In September and October of 2010 I was invited to speak at the Inside Self Storage conference in New Orleans, the California Self Storage Association conference in San Diego, and the Texas Self Storage Association conference in Fort Worth.
Many people fear public speaking, but I happen to love it. (If anyone reading this would like me to speak at an event, feel free to contact me – I would love to come to your company or industry event). Even though I love speaking and feel comfortable in front of a crowd, I wouldn’t think of going on stage without having rehearsed my remarks. Each of my 3 speeches was about an hour long, and for each of them I walked through my remarks anywhere from 2 to 4 times.
When I say I “walked through my remarks”, what I mean is that I stood up in my office and said, out loud, every word I intended to say in front of my eventual audience. I discovered the sticky sections and I went over them again. I found the areas where I was using 200 words to say what could be said with 50, and I condensed, forcing myself to be more concise.
Here is my raw evaluation data from the Texas Self Storage Association.
96% or more of the audience rated my presentation "Above Average" or "Excellent"
I think I did pretty good. But it wasn’t an accident. By the time I was done with those three, hour-long speeches I had probably invested 6 or 7 hours rehearsing. (Not to mention the other hours I spent researching, writing, and thinking about my material so that it was deep in my mind.)
No one wants to look stupid in public.
I think that is one reason property managers are reluctant to try new and better sales approaches. They don’t want to risk sounding pushy or coming across as dumb to the person on the other end of the phone.
The thing these recent speeches have taught me is that when you are practiced, you are comfortable. I don’t think most people are reluctant to make speeches or to sell more effectively because the activities are actually scary. We all talk to other people all the time. The real truth is that most people don’t like the hard work of practicing and rehearsing.
There’s no need to be afraid as long as you are willing to practice.
Are you with me?
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P.S. If you are going to the ISS conference in Las Vegas in March, 2011 I’d love to catch up with you there. I’ll be there Monday evening and most of the day on Tuesday. If you’re interested you can also see me present live on Tuesday morning at 9:00. I’ll be outlining my contrarian approach to “Motivating Manager’s to Sell.”
