Chapter 10

Writing for the Spoken Word

In This Chapter

Constructing a powerful elevator pitch

Drafting and delivering presentations

Planning and scripting video

Planning what to say in challenging situations

You need to know two main things when writing speeches, presentations and scripts:

They need to be written

They need to be spoken

That may seem ridiculously obvious, but take these rules seriously and you’re way ahead of the game, whatever yours is. Most people assume they’ll rise to the occasion and wing much of what they say when they’re on stage or just introducing themselves. Or, they write a speech as if it were a piece of literature and then are surprised at how hard it is to deliver it well.

Whatever the length or stakes of your spoken piece – from an elevator speech that lasts just a few seconds to a formal presentation – the planning and writing process I cover in this chapter gives you the foundation you need.

Elevating Your Elevator Speech

The elevator speech, or elevator pitch, is an indispensable business tool. The name derives from the concept of giving a speech in the time it takes to travel in an elevator (lift). Think of it as a speech in miniature to introduce yourself in networking and other professional situations. Take it everywhere. If you don’t think you need an elevator speech, you’re not getting out enough!

The challenge is to create a super-concise spoken statement that tells the person you’re talking to who you are, what you do, and what that means to him or her.

Not that long ago, the typical recommendation was for a pitch up to 30 seconds long. Then 20 seconds became the preferred norm. But things keep speeding up. My best current advice is to aim for 10 to 15 seconds. You can have an additional 10 seconds or so in reserve and use it if you sense a good audience reaction, but the 10 to 15 second version must stand on its own.

That short space leaves a lot unsaid, no matter how much you drill down to a core message. But brevity is good. Effective elevator speeches are conversation starters. If you can provoke a little curiosity and generate a question, you hit the mark.

If helpful, think of your elevator pitch as an oral tweet. A 140-character length message actually produces about 10 seconds spoken aloud.

To create a new elevator speech or improve an existing one, use the same framework that works for emails, proposals and blogs. The following sections tweak the process to suit the style and demands of spoken communication.

Defining your goal

Every person and every situation may differ, but essentially, aim to connect your elevator speech with someone you don’t yet know – or even more importantly, someone who that person knows – who may share an interest or link you to an opportunity you want.

Take a broad, relationship-building view of this idea. Trust that there is nothing you can say that will land you a job or consulting offer on the spot. Rather, aim to explore mutual interests. Your goal is to identify meeting points that may be purely professional, or more personal (like a common interest in antique cars); and if the outlook is promising, to find an opportunity to follow up later and build a relationship.

Expert networkers always listen to the other person very carefully and look immediately for ways they can benefit him. And they are alert to signals that the other person can connect them to someone else they want to know.

Defining your audience

You can’t do a good job on an elevator speech unless you think through your audience’s perspective: what interests them, what they want to know, their pain points, and why they’d want to know you.

Of course generally with elevator pitches, you don’t have a single specific person in mind, so think in terms of groups rather than individuals. (See Chapter 2 for pointers on audience analysis.)

Just because you’re defining a group, however, doesn’t mean you can be vague or general. Different groups have different characteristics. You can easily anticipate that lawyers have very different interests than painters, for example. But both may be interested in accounting strategies or intellectual property law.

Analyzing your goal and potential audience gives you a big bonus: it shows you where to show up – the places, events, and occasions in which to invest your time, network and find the people you want to tell your story to.

Strategizing your content

After you work on your core value statement (which I discuss in Chapter 9), you may be almost ready to launch your elevator speech. Scan through your core message to find a statement that comes close to expressing the single most important thing you want to get across. Then re-imagine it in words that work for the ear. (See the sidebar ‘10 Essentials for producing video’ later in this chapter for specific writing tips.) For example, consider a value statement from Chapter 9:

Jim White

Artist, art historian and administrator with experience and advanced training in archiving, preservation and photography. Special expertise in designing computer systems to accomplish administrative work more efficiently and economically. Excellent interpersonal skills, adept at training people to use new technology cheerfully.

If Jim went to a meeting of museum administrators, he might choose to say:

Hi, I’m Jim White. I’m a technology specialist for the arts. I create computer systems that save museums a ton of money by handling administrative work more efficiently. Right now I’m looking for a staff opportunity.

Jim’s work here was to recycle the content into a conversational, easy-to-say, and somewhat memorable statement that centers on his most important asset.

The first imperative of a good written speech, whatever its length, is to write it – on paper or your computer. This lets you look at, edit and refine it. The second imperative is to say it. There’s no substitute for speaking it aloud because it’s ultimately an oral product and must be further edited based on sound.

Of course you want your speech to sound spontaneous, especially if it’s an elevator pitch, so there’s a third imperative: practice.

But you don’t necessarily need to recite what you crafted word for word. More important, you need to completely absorb your message so without stress, you can adapt it to the occasion and the person you’re talking to.

If you haven’t worked on a core value statement and are starting from scratch on your elevator speech, think intensively about who you help. Whatever your product or service, ultimately someone benefits. Figure out how and what those benefits are. Think also about what in your work you’re passionate about, and what makes you feel proudest.

Tailor elevator speeches to the person, or group. A search engine optimization expert may tell this to an audience of marketing directors:

I’m Marian Smith, and my mission is to get businesses right on top of Google search results. I’m the marketing department’s secret weapon.

While to a roomful of entrepreneurs, she may say:

I’m Marian Smith, and my company is a one-stop shop for online marketing, websites and social media support. We level the playing field for you – and do it affordably. And we’re whizzes at SEO.

Here are a few more representative elevator pitches to stir your thinking.

I’m a personal trainer who specializes in working with older women who feel out of shape. I give them custom programs they’re comfortable with and can learn to do on their own. A few sessions with me can make an amazing difference in their lives.

I’m a financial planner. I believe financial planning shouldn’t be a service reserved for the super-rich, so I work by telephone to make good advice very affordable. I show people how to handle everything from paying for college to financing retirement and buying what they want.

Develop your own mini-pitches with these sure-fire strategies:

Be as specific as you can; generalizations make you sound like everybody else

Use short words and sentences, and craft them to sound like natural speech, not a memorized statement

Make it memorable, easy to repeat

Rev up your spirits and voice to sound positive and enthusiastic and lively

Infuse your words with your passion for what you do

Support your message with good body language and facial expressions

Practice it to the point where you sound spontaneous

Good elevator speeches encourage the listener to ask a specific follow-up question: ‘How do you do that?’ ‘How can you consult effectively by telephone?’ ‘What kind of opportunity are you interested in?’ ‘How does it work?’

And elevator speeches lend themselves to closing with a direct question yourself. To any of the examples I cite above, you can with suitable variation say, ‘Do you know anyone who needs that?’

Representing your organization and yourself

When you introduce yourself as a representative of your company or other organization, you speak for it. Often focusing on yourself isn’t appropriate when you’re talking to potential customers or industry groups. But do identify your role. For example:

I’m John James and I’m COO of Dempster & Dove. We’re a local company that builds miniature tractors for suburban homeowners . . . My role is . .

Your description of the organization should ideally be a 15-second expression of core value created in much the same way as a personal elevator pitch. It should meet the same criteria as a personal pitch – memorability, sharp focus, enthusiastic tone. Your company may have a ready-made pitch, a way of explaining the organization that you can adapt.

If you’re the owner of a one-person enterprise, you can speak in your own name or the company’s and use the editorial ‘we’ if you wish:

I’m Jean Leonard, and my company is Amateur Aerodynamics. We help airplane hobbyists increase their flying range . . .

If you’re looking for a job or a career transition, it’s fine to say so clearly. Help your conversation partner by being specific about your need. ‘I’m looking for a marketing job’ is far less likely to gain a nibble than:

I’m a 10-year veteran of the financial services industry and I’m working on an extra degree in marketing because that’s what I really want to do. I’m looking to move into marketing now at a place where my experience would be valued. Can you think of anyone I might talk to?

No guarantees, but if you’re in the right place, the person you’re speaking with is likely to glance around the room to find you a match.

Don’t forget that in an elevator speech situation, the people you talk to are just as eager as you are to make a new connection and to be heard. Act as an attentive and responsive listener. If you can help someone else in even a small way, take the opportunity. Great networkers follow up an introduction by sending a relevant clipping or link, or information about a travel destination or something else that came up. Or if the exchange is mutually promising, an invitation for coffee.

Aim to be the last person to introduce yourself. Listen with total concentration to what the other person says without thinking about what you’re going to say when it’s your turn. (You don’t need to – you’re prepared.) Active listening creates a bond. It empowers you to find common ground and adapt your own self-intro to the other person.

Preparing and Giving Presentations

As presentation coaches often point out, many people view public speaking as literally worse than death. I’ve never seen the research on this, but it does seem that the prospect of presenting terrifies most people. But effective presenting is more and more essential to today’s business culture, so you need to get over it!

Here’s the tried and true way presenting well and comfortably: preparation followed by practice.

Many books are written about presentation skills (notably Voice and Speaking Skills For Dummies by Judy Apps and Presentations For Dummies by Malcolm Kushner), so I focus on ideas to put the process into perspective as a writing challenge and make it easier to succeed.

Planning what to say

Just as for an elevator pitch, make decisions for your presentations based on your goal and your audience. What do you want to do? Motivate? Inspire? Sell something? Share information? Impress with your expertise? Change behavior? Each goal calls for different content, whatever the subject.

The more closely you define your goal, the better the guidance you give yourself. For example, when you want to share information, think through why you want to share it. Wanting your audience to work harder and smarter is different from aiming to sign audience members up for one-on-one coaching. The first goal demands that you motivate the audience and deliver practical how-to information. To accomplish the second, you calibrate how much information to give away to entice audience members to want more.

Who you’re giving the information to is the other half of the planning equation. If you’re a scientist, you naturally present different material to other professionals as opposed to a lay audience interested in something useful or fun. Give real thought to what your audience wants to know, worries about, and cares about.

Unless you are a technical professional talking to people just like you, presentations are not usually the medium for deep, detailed, complex material. Despite how most teaching is still done, oral learning by itself is not very effective. And onscreen visuals and video in the way that most people use them don’t help much.

Always the best rule of thumb: Keep it simple. When you plan a presentation, start at the end. What do you most want your audience to walk away with and remember?

Try to crystallize a theme for your presentation. Framing all material with a point of view, and putting things into perspective, is far more effective than giving them ‘just the facts’. Most of us feel we’re already drowning in information. We want to be told what the data, or product, or idea means.

Try the Hollywood approach of expressing your theme in one sentence. Billion dollar movies are funded based on sentences such as, ‘Boy robot and girl robot fall in love and want a baby’ A business equivalent? Perhaps for an audience of talent managers, ‘Invest in cross-cultural experiences because it produces better managers for tomorrow.’ For a new product, your theme can be as simple as ‘Invest in this gizmo because it shaves 11 per cent off production costs.’ Build your theme with the classic, simple structure – beginning, middle, end.

Beginning well

Use an opening anecdote, provided it’s relevant and you’re sure your audience will receive it well. Your personal story may provide an idea. If not, try what many professional speechwriters do: ask all your friends if they have a good anecdote about the subject, the venue, or your audience’s profession. But never tell a joke that can be interpreted as laughing at the audience. It’s okay to laugh at yourself. See Chapter 9 for much more on the power of storytelling.

More essential than an anecdote is to use your opening to tell your listeners what you’re going to share and why it’s important to them.

Middling well

Just as for an email or other document, brainstorm the solid middle content that will accomplish your goal with the specific audience. Keep to your theme and organize the material in a logical, easy-to-follow sequence. Easier said than done, I know. Remember that you don’t need to deliver the universe – just one small focused asteroid is plenty.

One organizational method that works well for presentations is to create a list of the areas that relate to your subject, much like you create a list of subheads for a written piece, as I explain in Chapter 8. If you were introducing a medical device, for example, you might list:

1. What the discovery is, briefly, and why it matters; who it will help

2. How the discovery was made

3. What collaborations were involved

4. Interesting surprises or challenges that arose during the process

5. Where things now stand

6. Next steps

7. Future vision: Why it’s important, who it will help, and how; if relevant, the audience can participate

For many subjects, a numbered approach works well and keeps you organized: ‘Here are the six most important changes that will affect your future in the advertizing industry.’ Or ‘Here are four ways this new software will change how you handle conflict.’ Most audiences love this strategy because they can tick off the items as you move along. Numbering gives them a sense of accomplishment and is easier on the brain. Staying attentive is hard work!

Ending well

As appropriate, state your grand conclusion, sum up what you said, and reinforce the takeaway you want. You might bring home to your audience why your subject matters to them and, if relevant how to take the next step or put it to work in their practical lives. Sometimes it’s appropriate to close with an energizing vision of the future as it relates to your talk. But don’t rehash the entire speech and bore your listeners. Keep your ending brief.

As the saying goes, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. A good ending often requires that you prep for questions. Preparing for the Q&A helps you deliver more confidently, too. If you inspire tough questions, see that as a plus. But have answers ready. Politicians and CEOs do this and so should you. Brainstorm, with colleagues if possible, to figure out the likely questions. Especially try to anticipate the one question you hope no one will pose and know how to respond.

Crafting your presentations with writing

Other than rocket science and brain surgery, perhaps, no thought is so complex that you cannot express it in clear, simple language. If you find being simple and clear a challenge, you may need to re-think your subject and ideas.

Writing helps you think through your presentation content and approach, so start with a piece of paper or your computer screen. Depending on how you work best draft a full script or create an outline that covers all your main points. Neither the draft or outline should accompany you to the event. Aim never to read a speech unless you must. Maintaining audience contact is much more important than remembering every word, or even every thought. Do aim to:

Use basic, natural language as you do in conversation: short words, short sentences.

Build in natural pauses – the oral equivalent of white space – between ideas, sections, and important sentences to help people absorb what you say.

Say your words aloud as you write and listen for an easy cadence; when you find awkward hard-to-say patches, or you run out of breath, rewrite and check the sound again.

Avoid using too many statistics or numbers because they dull the senses and numb the brain.

Use metaphors and other comparisons to make your point: ‘The applicants could have filled a football field’ is better than citing a figure.

Use graphic language whenever you can to engage the emotions and paint pictures. Check a thesaurus for alternative words to spark things up.

Time your presentation to fit the probable space, allowing for introductions and Q&A as applicable. Identify areas to skip should you run on too long so that you don’t short change your close.

Have a few content options in mind: when you see your audience losing interest, speed on to something else.

Integrating visuals

Notice that I’ve not yet mentioned PowerPoint, Prezi or their cousins. And for good reason: visuals should always be treated as support for your message, not the main show.

Don’t use PowerPoint or any other presentation system to plan and write what you’ll say. Your message becomes distorted when you try to jam it into a limiting, structured format. Don’t make decisions about what to include or omit based on pre-allocated pieces of space or flashy templates.

Plan and write your presentation and then think about supporting visuals. Or jot down notes on possible slides as you go. When you prepare the slides, don’t cut and paste onto them the editorial content you wrote: Treat each slide as an individual communication and figure out what (few) words should be included and what visuals help make the same point. Avoid throwing your whole speech onto the screen.

You are the central focus when you speak. People are there to see and hear you, not stare at a screen. Never read from your slides. And never distribute your handout before you speak because it distracts your listeners, who leap ahead to the end and then wait impatiently for you to finish.

Much more detailed information on using PowerPoint awaits you in PowerPoint ForDummies by Doug Lowe, but here are a few principles to guide you:

Keep every slide simple and easy to absorb at a glance: no long lists of bullets and sub-bullets, no complex charts and graphs, no sets of statistics.

Use visuals to translate those statistics or ideas into graphic form – for instance, if you’re trying to explain the size of a nanometer, show comparisons such as a human hair and other objects.

Keep fonts simple and LARGE so that people at the back can read the material. How large depends on the size of your room and audience.

Keep graphics simple and consistent in style and colors. Check for legibility before you present to an audience to be sure the text projects well and is easy to read.

Use the ‘action’ feature of presentation systems for dynamic visuals to show, for example, how one element of a graph line moves over time. But use animation features sparingly so they are not distracting.

Incorporate brief video clips as available to liven things up, but be sure they’re worth the watching time and support your theme.

Test everything out before show time to make sure the technology is working, especially if you emailed the deck. Video clips in particular can come undone. The savviest presenters stand ready to deliver without PowerPoint and Internet access altogether because you just never can absolutely depend on them.

Don’t drive yourself crazy by getting absorbed in the mechanics of presenting your material. Focus on the substance. In fact, a good way to stay grounded during a presentation is to use your slides as an organizational tool. Set up headlines and subheads that key you to remember important points. This keeps your audience with you, too. For example, use a succession of slides that just say things like: The Problem, What We Did, How it Worked, Our Conclusions, What’s Next – each with maybe just a few lines of copy.

Standing and delivering

The most important strategies for delivering powerful presentations are preparation and practice. When you do your homework and shape your message to audience expectations and your own goals – first in writing and then by practicing the message to internalize it – you have the right content and confidence to boot.

Practice is how dancers, musicians, actors, and athletes remember what to do when they’re on stage or in the sporting arena. Rehearse as many times as necessary to feel comfortable and master your own sequence.

Generally, speaking without notes is ideal, but it’s fine to use cue-notes as reminders, provided you don’t stare at them for minutes or rustle through them to find your place.

There are a great many angles to creating and giving effective presentations, which you realize if you know an actor, have worked with a voice coach, or have experimented yourself with even a short speech. Practice won’t make perfect, and doesn’t need to. But awareness of some useful techniques can go a long way. Following are my ten favorite ideas for feeling professional and confident.

Warm up: many professional speakers have an easy exercise routine they do before presenting; and many warm up their voices as well.

Stand, don’t sit – even for giving an elevator speech when practical.

Keep your posture straight and balanced, but not stiff; no rocking or fidgeting or pacing (but natural hand gestures are excellent).

Breathe deeply, from very low in your diaphragm.

Radiate positive energy and pleasure at being there.

Vary the pitch and tone of your voice.

Maintain voice energy: don’t trail off at the end of sentences or end with an upward inflection that sounds like you’re asking a question

Focus on one person at a time, perhaps for five second intervals.

Notice how people react. If eyes glaze over, or half your audience is looking at their smart phones, move in a new direction.

Don’t sweat what you forget: even if you skip a major point, you’re the only one who knows. Just focus on saying the rest with conviction.

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If public speaking is important to you professionally, perhaps as an excellent way to grow your business, give yourself some solid grounding. Many good speakers value their experience with Toastmaster’s International. Courses in voice or presentation techniques are often available through local colleges, universities, and other educational institutions.

Scripting for Video

I recall hearing a communications professional report that, after finding that his company’s expensive, beautifully produced videos drew only a fraction of the YouTube viewers who watched his mailroom clerk’s videos, he put the clerk in charge of production.

Are production values – good picture, sound and scripting – dead? In the name of authenticity, do people prefer rough amateur quality-free video made on smart phones?

Certainly people have become sceptical of slick promotional material, both print and video. Digital technology makes video easier to create as well as less expensive and more accessible every day. But the fact that almost anyone can produce video means that to reach people and accomplish goals, yours has to be better and better. This may require some supplementary equipment and an awareness of production values. But fortunately, it doesn’t mean unaffordability, because the everyday technology keeps radically improving.

Writing is one of the key ways to produce successful videos. Scriptwriting, however, encompasses not just writing words that someone speaks, but planning the visuals – what appears on the screen.

The need for good visuals is quickly apparent the first time you write a script. For every instant of narration, something must be up on the screen. During my first experience, I came to the editing room with 15 pages of carefully written and recorded voiceover and a few days of on-site shooting. The editor laid down the first two minutes of sound and said, ‘OK, what’s the picture’? We had only 10 seconds worth of relevant footage. Out went the script.

According to the nature of your project (and budget), content can include talking heads (people speaking directly to the camera), live action (such as demonstrations of a process or something happening), cutaways (close-ups of models, charts, or details of the scene), still images, on-screen titles, animation, and more,

I assume you don’t have a production company on hand. My strategies in this section focus on basic ideas that you can apply to your social media résumé, website, or YouTube-bound videos to spotlight your product, service, idea, or anything else.

With video, keep it simple. Pick subjects that support your goals and that you can handle with the equipment and know-how on hand.

Introducing yourself with video

Video is a powerful way to liven up a website or social media page. Someone – perhaps you – talking on camera about your business, product, service, or career dream is a much more personal introduction than written copy. You and your business become real to the viewer.

However, not everyone comes across well in living, speaking media. Video is especially high-risk if you plan a talking-head speech with the camera focused fully on you the whole time. You can work out a simple version of a Teleprompter, such as cue cards or pages with notes outside the camera’s view, rather than reading. Or try for spontaneous. But coming across as warm and natural without some talent or training is very difficult.

So record yourself for a few minutes speaking directly to a camera and then take a hard look at how you come across on video. Ask colleagues for honest input. If the piece doesn’t show you off to advantage, either:

Scrap the ‘here I am’ video for the time being

Do a really short version

Twenty or thirty seconds of video is usually enough for an intro. Think of it as an elevator speech with a camera. Your actual elevator speech, as I cover earlier in ‘Elevating Your Elevator Speech’, may give you the core of your video message. Also consider drawing on your personal value statement, or your personal story, both of which I talk about in Chapter 9.

What often works best is to talk about something that ignites your own genuine enthusiasm – for example, your passion for your work. I once reviewed a script for a travel agent that began, ‘Hello, I’m Viola Smith, and I run a full-service travel agency.’ I suggested instead, ‘I’m Viola Smith, and what I love about my work is rescuing people from the travel adventures they didn’t expect.’ After your lead is in place, the rest falls naturally. Viola went on to give a few examples of extreme rescue, like finding a flight from Afghanistan for a family at 4 in the morning, and replacing a traveller’s stolen money and documents in time for him to get home for his daughter’s birthday. In less than a minute she demonstrated her problem-solving know-how, showed how far she goes for clients, and connected with prospects. Who hasn’t had a disastrous travel experience and doesn’t anticipate another?

A simple line or two introducing yourself is fine for a video opener – you don’t need a flashy intro or magical words. But use your best writing-thinking skills with core value and story techniques (see Chapter 9) to come up with the right words you can say with conviction.

Sharing expertise

Most people go straight to the internet to learn things: how to fix a computer problem, how to treat a pulled muscle, how to make a quilt. If you’re good at something or have specialized knowledge, you probably already possess excellent subject matter for how-to videos.

If you think disseminating such videos is worth your while for establishing expertise or authority, concentrate on communicating your knowledge or advice as clearly as possible. If appropriate for your subject, create a step-by-step set of visual-plus-narrative instructions.

How-we-do-it videos are also good enhancements to your organization’s website or blog. Whether you make boots or art glass or fix machinery, how-to tips can interest your target audiences. They can also communicate what makes your product unique and perhaps expensive: special materials, a demanding process, expert knowledge.

Video offers a lot of potential for service businesses, too, by providing glimpses of what you do and how. A training company can show clips of its workshops in action, for example, which is far more effective for marketing than endless descriptions. A non-profit can use video to showcase its accomplishments, focusing on specific people who its work has helped. A corporation can use this technique too, for sharing their contributions to good causes, or highlighting how employees give their time to volunteer work. With staff members alone this use of video really helps amplify a team spirit makes excellent material for customers via websites and social media, too.

Writing the script

Even if the subject is ‘you’ as the sole talking head, don’t expect to set the camera up and wing it.

The most important principle for business videos is to script before you shoot. Otherwise you won’t know what you want to record and are likely to end up with a random assortment of material that doesn’t add up to the message you mean to deliver. You may succeed if you shoot first, think later, but the process will be far more expensive and time-consuming than shooting to script. Production is typically the most expensive part of the video-making process, so strive for minute-by-minute efficiency.

Preparing you for video production is beyond the scope of this chapter. (See Digital Video For Dummies by Keith Underdahl or Digital SLR Video and Filmmaking For Dummies by John Carucci.) But I do give some basic grounding from the writing/planning perspective in ‘10 Essentials for producing video.’

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Video ideally is a team endeavor, and an exciting one. Even if you’re a one-person operation and plan to accomplish everything with a smart phone or small digital camera, knowing how to develop a larger team effort with specialists is still helpful.

If you don’t have a team of specialists to work with, build one with colleagues who have good ideas and a willingness to experiment. Ingenuity and imagination can to some extent make up for specialized technologies.

If you’re basically your own crew, rely on the following production essentials:

Lighting is the big difference between interesting, clear video imagery and indifferent visuals. Invest in a light you can position and adjust. Take the time and effort to light your subject carefully.

Sound quality counts hugely. The biggest technical complaint about video is poor sound. People can apparently forgive not-so-good picture but hate having to strain their ears to catch or interpret the words. Look for help on recording sound. Seriously consider investing in a good, versatile microphone. The ones built into cameras and computers are not good enough.

When interviewing people on camera, frame really good questions. Pose open-ended questions – not ‘Did the program work well for you?’ but ‘How did this program change your life?’ And ask with the tone you want the person to take: a bored routine sounding question earns an answer that matches.

In addition to using the books recommended a few paragraphs earlier, look for free help from camera or video stores. Tell them what you want to do and how you see your needs and ask for options. You will probably get some good advice and a bit of education.

Scripting Yourself for Practical Purposes

Writing, with the planning that goes along with it, gives you a practical advantage in many spoken-word situations. Depending on spontaneous interaction when the stakes are high is risky. But using your writing skills to pre-plan your responses can help you outpace your competitors. Following are two scenarios where self-scripting is particularly effective.

Composing talking points for fun and profit

If you ever wonder how CEOs and politicians equip themselves to win debates, be good interviewees, and prepare for press conferences, the answer is likely talking points. Large organizations also use talking points to ensure that all the executives, or everyone in the company, are on the same wave length in what they say about the company to the public.

Talking points give you a beautiful tool for any kind of confrontation, or any situation where you may have to think on your feet. The idea is to make a list of the things you want to get across. This demands thought.

For example, if you’re preparing for a job interview, think through your best matching points and examples. Then write them out, preferably just a line or two for each, limiting yourself to a single page. Someone applying for a sales manager job may list:

7 years’ experience in a similar industry, know many people

Achieved 14 per cent increase in my territory’s sales over previous person

Appointed assistant sales manager a year ago

Named ‘Salesperson of the Year’ three times

Train new sales recruits

Leaving job because of limited upward opportunity

Hold business degree from XX

Board member of local Heart Association

Former board member of local school district

Of course you have more to say on each point, and must think about each in depth, but the idea is to know in advance what you want to get across during the course of the interview, or other situation, and crystallize it in a statement you can remember. Then you can draw on this mental material to answer questions effectively. You also create a checklist of your ‘advantage’ points and gracefully add all or some at the interview’s end (‘You might also like to know that . . .’).

You can also use a politician’s trick to ‘bridge’ to something you want to say or to avoid putting yourself in an unfavorable light. (‘I don’t have direct experience with that strategy, but I did work with YYY, for three years and came to find out . . . ’). Take care not to appear evasive if you use this technique, however. It’s important to convey that you are straightforward and honest.

The talking points approach is equally useful in preparing for any confrontation. When you ask for a raise, express disagreement, air a problem or recommend an unpopular course of action, planning gives you confidence and underwrites your success. You’ll know the important points to make and be ready to respond with answers when questioned or challenged. Create talking points for your sales presentations, too.

Scripting telephone messages that work

Good salespeople script their telephone and in-person pitches and give more thought than most to crafting telephone messages that prompt call-backs. The key, according to my favorite sales coach, Jeff Goldberg, is to provoke curiosity. Long detailed messages that explain exactly who you are and why you’re calling don’t generate interest. Better is a short message such as:

Hi Jack, my name is Lynn Barrows. My phone number is . . . Jack, I’m calling you regarding IBM. Once again, my number is . . .’

‘IBM’ in this instance is a current or past client and the link when Jack returns the call is that Lynn has helped IBM in a way that will also benefit Jack. Of course, the relationship with the well-known company must be genuine.

The actual sales pitch, when Jack calls, keys off Lynn’s elevator speech: short, benefits-oriented and memorable. Which could be a good general guideline to inform everything you write.

And my last word on speaking your script: Smile when you say it. You can write the best elevator speech or presentation or sales pitch in the land, but if you deliver it without conviction and enthusiasm, you won’t succeed. Write what you believe – and believe in what you say.