A Good Persuasive Speech Outline
- By Earl Netwal
- Published 02/17/2010
- Tutorials
- Unrated
Start with a clear idea of your persuasive speech's objective. What do you want your audience to do as a result of your speech. Condense it into a single sentence. Keep this in mind throughout.
Draft a preliminary Call to Action, specifically asking your audience to do what you want them to do. If yours is a sales speech, be clear as to what the next step you want them to take is. Is it to buy your product, or perhaps to test drive it, or maybe just to begin the process of considering your product.
Prepare three solid reasons why they should do what you want. Start by brainstorming 6-10 good reasons. Group those that are closely related into the three main concepts, and then rank them according to their relative importance.
You now know where you want your audience to go and why from your perspective.
Now stop and think more carefully about your audience. Who are they? Are they the decision makers? Or support staff? Are they capable of making a decision to buy on the spot, or is there a process that will be required. Consider their age, gender, existing relationships with your competitors, geographical distribution issues and any other factors that will influence the way they hear what you have to say.
You've already identified what you have to say, the goal here is to understand how best to say it, so your audience hears what you have to say. You may rank the importance of your arguments one way, they may another. If there is a difference, consider re-ranking yours. A good persuasive speech communicates what the audience wants to hear and know.
Now for each major point on your list,
come up with an anecdote or story to illustrate how or why this would be important to your audience. These stories will become the body of your speech. When you have three good stories, one for each major point you need to consider how to link them together. How to transition from one point to the next.
Finally, now that you have a series of three stories, each of which illustrate one of the key reasons why your audience should act positively on your call to action, you need to come up with an introduction. This is like an appetizer to get them interested in what you are about to say.
Asking them a relevant question, or making a bold statement designed to grab their attention are just two possible ways of achieving this. The introduction should be relatively brief. You want to grab their attention, and give them a quick preview of what you are going to tell them.
You now have your draft persuasive speech outline. Ultimately you want to memorize your introduction and your call to action/conclusion. You want these to be down pat.
Don't memorize the body of your speech. Instead, remember the stories you are going to tell and the transitions you are going to use to move from one to the next. This will give your speech a natural flow and relieve you from worrying about memorizing exact phrasing.
Write your first draft in 30 minutes. Practice it out loud and or in your head a dozen times. Each time, you will change it trying to convert your ideas into language your audience will hear and understand.
Do this and you will wow them. Making a speech, particularly a good persuasive speech isn't about what you want to say, it's about saying what your audience is open to hearing and doing so with stories and images they will remember.
Draft a preliminary Call to Action, specifically asking your audience to do what you want them to do. If yours is a sales speech, be clear as to what the next step you want them to take is. Is it to buy your product, or perhaps to test drive it, or maybe just to begin the process of considering your product.
Prepare three solid reasons why they should do what you want. Start by brainstorming 6-10 good reasons. Group those that are closely related into the three main concepts, and then rank them according to their relative importance.
You now know where you want your audience to go and why from your perspective.
Now stop and think more carefully about your audience. Who are they? Are they the decision makers? Or support staff? Are they capable of making a decision to buy on the spot, or is there a process that will be required. Consider their age, gender, existing relationships with your competitors, geographical distribution issues and any other factors that will influence the way they hear what you have to say.
You've already identified what you have to say, the goal here is to understand how best to say it, so your audience hears what you have to say. You may rank the importance of your arguments one way, they may another. If there is a difference, consider re-ranking yours. A good persuasive speech communicates what the audience wants to hear and know.
Now for each major point on your list,
Finally, now that you have a series of three stories, each of which illustrate one of the key reasons why your audience should act positively on your call to action, you need to come up with an introduction. This is like an appetizer to get them interested in what you are about to say.
Asking them a relevant question, or making a bold statement designed to grab their attention are just two possible ways of achieving this. The introduction should be relatively brief. You want to grab their attention, and give them a quick preview of what you are going to tell them.
You now have your draft persuasive speech outline. Ultimately you want to memorize your introduction and your call to action/conclusion. You want these to be down pat.
Don't memorize the body of your speech. Instead, remember the stories you are going to tell and the transitions you are going to use to move from one to the next. This will give your speech a natural flow and relieve you from worrying about memorizing exact phrasing.
Write your first draft in 30 minutes. Practice it out loud and or in your head a dozen times. Each time, you will change it trying to convert your ideas into language your audience will hear and understand.
Do this and you will wow them. Making a speech, particularly a good persuasive speech isn't about what you want to say, it's about saying what your audience is open to hearing and doing so with stories and images they will remember.
Earl Netwal
Earl Netwal Calls himself a Micro Business Specialist. He focuses on helping on and offline businesses learn to more effectively use the internet for marketing purposes.
He writes a blog specifically providing resources for Top Public Speaking Tips and a general blog on all aspects of internet use for business purposes at http://MicroBusinessSpecialist.com/blog
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