Leveraging the speech

When you make a speech to an audience of, say, fifty people, what you see is what you get. It's sensible, then, to look for ways to extend the benefits of the speech beyond this narrow group of people. I call this leveraging the speech—increasing its value exponentially.

Publicity is the best way to leverage a speech. Several steps should be taken to help ensure that the speech is well-publicized:

It's important to send to the program chairman, or whoever extended the invitation, a short news release along with a biographical sketch and a photo of the speaker. This should be done well in advance. The program chairman can use the material in the club bulletin or the printed program and send it to the local news media. Or, if you prefer, the company's PR department can distribute the news release.

Depending on the occasion, the speaker, and the subject, the speech could have significant news value. It's a good idea to take a couple of extra copies of your speech to the meeting just in case any news media representatives show up. Reporters appreciate having a printed copy because it frees them from the necessity of taking notes. Moreover, it helps ensure that you will be quoted accurately. When I handled press relations for corporate annual meetings, I always gave copies of the chairman's speech to business writers who attended. Reporters seemed to appreciate this courtesy.

The copies you hand out should be conventionally punctuated and typed, not arranged for use at the lectern according to our discussion in Chapter Sixteen.

If you have reason to believe that the speech will interest people in a broader area, distributing a news release based on the speech to appropriate media is a good idea. Your distribution list should include trade publications in the industry of which the speaker is a part. In many companies, preparing these news releases is done routinely by the public relations department.