Public speaking is a skill that few people excel at without a lot of practice and training. However, public speaking is one of the best ways to indirectly promote yourself and your company.
How do you improve your public speaking skills if you can’t afford to hire a trainer to help you? Susan Dugdale of Write-out-loud.com offers a comprehensive speech evaluation process that you can use to ensure your speeches and presentations are as good as they can be. She breaks her speech evaluation process into six parts:
- Introduction: focuses on the topic and audience
- Body: focuses on the main points of the presentation
- Conclusion: focuses on the closing of the speech
- Language: focuses on the actual language used during the speech
- Delivery: focuses on the speaker’s actual delivery of the material in the presentation
- Overall evaluation: focuses on whether the presentation goals were met
Each section of the speech evaluation process requires that the evaluator asks a specific set of questions and rate your speech on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being poor and 5 being excellent. You’ll end up with a highly detailed evaluation of your speech, so you can see exactly where you need to improve.
Susan also shares a downloadable speech evaluation form, tips to organize speech evaluators, and tools to help you plan, write and rehearse your speeches. You can follow the link at the beginning of this article to get all of the details, find all of the downloadable forms, and find links to numerous public speaking resources that Susan recommends.
Once you’ve honed your public speaking skills, you should start promoting your speaking services. You might even consider working with a speakers bureau. Whether you want to become a paid public speaker or you simply want to improve your speech writing and delivery as part of your overall professional development, Susan’s tips and resources can help you do it.
What are your top tips for public speaking? What resources do you recommend to improve your public speaking skills? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the Women on Business audience.
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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