as I did.

Who Do You Trust?

Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Worldwide, the world’s largest public relations agency, tips you off on who is most trusted.

Knowing who people turn to for information is invaluable as a PR practitioner. Since 2000, the Edelman Trust Barometer has measured trust in various institutions and groups of people. This annual survey of 25,000 people and 5,600 opinion leaders in 25 countries reveals some key findings about Aristotle’s concept of ethos or “source credibility.” Here are some significant trends from the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer.

Trust in government has declined sharply.
Government’s inability to effectively manage political and financial crises has severely impacted the credibility of government officials. In 17 of the 25 countries surveyed, government is now trusted by less than half to do what is right. In Europe, trust in government dropped almost 10 percentage points. In Asia, trust in government dropped 13 points in China and 26 points in Japan, the latter resulting from its response to the catastrophic earthquake. In the United States, trust in government remained flat at 43 percent.

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