Public Speaking Notes

Storytelling is a part of public speaking that each potential speaker should embrace. Fact is there are public speakers who do nothing but tell stories. There are even events and contests across the country to find the best storytellers.

This article gives just a bit about storytelling and how it helps to develop a rapport among your listeners whether it is one person or a whole crowd.

Storytelling For Quick Rapport
by Kenrick Cleveland

So say you’re face to face with a brand new prospect. They’ve heard a little bit about you, your reputation, what kind of a person you are and yet, maybe they still have some defenses which you are going to need to overcome before rapport has been established and they can feel good trusting you completely.

Stories drastically speed up this process. Clients quickly learn who you are and thus begin to trust you.

Some relationships take a while to unfold. You reveal yourself bit by bit, maybe share a little personal information or brief anecdote about your life. Stories can eliminate that long time period, showing your prospects your true essence in a brief time.

Think of how you get sucked in when you watch a movie. Stories do this to us. They fit into the indirect permissive model not the direct authoritarian model and therein is one of the most significant powers of stories.

In a New York Times and CBS news poll, sixty-three percent of people were found to believe that you must be very careful in dealing with other people.

Another thirty seven percent believe that given the opportunity, most people would try to take advantage of you if they could.

Thirty seven percent. Over one third of the population. One out of every three people believes you have the potential and/or interest in taking advantage of them and three out of four people believe that you have to be extremely careful in dealing with others.

Seems like we’re a cynical, distrusting bunch of folks.

Here’s the strange part: the very same poll asked, ‘Of the people you know, what percentage would try to be fair?’

The outcome: 85% said yes.

How can we immediately turn up the pressure of persuasion on the people that we want to influence? All we have to do is get them to ‘know’ us.

The best way in the world to do that is with a story. All of the sudden we go from almost three-fourths of the people thinking you can’t be too careful and well over a third of the people believing that you’d try to take advantage of them if you had the chance to eighty-five percent believing that you would try to be fair with them.

Use a story to let people know who you are and your trustworthiness almost triples.

Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of affluent clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies.

Tags: public speaking, persuasion, speakers