Thrilling Talks: Giving Client-Winning Talks At Major Events

The bar to being seen as a good public speaker is pretty low - alas many people still fall significantly below it (and don't realise it).

Hi, I’m Richard Millington. Welcome to my consultancy newsletter. Subscribe to my newsletter to discover our systems for scaling your consultancy practice to $1m+ in revenue.

TL: DR—Too many consultants are just good enough at public speaking to get through a talk without doing anything embarrassing. But not good enough to give talks which attract clients or stand out in a speaker line-up. This will change if you deliberately focus on improving a skill each time you speak.

Leverage Points

One of the best leverage points for attracting new business is being better at something than others.

There are plenty of ways to do this, but if you’re in the consultancy space, I suggest considering public speaking as one of your leverage points.

If you can get good at public speaking - as in really good - where everyone else is average (or worse), then it leads to lots of discussions like this:

Overcoming The Low Bar

The thing about public speaking is the bar is set extremely low at most events. I’ve sat through hundreds of talks at conferences and events over the past decade or so - and, quite honestly, I can barely remember any of them.

That’s because most public speakers don’t know or embrace the fundamental principles that will make their talks memorable and stand out from the crowd.

If you don’t believe me, answer two questions.

1. How many talks have you sat through?

2. What do you remember from those talks?

Far too many talks fall into one of two categories.

The speaker gives a “then I did this, then this, and this…” style talk. Which can make you feel like the speaker is trying too hard to impress you.

Or the speaker gives a “you should do this, this, and this” style of talk, which feels like reading a listicle for 30 to 40 minutes.

Sharing personal experiences and giving advice can work well, but they must be carefully structured to become a great talk.

It sometimes feels like speakers spend more time working on getting a speaking slot than being able to deliver a great talk.

The Speaker-Buddy Complex

Most speakers, even at the biggest events, are at the beginner level.

I’ve sat through hundreds of talks where the speaker either lacks the content, confidence, or public speaking knowledge to knock it out of the park.

Like everything else, public speaking isn’t new. There are fundamental principles to follow to do well. Yet most public speakers fail to embrace many (if any) of these principles. They fail to make their talks memorable. They often leave an audience bored and waiting for the talk to end.

That’s understandable. The audience often suddenly shifts their attention from their phone, which offers unlimited opportunities for dopamine hits, to a speaker who tries to command their attention for 30 straight minutes.

The speaker-buddy complex compounds this problem. After a talk, no matter how poorly a speaker performs, they will always have a supportive (and well-intentioned) group of buddies to tell them they did great. Attendees will also be kind to the speaker—no one wants to be the jerk who said the talk was dull. This might help build confidence but doesn’t help the speaker get better.

There’s an irony in this though.

The easiest way to become more confident in public speaking (and pretty much anything) isn’t just to do it and be told you’re wonderful. It’s to do it and be told how to improve. The better you get at anything, the more confident you become.

These problems result in most speakers delivering instantly forgettable talks to a bored audience. The only honest feedback many speakers get on their talks is from the conference organisers before they provide them. This feedback is usually on the slide design or topic selection—never retroactive to the talk itself.

If you want to improve, then you either need to receive critical feedback on how to improve or learn what you can do better each time.

Beginner-Level Talks

Don’t try to pretend you’re not a beginner.

Over the past few years, I’ve sat with speakers preparing to give their first-ever talks a couple of times.

I usually suggest the same thing if they ask for advice (or seem especially nervous).

If it’s your first time, go out there and deliver a talk. Let yourself be a beginner. Don’t try to copy what you see TED speakers doing. They’re some of the best speakers in the world. They’ve mastered skills you don’t even know exist yet.

Your goal is to feel the fear and get through it okay. If you can get through the talk without freezing up or breaking down, you’ve succeeded. If not, you have something to aim for next time. Once you trust yourself to get through a talk, you can start developing your skillset.

Or, in more straightforward language, let yourself be a bit s**t.

For your first talk, I think you should focus on content and structure. These are things you can prepare in advance. You can be the most nervous, awkward speaker that’s ever graced the stage - but if your content and structure are good - people will still love your talk.

Let’s tackle each level then.

1. Content

The fundamental thing to have - even if you’re a beginner - is excellent content. I suspect the biggest mistake many speakers make is trying so hard to show how great they are that they don’t focus on giving the audience high-quality content.

There are some simple ways to be better than average here.

1. Your talk needs a central theme. Whether it's a ‘big idea’ talk where you try to persuade the audience of something or a ‘how-to’ talk where you give relevant, practical advice on how to do something. The theme should be implicit in your talk title. The theme should ideally give people something they want. Look at business book titles for inspiration if you like.

2. Avoid telling the audience what they already know. Ask a few questions about who these folks are and research their struggles. This means you need to do some basic research on the audience. If you’re doing a beginner-level talk, ensure it’s a beginner-level. Otherwise, try to pitch it as just above the average person’s level. Ensure you have examples and takeaways that aren’t common and are already widely discussed in your space. Don’t say things that are obvious or that are often said.

3. Be extremely practical. The easiest way to stand out is to be practical. Everyone can speak in vague, fluffy terms, but what people really need are specifics. For example, “find out what your audience wants and do that” is vague (and obvious) advice.

   But what if you made it super specific? Find out how exactly. What tools did you use? How did you recruit participants exactly? What specific questions did you ask? How did you structure the interviews/surveys? How did you analyse the results? Really push the boundary. Consider using before/after images. Use arrows to point to the specific areas of improvement. I can’t stress enough how valuable being practical is. Push this to the absolute limit.

4. Have a slide everyone takes a photo of. At least once in a presentation, I have a slide that contains a complete framework. It’s often text-heavy, but I know when I show the slide to the audience, about half of them will whip out their phones and take a photo.

5. Examples. People love examples. Even if you mock up the examples yourself, it still helps to have the examples people can look to and refer to. Pack your presentation with examples.

6. Be counterintuitive. Share some counterintuitive advice. Go against the grain. Tackle a sacred truth you believe is unsound. Tell people something they didn’t expect to hear—this will often make your talk memorable.

Even if you get nothing else right - delivering a highly practical talk will put you in the top 20% of speakers at any event.

2. Structure

Structure makes your talk memorable and easy for the audience to grasp. I can’t remember the stats, but I think it’s something like we forget 85% of a conversation the next day. Given you’re one speaker at one event, the odds of retention of information aren’t super high. Most people remember the gist of what you’re saying rather than the specifics.

You can increase your odds with a good talk structure. There are a few areas to think about:

1. The single takeaway. Your talk should have a one-sentence takeaway that everyone remembers. They might need to remember the examples and sub-stories but should remember the single key message. What is that message?

2. Chronological, hierarchical, or something else? Do you structure your talk chronologically, i.e., in the order in which people must do each step? Hierarchically - i.e. with the most important aspects to get right first? Or through some other relationship between each point? If you’re starting public speaking, you might simply go chronologically with a beginning, middle, and end. As you advance your skills, you might want to try other approaches. These days, I tend to begin by highlighting a problem and then creating a series of points on how to overcome that problem.

3. Point> Proof> Summary. When you're planning on your talk, please make sure you focus on the format of making a point, supporting it with evidence/information, and then summarising it. This is a simple structure anyone can use.

4. Transitions. This is a more advanced skill, but you should think about your transitions from one point to another to make the talk flow. If you like, you can say, “OK, on to the next point…”. But it looks and feels much better if the ending for one point naturally leads to the next point you want to make. Comedians do this well on their shows. They will lightly touch upon a new topic at the end of the current one to create a natural transition.

5. Summary. It’s often a good idea to summarise the key 3 to 5 points at the end to increase recollection of the talk. Usually, this, too, becomes a slide that people can take a photograph of.

Beginners should focus on getting these basics right. Even if you just do the content and structure well, you’ll be better than most event speakers.

Professional-Level Talks

It’s time to improve some core skills.

Once you’ve given around ten talks, you should feel comfortable on stage. The nerves will never vanish entirely, but you will feel more comfortable standing on stage with people looking at you.

Once you feel comfortable, you can deliberately improve specific areas of your talk. I would suggest that you improve the design of your slides and the level of engagement.

1. Design.

Unless you’re a designer, you probably won’t have amazing-looking slides when you begin. You might start using a template with Keynote, PowerPoint, or Google Slides. But over time, you probably want to create a custom template you can use for most of your talks and later develop a unique deck for each talk.

Tiago Forte demonstrates a simple, professional-level slide design with an emotive image on the left and text on the right.

Let’s go through some basics of improving presentation design.

1. Hire a designer to create templates for you. Once you begin giving a few talks, it is worth hiring a designer to build a set of templates and standard graphics for you. I did this as part of a broader effort to improve the design of everything we did. Make sure you know your branding, the common types of slide styles you’re likely to use in a talk, and the kinds of graphics you’ll probably use. You probably want a theme which contains 10 to 12 slides (including a beginning/end slide, etc…)

   It might help to create a deck yourself so a designer knows what kind of talks you’re giving. You can find designers on Upwork or ask for referrals. You should be able to use our benchmarks above to provide the designer with a standard for which to aim.

2. Break the rules and have as much text as you want. When I first began public speaking, everyone was obsessed with following a relatively new set of rules, such as ‘only five words per slide!’. You wound up with speakers showing a big image and a single word to describe the point they wanted to make. This works well for ‘big idea’ talks. These are talks when you want to persuade people of something, and emotive appeals reinforced by large images are ideal. They don’t work well for ‘how to’ talks, which are much more common.

   I found early on, people would ask me for my slides - but I knew that the slides without me speaking wouldn’t make sense. Some people tackle this by having two versions of these slides. I tried that too, but then I realised I wasn’t getting enough requests to make it worthwhile (it was too much work). Ultimately, I simply created slides that work in both settings - usually with more text so each slide can explain itself without me. Rand Fishkin is an excellent example of creating slides which work in both settings.

   

   Traditional advice would be to show an exhausted person instead of all this information. We can agree that this works a lot better.

3. Point specifically to the information you want to draw attention to. I like annotated examples like the one above a lot. It’s informative, clear where you want to draw the viewer’s attention, and increases the practicality. I’d strongly recommend that you share examples to annotate them. You will get a lot more requests for your slides afterwards.

4. Create custom graphics. Some rules still apply. It’s not generally a great idea to have lots of bullet points. It’s boring and shows a lack of effort. You should be creating custom graphics if you have multiple points you want to share. One point per slide is often a great practice. Otherwise, browse examples on Canva, Envato, and Slideshare to see what other speakers do and copy their style.

   

   Could you create custom graphics to share the point you want to make?

5. Increase the number of slides. My tip is to increase the number of slides to improve engagement significantly. One of my recent talks had 120+ slides in 30 minutes. As the organiser pointed out, that’s a new slide every 20 seconds.

   That sounds a little nuts, but it works well in practice. You have less content to memorise. But, most importantly, it increases engagement in your presentation. Think about the most exciting moment of an action movie. There’s a lot of fast cuts. The same is true for a presentation. Instead of showing a slide and talking for five minutes, I can show 20 slides and keep people hooked.

6. Save as a PDF. If there is one technique that has saved me countless pain over the years, it’s saving a presentation as a PDF. I no longer have to worry about whether they have the font or the same version of PowerPoint, etc.… I save it as a PDF and will never be embarrassed on stage by poor formatting. The downside is that it doesn’t allow videos, audio, builds or transitions. In my experience, these usually don’t give anywhere near enough value to justify the number of times they don’t work.

2. Engagement

Audience interaction is generally a good thing, but there’s a finesse to doing it well. Interaction for the sake of interaction generally isn’t a good thing.

How often have you heard ‘raised your hands if…’?

When nobody does it, the speaker often jokes, ‘Raise your hand if you don’t like raising your hand’.

Groan.

Asking people to raise their hands isn’t a bad thing. It’s one of the easiest ways to solicit an action from people. The problem begins when it’s obvious that this doesn’t add anything to the narrative you’re creating. Often, it happens when you say something and ask people to raise their hands if they’ve also been in that situation or agree with you. Let’s cover some simple interactive activities.

1. Set challenges for your audience. This is a straightforward tactic, but these questions should add value to the talk. You’re not looking to find out personal information about an audience member; you’re looking to see if they can determine the answer based on the information you’ve given them. Last year, I gave a playful talk in Prague about community mysteries. I spent the first half of the talk telling the audience how to solve problems and then the second half walking them through some real-world situations. But because they had an interactive app, I encouraged them to guess the answer based on the clues I gave them.

2. Getting ‘raise your hand’ right. ‘Raise your hand’ activities are essentially informal surveys where everyone can see the immediate results. The best way to do this is when the results interest the audience. People often think of this as binary. Those who do vs. don’t raise their hands. There are two ways to do this well. One is to set out 3 to 5 options and ask the audience to raise their hand on what they think is correct (and then do a reveal). Another is to let the audience classify themselves based on which categories you create and what they would identify with. But it must be relevant to the point of the talk (i.e. the audience should learn something from the activity).

3. Asking questions. Another way to solicit interaction is to ask questions. But remember here, the questions should always be set as a ‘mini-challenge’, which allows a member of the audience to feel smart if they know the answer. I recently told a story about the revival of Harley Davidson at a conference talk. Then, I asked the audience what was untrue about the story. This is both fun and interactive. I encourage people to shout their answers - raising their hands takes too long. I want the energy of people shouting over each other (unless you have 500+ people in the room - that’s too much energy!).

4. Make a unique request. At 0.40 in this video, Seth Godin asks the audience to give the worst applause possible. That’s humorous and interesting enough, and the audience is curious to see where he’s going with this. In another talk, he asks the audience to raise their hands as high as possible, and then a moment later, he asks them to raise their hands even higher (which many do). The audience responds well when you take standard ideas and make them intriguing.

5. Deliberate eye contact (at three points). At the more advanced level, you want to avoid scanning across the audience when speaking. When you say something, you should speak in a specific direction - not turning your head simultaneously. A common tactic taught in public speaking courses is to pick three points in the room and speak to them. Or, better, pick three people in the room and say each point to each of them - shifting between them (or changing to the person next to them if they begin to get uncomfortable.

I’d round this out with a few things to avoid…

1. Avoid physical activities. I know some speakers love the ‘stand up after lunch’ activities - but everyone hates it. Standing up and stretching is just annoying and awkward for everyone involved. Don’t do it. I’d also avoid encouraging any discussions between the audience during the talk - it’s just a distraction and no-one really learns anything in a few minutes. People don’t want to move around during the talk.

2. Avoid polls and quizzes requiring people to use their phones. These just take a long time and are prone to breaking down. It’s also really hard to practice this - so it often comes across a little awkward. And do you really want everyone looking at their phone during your talk? How long will you leave the poll open for? How long will it take the audience to figure out how to use the app etc?

3. Avoid throwing things at the audience. Chocolate bars for asking questions comes to mind. You don’t want your Mars bar hitting a lactose-intolerant prospective client in the eye.

4. Avoid anything complex. It’s easy to think of activities you can do with the audience that involve some props. Maybe a workbook, cards, or some other games. And in a small group it would work fine - it works far less well with a huge audience. It just takes too much time to set up and complain.

As you begin speaking more often and getting comfortable on stage, start exploring with improving the design and engagement aspects of your talk. Pick one new thing to practice each talk and see how it goes.

Advanced-Level Talks

Become one of the best speakers at any event your attend.

If the beginner level is to get comfortable on stage and professional level is to move you into the center of the pack of public speakers, the advanced level is about becoming one of the top speakers at the event.

Once you’ve hit 25 to 50+ talks, you might to focus on improving your delivery skills to make your content more memorable. It’s hard to do this at the beginning because there’s just too many things to focus on and think about.

This is usually the level where public speaking courses can help the most.

There are a few things to focus on at this level.

1. Use the space of the stage. In your first talks, it’s likely you’ll be standing off to one side, largely rooted to the spot, and shifting your body weight from one foot to another. That’s very natural. But as you progress, it’s time to make it your stage. Public speaking courses will teach you the triangular method. You pick three points on stage and walk to them. This is usually the center, left, and right side. If the stage is tiny, then feel free to use the space in front of the stage. But you should own that stage and explore the space.

2. Walk to make a transition to the next point. I used to aimlessly walk from one side of the stage to the other when speaking. Then a speaking coach explained to me that you should walk to make a transition to the next point. You shouldn’t usually be walking and making an important point at the same time. Make a point, then walk, then stop and make your next point.

3. Plant your feet and use open body language. Get comfortable planting your feet should-width apart at the front of the stage, having open body language, and talking to the audience. This feels uncomfortable to do at first - but when you look back at the replays later you can see it looks better than anything else. Whenever you make a point, your feet should be planted and body language open.

4. Figure out what to do with your hands. This is where a speaker coach helped me a lot. For ages, I couldn’t work out what to do with my hands when I spoke. Should I let them drop awkwardly by my side? Should I keep them behind my back? What should I do? One popular solution is steepling - Angel Merkel was famous for it.

   

   Whenever you see anyone use that gesture, it’s usually because they’ve been trained. I don’t like this personally. It feels a little awkward. But keeping some tension in the arms is usually good if you’re standing still. I like to bring them very lightly together in front of me - just touching (as you see in the image of the video below).

   The other solution is to use your hands all the time to gesticulate. This is the most natural thing to do. If you watch my talk below, you’ll notice that’s what my arms are doing - they’re emphasising what I say.

5. Speed and tempo. Another area where a public speaking coach helped.You should practice speeding up through the exposition (less exciting parts) of your talk and slowing down when making a really important point. Practice making your key point and saying nothing for three seconds. Those three seconds will feel like an eternity - but silence is powerful.

6. Voice modulation and intonation. This is one of the hardest skills to pull off and requires deliberate practice. Most speakers will maintain the same tone and rhythm for their entire talk. But it’s a good idea to practice going overboard with changing your pitch and modulation to really emphasise your point. This is probably the hardest thing to do because it requires you to be fully invested in what you’re saying. A good test is to say “I didn’t steal diamonds” using a different inflection point on a different word each time to change the meaning of the sentence. I’m still working on this one.

7. Act it out. Consider, when relevant, acting out what you’re saying on stage. This helps convey meaning and keeps people absorbed in what you’re doing. I’ve begun doing this recently and found I quite enjoy it. If I’m saying something, I might act out to a degree what I’m saying. It

8. Learn the principles of humour. I still find it awkward to make jokes on stage. Around 50% of them don’t work because a) I’m probably not as funny as I think I am 😭 and b) I don’t fully commit to them and the audience senses my hesitation - so they’re not sure whether to laugh. But if you do plan to make jokes, it’s worth learning the basic principles of crafting jokes - especially the structure. You often need to reword what you plan to say to make the final word in the sentence the thing which elicits laughter.

This is where I feel a public speaking coach can have the biggest improvement on your presentation skills. I find coaches are best utilised when you’ve already given a dozen talks or so and are now looking to take your game to the next level.

Elite Level Talks

Give a talk people remember months later

You’ve probably attended hundreds of talks - how many do you remember? The answer for most people is almost zero (or very close to it). That’s a pretty low bar to cross - but also demonstrates how rarely we remember talks we’ve seen event very recently.

Giving a talk people remember is the biggest difference at this level. The major thing I notice when comparing elite speakers to good speakers is their ability to tell really compelling stories.

Storytelling sounds easy until you remember the deep complexity of it. There are several types of stories you need to tell.

1. The opening story. This is like a mini-keynote for your talk. It should set the theme for the talk you’re about to give and highlight the problem.

2. The sub-stories to illustrate each point. You usually want to tell stories to illustrate the points you need to make.

3. The closing story. This story should exemplify what you’ve said.

There are some key principles for telling compelling stories (repeated below).

1. Select the right story. You should work to select the right stories in the first place - or events which you can turn into compelling stories with a little graft. I recently opened a talk about advocacy by talking about Harley Davidson. The theme of my talk was the way most people believe advocacy works is outdated. I shared the story of how Harley Davidson build their advocacy groups to thrive after a difficult time in the 80s. Only, that wasn’t true. As I explained, what really happened in a leveraged buy-out where they fixed production issues, invested in marketing, stopped selling poor-quality bikes and lobbied the government to slap tariffs on competitors. I used the story to confirm what people knew and then pull the rug from under them.

2. Avoid stories everyone knows. Try to avoid the stories everyone has heard already. If your story includes the words ‘steve’ and ‘jobs’, find a lesser-known story. Personal stories are by far the best. One of my favourite talks is Seth Godin’s - How To Get Your Ideas To Spread. His message is simple. Ideas that spread win. Seth’s talk here is a mix of quick, compelling, stories.

3. Cut out all the stuff the audience doesn’t need to know. You don’t need to begin a presentation with who you are, what you do, or what you’re going to talk about. Often that information is on the intro screen as you walk on stage. And if it isn’t, no one cares. Even if they did, they wouldn’t remember it. Cut out every component of the story which isn’t absolutely critical for the audience to know. Only include the critical steps. Jump straight into the exciting bit. If you’re going to give a talk, drop people right into the middle of the most exciting part of your story. Sprinkle in the background details later.

4. Tell your story in real time. Tell your story in the first person and in real time. Don’t say “I was walking down the street when…” go with “I’m walking down the street and…”. Stories in the past don’t have the same impact as telling it as it’s happening. Matthew Dicks is fantastic at both jumping into the middle of the story and telling a story in real time.

5. Set the stakes. If the outcome doesn’t matter, the story doesn’t matter. What’s the conflict in your story? What’s at stake in your story? The higher the stakes, the greater the interest. If nothing is at stake, who cares? Set the stakes early on to create a sense of excitement.

6. Use mnemonic devices. Try to find something in your story that people can visualise. Pick one unique thing in your story which lets people visualise something - the visualisation is critical if you want people to recall your story. No, a ‘bright sunny day’ or ‘the dark client’s office’ is not a mnemonic device. It’s irrelevant information. But ‘the Ferrari in the lobby’ or the ‘grandfather clock against the wall’ is something people remember. In your stories, try to find the visually surprising bit. If you’re feeling bold, you can literally use props to make your point as Hans Rosling does brilliantly here:

7. Have a punch line. The reveal should be sudden. It should be described in as few words as possible. Even better, have a single word you use to give the reveal. Comedians do this. They structure their jokes so they end with a specific word (like a button they push). You can do this several times. Notice in the talk by Matthew Dicks above how he introduces the names of the children first and then in the second line gives their ages as the very last word in the sentence. That’s the surprising reveal.

8. Add an unexpected twist. If people can guess how the story is going to end, it becomes a chore to get through it. You have to keep the ending mysterious and only reveal it at the end. If the outcome is how amazing you are, that’s not ideal. But it helps if the outcomes points to a universal truth in life that reaffirms our beliefs.

I believe storytelling is the hardest skill of the bunch to master. But if you can do it well, you will create truly memorable talks. The kind of talks that will not only make you the best speaker at every event you speak at - but those will attract remarkable client.

Good luck!

Thanks for reading

Richard Millington