I give more than 75 presentations a year at annual meetings and sales meetings. There are always other presenters – CEOs and VPs of everything from finance to marketing. Most of the speakers are (to be kind) less than compelling. Most of the speakers (to be unkind) are boring.

People in the audience are doing e-mails and texting while their CEO is speaking. YIKES. These companies have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on these meetings, and their messages may not be getting through.

Here are the primary reasons speakers fall flat:

• Lack of training in public speaking.

• Lack of preparedness.

• Lack of material mastery.

• Lack of rehearsal.

• Lack of understanding of speech responsibility.

• Lack of understanding of the audience.

• Boring material.

• No humor.

• Excuse-based speech (nervous, not enough time to prepare, bad slides, bad room, bad time of day).

Tons of books have been written on the subject of speaking and presentations. Dale Carnegie wrote one of the most famous, called simply “Public Speaking.” It was written in 1926, and it’s still in print 85 years later.

One of the most informative and one of the earliest pieces written about public speaking was by the father of self-help in America, Orison Swett Marden.

Marden’s classic book is “Pushing to the Front,” published in 1911. He espouses wisdom such as:

• “No amount of natural ability or education or good clothes, no amount of money, will make you appear well if you cannot express yourself in good language.”

• “One’s judgment, education, manhood, character, all the things that go to make a man what he is, are being unrolled like a panorama in his efforts to express himself.”

• “In thinking on one’s feet before an audience, one must think quickly, vigorously, effectively. This requires practice and experience early in life.”

• “Every time you rise to your feet you will increase your confidence, and after a while you will form the habit of speaking until it will be as easy as anything else.”

Sound advice that’s available for free. The entire book is now in the public domain. (It may be the best personal development book of all time.)

I ask executives how much public speaking training they have had, and the usual response is, “Little or none.” WHY?

Many look at public speaking and presentations as “unimportant,” or try to let their slides speak for them. BAD DECISION.

I have some ideas that will help you:

• Take a course. You can jump-start your ability by educating yourself.

• Speak regularly. At least once a week.

• Speak in safe venues. Civic groups. Or in front of your co-workers.

• Hire a coach. Someone who has been there often and done it dynamically.

• Make a video recording of yourself EVERY TIME YOU SPEAK.

• Master your slides if you use them. Slides can make or break a talk.

• Master your speech. Live rehearsal and total belief in what you’re saying are integral to authenticity.

• Speak from your heart – not from a script, a teleprompter or a speech that someone else wrote or prepared. Sincerity in speaking, not reading, makes your message transferrable.

I am throwing down the gauntlet right now. Get better as a public speaker.

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by e-mail at salesman@gitomer.com. © 2011 Jeffrey H. Gitomer