I was delighted to be invited to speak at a business networking group recently, The Best of Hertford and Ware. What a lovely group of friendly professionals.

I talked to them about those "Public Speaking Monkeys" the pesky voices in your head which say things like "you're stupid" or "you're going to make a mistake".  Plenty of them bought my book and are off to learn more about increasing their public speaking confidence.

Next I taught a 3 step approach to a 1 minute business networking pitch, which if you want to try it yourself, went a little like this...

Step 1: Begin with "You know how..."  in this section you put the problem that you are solving. So it might be "you know how some business professionals are nervous and scared about speaking in public..."

Step 2: Next say "Well what I do is... in this section you put your solution that you offer, which may be your business or a product or service you offer. For example...

"Well what I do is help people to speak confidently clearly and concisely..." 

Step 3: Now tell a story that illustrate Steps 1&2 above...

"Recently I worked with a very successful business owner was delighted when she won several business awards. But  she knew she did not maximize the publicity because she had a fear of public speaking which was holding her back. It wasn't just the missed PR opportunities -  she wanted to make online videos as the next stage in her business. I talked to her about  my unique  approach  which is helping people to tame and train their public speaking monkeys  and so she signed up to my one to one mentoring program. After the first session she was no longer scared of speaking. In the next sessions she will structure her video training session, gain practice and get one to one feedback on where to improve and develop."

If you know anyone that could do with my help please let me know, Dee Clayton. Simply Amazing Training - Taming Your Public Speaking Monkeys.

This approach will work in all sorts of different ways for many different products, so give it a go and see how it works for you. It also works in social situations where people say that dreaded question "what do you do?" Next time, instead of answering "I'm a trainer" which gives a dead end and they don't know what to ask you, try this

"What do you do?" "Well you know how..."

Good luck! 

Dee Clayton, Simply Amazing Training.