What is the best way to be introduced as a speaker? Answer: Do NOT be introduced by the MC.
Instead have one of the previous internal speakers (like the CEO or the CMO etc who has spoken before you) do a REFERENCE to you and your speech in THEIR speech.

That way the audience understands WHY you where selected to speak and why the topic you are speaking on is important to the company you are speaking to.

Because they now heard it from the boss. Not the MC. And not from you.

I just came from the last briefing meeting with Reliance Digital – the largest electronics retailer in India – where, in a few hours, I will speak to 500 of their most important clients.

We have agreed that one of the previous speakers will do a reference to my session and about “creativity” is so important for Reliance. (The theme of their conference is “Beyond”).

So the next time you speak let the MC explain the topic and build you up as a speaker but make sure – if possible – that someone from the top management does a mention to your speech and it’s topic so that the audience feels: “If this is important to the CEO it must be important to me.”

Last week I spoke for all the High Potential leaders in DBS bank. Twice. The conference was held twice with 200+ participants each time. That meant that I was asked to deliver the same speech two both groups.

But I did not do that.

Instead I changed perhaps 40% of the slides, and more importantly I totally changed the mood of the speech.

Not because the client was not happy with the first speech (they were), but because any time you deliver a speech you learn so much about the audience, what they like, trigger on etc.

Now most of the time we get all those insights about a group but we get it “too late”. But in the rare instances that you get to speak twice for the same group (but different people) you actually get a chance to the equivalent of a “time machine” where you can go “back” and change the things you now realise that you should have said, based on how the group reacted.

If you do not take that chance, you are missing a very powerful opportunity. I did, and thus speech 2 was even better than speech 1.

That is the tip of this week from ProfessionalSpeaking.com by Fredrik Haren.