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It can be so frustrating. You hear a comedian tell the absolute funniest joke in the world. It’s so funny that you’re on the floor for ten minutes, shrieking hysterically. The next day you tell the same joke to your friends and their reactions are, to say the least, more subdued.

Now you’re devastated. “Don’t you get it?” you ask. They tell you they did get it, but it just wasn’t all that funny. “I guess you had to be there,” you mutter.

You know, often it’s not so much the joke itself that puts you on the floor, but the way it’s told. Comedians are masters of expression, voice-tone, timing, and all the subliminal little things they do that makes their renditions sparkle. Without these, yours will most likely fall flat.

It’s the same with any form of public speaking. It’s not just the words you say, but how you say them and how you send them to your listeners.

In short, it’s all in your delivery.

Delivery is everything in a talk or presentation. Okay, maybe not everything. Of course its content matters greatly as well.

But … if you want to really WOW your audience, keep in mind that your content – your words – need to impact the listener.

Now, the word, “impact” may seem to suggest a ranting and raving not unlike a pep rally or a political speech a-la Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, certain talks call for this sort of highly-charged, impassioned delivery. But even if your talk is of the lower-key sort – a business meeting or a class, for instance – you certainly don’t want to bore your listener.

Great delivery is, above all, a matter of:

1. Intensity

2. Expression

Today we’ll cover intensity. By this I mean, first of all, to speak intensely. Keep your voice strong and clear. Speak up! Don’t say you can’t. Of course you can! What would you do if your child just doused the cat with half a bottle of your $60 cologne? Mumble? Whisper? I don’t think so. No, you would use those lungs of yours! Do the same in your talks. Push, push, push! Belt those words out! Listeners love it.

Second, speak as if you are very interested in your subject. It would help if you could find your way toward becoming very interested in it. But even if you can’t … fake it! Like the saying goes, “fake it ’til you feel it!”

A good speaker can get an audience fired up about nearly anything. Even the most mundane subjects can, if delivered with intensity, come alive. Think of the announcer on a commercial for a “New!” tortilla chip. How does he talk? Pretty intensely, right? We’re talking about a bag of salty, greasy fried corn here. But the way this person is speaking, you’d think they’d found a cure for cancer.

So I don’t care if you’re presenting a quarterly sales report, or giving a lecture on upholstery repair. Present that information with as much intensity as you possibly can! Make the subject interesting. Make the content stick in the listener’s mind. Make an impact upon your listener. Make them glad they came.
Conjure up as much infectious enthusiasm for your subject as you possibly can. And let it show on your face.

In fact, exaggerate. By that I mean, whatever mood you’re trying to express, exaggerate it. Don’t just sound interested, sound very interested. Don’t just sound encouraging, sound very encouraging.

You see, more often than not, the intensity with which we speak arrives at the listener in a weakened state. I don’t mean just the volume. It’s as if traveling through twenty-five feet of airspace simply dilutes half the energy right out of it. So, to compensate: Put more intensity, interest, and energy than you think you need.

Don’t worry that you might go too far with this. I’ve never seen a speaker who I thought was too “into it” – with the exception of a few over-the-top politicians, perhaps. More often than not, the opposite is true.

Ask yourself: How many speakers have I heard who were too excited? Or who made me feel too excited? Then ask: How many speakers have I heard who weren’t interesting enough? (i.e., bo-o-ring!)

To be interesting, be interested!

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In Part Two of “Special Delivery” we’ll look at the truly fun component of great delivery: Expression. Until then, I wish you the best with your public speaking endeavors!

PowerPoints are the frogs of marketing content. They’re plentiful and useful – but let’s face it, they’re not very loveable. While you might brag about a great new white paper or case study, PowerPoints are shoved to the bottom of the content heap, never to be seen or heard from again.

What if there was a way to turn all those PowerPoint frogs into content princes? How much easier would your job be if you had plenty of ideas and information for new content right at your fingertips? These five simple strategies will allow you to work magic on your all your froggy PowerPoints – turning them into something worthy of a content throne.

Strategy #1: Online Slidesharing
The beauty of this strategy is it requires almost no effort on your part. There is a growing demand for online presentations, and slidesharing websites make it easy to post your slides online with keywords and descriptions that help prospects locate your content using search engines.

Strategy #2: Multimedia Presentation
If you want to go a step further, have the PowerPoint’s presenter narrate the presentation while being recorded. Then use a video editing program, online presentation service or webinar creator to match the audio up with the slides.

Strategy #3: Infographic
This strategy works especially well if you have a PowerPoint with lots of facts, figures and lists. Pull out the pieces of information that really tell the story of the presentation topic, or get a content copywriter to do this for you. Then work with your graphic designer (or have your copywriter work with their graphic designer) to create a visually impactful and informative infographic. Hint: If you haven’t seen examples of some of the amazing infographics being created, do a quick web search to learn more.

Strategy #4: White Paper
If you’ve already completed “Strategy #2″ this step will be especially easy. Simply send your content copywriter a link to your multimedia presentation – any good writer will be able to turn a PowerPoint presentation into a valuable white paper. If you haven’t done a multimedia presentation yet, this strategy still works. Just have presenter record themselves giving the PowerPoint using a basic digital recorder, then send the audio file and slides to your writer.

Strategy #5: E-book
Many organizations love the idea of creating an e-book, however the notion of finding enough content to fill dozens of pages scares them away. But chances are, if you look at all your organization’s PowerPoints collectively, you’ll have a fairly complete picture of the story your company wants to tell. If that’s the case, it’s simply a matter of executing “Strategy #4″ on a larger scale by working with your writer to organize all that content into one coherent marketing piece.

Gaining leverage in a negotiation is one aspect that leads to winning a negotiation. The questions some negotiators ask are, how do I gain leverage in a negotiation, what’s the value of it, and how do I use it once I have it?

The following are ways to gain and use leverage in a negotiation.

• Gaining leverage is the advantage you acquire in a negotiation as the result of an act you commit and/or position the other negotiator is in as the result of such action.
• Understand what you did to obtain leverage (e.g. caught the opposing negotiator in an untruthful statement, which caused other positions of his to be called into question), when you have it, what you’ll do with it (e.g. as a strategy, cause him to defend a position that doesn’t serve him), and what you’ll do to regain it once you lose it (i.e. in a negotiation, leverage ebbs and flows based on the positional power of the negotiators).
• Consider the person with whom you’re negotiating and what stimuli will influence him (e.g. will he move from pain to pleasure, or fight you harder if you back him into a corner).
• Consider how you can impress and/or intimidate the other negotiator (i.e. in some cases opposing negotiators can share a common interest, which may serve one more than the other. The one to which more of a gain occurs is the one with more leverage).
• To gain leverage, feed the ego when such is sought and/or required (i.e. feeding vanity can be a great source of motivation for the other negotiator to grant concessions at times. The reason being, she may want to appear to be magnanimous).
• Be long term in thoughts and outcome
• Shift the perspective to fit your reality and don’t worry if others don’t buy into it. If you’re strong and persistent enough, over time you’ll benefit from not backing down because even a lie can become the truth if it’s told enough and enough people begin to believe it (i.e. when seeking leverage, a statement said with assuredness can be more believable even if it’s false than a truthful sentiment stated with doubt).
• Learn to be a good ‘spin master’ (i.e. cast your position/perspective from a point that best serves your purposes).
• Go after things you engage in with the expectation that you’re doing whatever it will take to win (i.e. when positioning your perspective to gain leverage, remember to synchronize your body language (nonverbal gestures, etc.) with your verbiage.
• Summarize people in negotiations with one word and/or in ways that position them in the way you wish them to be viewed by others (i.e. the light in which you display people to others can be the way they’re viewed. In a negotiation, to gain leverage, attempt to position the opposing negotiator in a light that’s less flattering per his position).
• Control (anger, environment, other negotiator & yourself)
• Think about where you come into a situation. That will determine your perspective of it. (In a negotiation, your perspective determines the actions you engage in. When seeking to gain leverage, consider how both you and the opposing negotiator views the perspective of why you’re negotiating and what you seek from it).

One of the most efficient ways to win more negotiations is to discover ways to gain and use leverage. Adopt the insights above and your negotiate win rate will increase… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!