When we give a speech, we do it for a purpose. Perhaps we are sharing  information or perhaps we are trying use the importance of public  speaking to motivate an audience to take action. 

It’s those cases in which we are trying to get our audience to take action that we need to be able to deliver a persuasive speech.  These kinds of speeches can connect with our audience, make them  believe the same things that we do, and then take action. 

Now the big  question is just exactly how can a speaker go about creating a  persuasive speech?

So why are you willing to go to the effort of giving a speech? 

If you  are like most of us, you have a goal in mind. What you want to do is to  use the, importance of public speaking to influence your audience to either change the way that they think or to take an action. If you  can do this, then you will have become a powerful speaker. 

We may all think that having the ability to influence an audience is hard to do;  however, it may turn out that doing this is easier than any of us may  know.

So the interesting thing about a speech is that they don’t all look the  same. In fact, sometimes a speech may look completely different from  what you might think that they should look like. 

When you find yourself  in a situation where you want to sell an idea to an audience, sometimes it might make sense to use the importance of public speaking  and engage yourself in a debate.  This allows your audience to see both sides of an argument and with a  little luck they will agree with the arguments that you present. 

What we  need to know is just exactly how to go about speaking during a debate.

All speakers want to become better speakers. 

The challenge that we face  is that we just don’t know how to go about doing this. We can hire  coaches, we can attend classes, there is no shortage of things that we  can do. However, it turns out that if we truly want to become better,  there one thing that we can do. Take the time to video record ourselves. 

The camera never lies.

So why do you give speeches? Is it just to hear yourself speak? 

Is it  because you understand the importance of public speaking? I suspect that  the answer to this question is “no”. We give speeches because we have  information that we want to share with an audience. Our goal for sharing  this information is to persuade and influence them in order to get them to take some sort of action that we want to have accomplished. In order to make that happen, your audience is going to have to understand your message, accept it, and then act upon it. What you need to do is to learn how to speak persuasively. 

It turns out that there are a number of things that you can do while you are speaking that will make this happen.

I’d like to be able to tell you that every audience that you will  address will be excited to hear you talk and are open to your message  because they understand the importance of public speaking. However, as  we all know this is not the case. There will be times that as you stand  on that stage you will be able to feel the hostility coming from your audience. When you find yourself in a situation like this, you need to know how to deliver your speech in a way that will prevent your audience from tuning you out and may allow you to build bridges to them.

Would you like to have a big audience show up for your next speech? 

I  mean, would you like to have the room filled to overflowing? It turns  out that this is actually fairly easy to do: just agree to give a speech about a controversial topic,  you know what I’m talking about: sex, religion, or politics. The reason  that so many people are going to show up is because a lot of them are  going to disagree with what you have to say. 

Just exactly how is a  speaker supposed to go about giving a speech like this?

Often when we are creating a speech, we spend our time thinking about  how we can connect with our audience. 

What it’s going to take in order  to get them to believe what we are telling them. Since we understand the  importance of public speaking, we also spend our time looking for ways to get our audience to take action after we are done talking to them. It turns out that all of these things are exactly the same things that sales people do when they are trying to close a sale. Speakers can play the role of a salesperson. 

We just have to know how to build a speech that will help us to sell…

Congratulation, you now have the ability to stand in front of an  audience and give a speech – you understand the importance of public  speaking. 

What comes next? Have you ever thought about branching out?  Perhaps you can use your speaking skills in a different way in order to  communicate with a group of people. One way to do this is to become a trainer.  If you think about it, being a trainer is very similar to giving a  speech. 

Just exactly what does it take to make the switch from being a  speaker to being a trainer?

As speakers, the one thing that we want to happen when we give a speech is to use the importance of public speaking and be remembered. 

In order to make this happen, we will spend countless hours thinking about what  we want to include in our next speech. We will often think about how  other people have been able to reach out and connect with our audience  and sometimes we’ll decide that we want to do the same thing that they  did – we want to use their material in our speech. When we make a  decision like this, we are starting to travel down a dangerous road. 

If  we use too much of someone else’s material then we may run the risk of violating their copyright.