Mastering the art of persuasive speech and crafting effective persuasive presentations can be a formidable task, as the primary goal is to motivate your audience to take action or align with a particular perspective. A persuasive speech goes beyond mere information dissemination; it’s a dynamic engagement that aims to influence and inspire.
But with the right approach, you can create a persuasive speech that’ll leave a skeptical audience enthusiastic to get on board with your company’s project.
What is a Persuasive Presentation?
What is persuasive speech?
At its core, a persuasive speech serves the purpose of convincing others to adopt your viewpoint, support your cause, or take specific actions. To succeed in this endeavor, it’s essential to understand how to start a persuasive speech. The opening should captivate your audience’s attention, lay the foundation for your argument, and establish credibility.
Persuasive presentations rely on spoken words, visual aids, facts, logic, empathy, story-telling, and more to help the audience accept new information and take action.
How to Plan a Persuasive Presentation
Not sure how to persuade an audience?
Here are 5 ways you can create an effective presentation to persuade your audience:
Decide on a Single Task
Before diving into the art of persuasive speaking, it’s imperative to grasp the fundamentals. A persuasive speech or presentation is centered around a single, clear, and compelling focal point. This central message is the cornerstone of your persuasive communication.
Whether you’re a seasoned presenter or new to persuasive presentations, mastering the art of persuasive speaking is a valuable skill. So, how do you do a persuasive speech effectively? It all begins with a clear and impactful central message, a captivating start, and a memorable conclusion. And, of course, the strategic use of persuasive speech visual aids can take your presentation to the next level.
Focusing on too many things can lead to your audience losing interest, becoming confused, or rejecting your message altogether. Therefore, as you embark on your persuasive journey, keep your message focused, your presentation engaging, and your purpose clear.
Focus on Fewer (but more relevant) Facts
Ensure the message you’re trying to get across resonates with the audience. You can do this by doing comprehensive research on the audience and finding out how your company’s product or service can solve their problems.
While presenting, ensure you empathize with the audience and keep their unique concerns in mind.
Build a Narrative Around Your Evidence
A successful presentation tugs at the heart strings of the audience.
What do we mean?
It’s not enough to just win over the audience’s brain – you need to get their hearts in it too! Fortunately, you can connect with your audience easily by sharing a personal story related to your organization and its product or service and by speaking passionately.
Your audience is only human and a little bit of emotion can help them connect with your company and the value it provides. What truly matters is the clarity of your message, the strength of your supporting evidence, and the power of your persuasion techniques. Persuasive talking involves not only the words you choose but also your tone, body language, and ability to connect with your audience on a personal level.
Confidence Matters
Before the big day, ensure you’ve practiced your presentation a couple of times. This includes familiarizing yourself with the speech and visual components that’ll aid your presentation.
Rehearsing your speech can help you deliver a smooth and confident presentation to the audience. This is crucial since you don’t want to end up pausing a lot or saying “um” way too many times while presenting!
But remember not to memorize the entire thing – you don’t want to sound robotic. So, ensure you familiarize yourself with the entire presentation enough to deliver organically on the day.
Prepare for Common Objections
While preparing for your presentation, ensure you consider what concerns or objections the audience might have. After all, you don’t want to end up saying “I’m not sure” or “let me get back to you” when a prospect asks you an important question. Not knowing the answers to crucial questions can make the audience think that you’re unprepared or unconfident in your product or service.
As a result, you need to research the topic of your presentation thoroughly and prepare for common and uncommon questions or objections your stakeholders might pose. This way, you can deliver an incredibly convincing and solid presentation.
So, whether you’re tasked with delivering persuasive speeches in the corporate world or any other context, understanding what is persuasive speaking and how to do a persuasive speech can be a valuable skill. It’s about conveying your ideas with conviction, influencing opinions, and ultimately inspiring action. With the right approach and strategies, you can create persuasive presentations that resonate with your audience, leaving them enthusiastic and eager to support your cause or project.
If you want to learn more about creating and delivering a persuasive speech, visit the Corporate Class website today.
We offer a Course and Lunch and Learn on presentation skills. In this 1-day experiential presentation skills training workshop, you’ll receive training from expert facilitators who will equip you with the skills, tools, and practice you need to hone your business communication skills.
Participants will learn how to persuade an audience, convey leadership and authority, and deliver a professional presentation.
Contact us today to learn how to deliver a persuasive speech.