Mickey Raphael*, Willie Nelson’s harmonica player in 7000 performances, says, “Miles (Davis) taught me, ‘Don’t overdo it. Take a breath. What’s important is the space between the notes.’”
When you want your listeners to really hear you: Don’t overdo it. Take a breath. What’s important is the space [pauses] between your content.
Why use pauses?
Pauses enhance your vocal variety.
Pauses keep your audience attentive.
Pauses act as verbal commas, semi-colons and periods.
So why don’t you pause more often?
When you get nervous you speed up – the exact opposite intention!
You can’t stand white space!
Time distortion: You think you’ve paused for an eternity but it’s been only 1 nano-second.
How do you master the art of the pause?
Use a pause to transition from one idea to the next. (Your most logical pause strategy.)
Insert a “pause” into your material when you want to create drama. (Write it into your outline & internally count “1001, 1002, 1003 – maybe even longer.”)
Add pauses when sharing a story. (Especially if you act out some dialogue.)
Pausing is one of the most powerful tools you have when you speak. I urge you to find “The Space Between Your Notes”.
*PS: Personal trivia – Mickey Raphael grew up in my home town, Dallas, and my parents enjoyed a great friendship with Thelma and Arno, Mickey’s parents!
We are back with our annual selection of the best Super Bowl Commercial.
For starters, the Roman numerals for this year’s Super Bowl are LVII. Remove the “L” and you’re left with “VII” that = 7. And THAT is what a 30-second commercial costs these days: 7 million bucks (before adding in talent and production dollars)!
Speak For Yourself® picks our favorite commercial each year. Why? To learn best ways to get YOUR message across without paying $VII,000,000.
Drum Roll…. This year Breaking Good PopCorners commercial wins.
Use this list of strategies for your next board presentation, zoom meeting or project review all modeled in this commercial.
Self-deprecating humor. Laugh at yourself – it makes you more approachable. We will then want to listen to you. Our beloved Breaking Bad characters, Walter, Jesse and Tuco make fun of themselves and the original show throughout this ad.
Good story arc. Many of the ads tried too hard and became disjointed. You could not figure out what they were selling till the last second. Our Breaking Good ad reveals the product up front and the PopCorners take center stage.
Clear CTA. Eat PopCorners. In other commercials you had to really search for the product relevance & Call to Action.
Logical support material. Rather than have gratuitous celebrity placement our commercial gives us a great throwback to the Breaking Bad main characters and their van… which moves this story forward.
Strong finish. And they’re air popped, not fried. Now in seven flavors.
Real takeaways for you – find the humor, move your story forward with logic, add good support material that makes sense and create a clear message/solution. Finally, don’t get stuck in a van in the desert near Albuquerque.
The trailblazer of interviewing, who won 12 Emmy awards over a 5-decade career, teaches us 3 master lessons on how to leverage any conversation to your advantage.
Fairness
“Barbara Walters’s superpower was fairness”, writes Matt Zoller Seitz (critic & writer for Vulture and New York). He continues, “Her subjects trusted her to give them as fair a shake as she could, even if she disapproved of what they did, said, or stood for.”
She exemplified an open mind and the ability to listen to the nuance of any situation.
Relaxed ambiance
“Barbara Walters, in my estimation, really has the quality of reaching through to the person,” Mike Wallace said. “She will put the person sufficiently at ease and it’s a remarkable gift.”
Looking at her interviews from every U.S. president and first lady from the Nixons to the Obamas to a wide range of celebrities and sports figures she creates rapport through her content and delivery.
They said yes to her when they wouldn’t say yes to anyone else because they liked the atmosphere Walters created onscreen.
Trust
Trust requires these three components working together: trust in yourself, trust in the process, and do your homework.
Walters nails this triad. And THEN she goes after the tough questions!
Excerpt from a Walters’ interview, “You’re a New York Times best-selling author, you’re an accomplished and celebrated concert pianist, and a three-time Academy Award–winning actor. Why the porn?’”
Bonus Strategy:
Ok – she also plays into the subject’s ego. She usually gave three compliments, and then went in for the kill.
Barbara Walters, who died recently at the age of 93, left a legacy about how to set the stage for a meaningful dialogue.
A compelling presentation is NEVER just about your data.
4 questions to ask yourself – and answer (!) – before giving any speech
1️⃣ How much time do you have?
Your best friend when giving a presentation is your clock or timer.
Don’t: glance at your watch while speaking – that’s distracting for you and your listeners.
Do: prepare and practice your comments to fit within your time limit.
2️⃣ How much do they know or need to know about your topic?
Your stealth bomb on getting heard above the noise is all around meeting the needs of your audience.
Don’t: underestimate or overestimate the topic knowledge level of your crowd.
Do: your due diligence on finding out their interest, experiences, pain points and successes on whatever you are about to say.
3️⃣ So what? What’s in it for them?
My clients often miss this one: the ROI – the Return On Investment for your listeners.
Don’t: forget to share this ROI, near the beginning of your remarks, out loud. Don’t: make it hard on your crowd to understand what they’ll gain from you.
Do: tell us how you’ll solve some issue, help us be more efficient, save us time and headaches, improve our bottom line. Pick any of these that work for your message, or figure out how you will help us… and then tell us.
4️⃣ What do you want them to do, think, or feel as a result of your speech or digital message?
If you don’t move the conversation forward in some way, then whatever you’ve shared in your message is a waste of our time. One of my mentors, Jeanne Robertson, of blessed memory, was a humorist. Her Call To Action (CTA) was to make us laugh and help us find the humor around us, even when times are tough. Perfect.
Don’t: leave us hanging!
Do: understand your CTA and share that with us. What are our “next steps” after reading your email or listening to your message?
Next steps for you
Be compelling when you speak by sticking to your time limit, creating your message to meet the needs of your audience, sharing your ROI, and moving your conversation forward by adding your Call to Action.
Today’s focus: expecting the unexpected as a leader.
How do you, as business and nonprofit leaders, do damage control during a crisis?
4 Crisis Communication Strategies
1️⃣ Be timely. No communication when crisis hits the fan creates a huge vacuum that fills with fear, anger and confusion. You want to avert that mushrooming emotional effect by being accessible.
2️⃣ Be transparent. Share what you know and share what you don’t know. When my beloved mother suffered from what would become a terminal heart attack my sister and I sat in the waiting room for three weeks. As difficult as it was to hear, the medical community gave us their updates including the known and the unknown. We valued their clarity.
3️⃣ Be empathetic. Always, always, always. Try to understand the craziness from your team/board/department’s point of view. Communicate your concern for them and about them.
4️⃣ Be solution minded. Pet peeve: people who complain without any ideas on how to improve the situation. Don’t be one of those leaders. Bring your facts, context, and thoughts on how to handle your crisis.
🔢 THE PIC: Not to detract from the serious nature of many crises, this crisis happened because #HandsomeCowboyHusband had back surgery (a few years ago) that meant I had to clean the chicken coup. Pic key: bandana to ward off the fumes; gloves to handle the mess and my rhinestone necklace because … why not?
Why do you stand in line to spend more money to buy a product you already own?
Double line at Apple Store
Retail craziness
Over the weekend my husband and I walked around NorthPark Mall in Dallas and witnessed this long line, really two lines (!), of Apple customers waiting, ONE BY ONE, to enter the store.
Not every store in this mall has lines forming out the door.
The secrets of Apple’s magnetic spell
Selling Rule #1: Communicate Value
You buy products that excel in the marketplace. You buy what works – professionally and personally (preferably both), what’s dependable, and what makes your life easier. And you’ll keep buying what continues to propel these attributes.
Selling Rule #2: Communicate Customer Service
You provide excellent after care for your products/services. “Apple Care” costs extra (another genius upsell!) and it’s worth it. Why? Because it works, it’s dependable and it makes your life easier.
Selling Rule #3: Communicate Loyalty
See Selling Rules #1 and #2! IF you provide value and excellent customer service you will achieve Customer Loyalty.
My clients are successful because they have achieved loyalty in their various industries.
How can you cash in on this type of momentum?
Know your Value Proposition. Keep it simple and memorable. Share it widely. Ex: Walmart – ‘Save Money. Live Better’. You see this on their trucks, on the front of their stores, and on their shopping sacks.
Take care of your customers… and they’ll take care of you.
Appreciate your buyers. Let them know how much you value their loyalty.
To sell well you must communicate well.
Author: Karen Cortell Reisman is Founder of Speak For Yourself®, a communication consulting firm, and the author of 2 books on how to communicate. She lives in Dallas, Texas and … full disclosure: Karen is typing this blog on a MacBook Air, while multi-tasking on her Apple iPhone mini 13, and looking forward to a book she’s reading on her Apple iPad.
Mickey Raphael*, Willie Nelson’s harmonica player in 7000 performances, says, “Miles (Davis) taught me, ‘Don’t overdo it. Take a breath. What’s important is the space between the notes.’”
7. And THAT is what a 30-second commercial costs these days: 7 million bucks (before adding in talent and production dollars)!
1️⃣ How much time do you have?
