How To Brief Your After Dinner Speaker
Once you’ve gone to the trouble of hiring an after dinner speaker you might believe that all the hard work is over. Sadly this is not necessarily the case. After you’ve made the arrangements for who’ll be speaking you have to start your preparation work by ensuring that your after dinner speaker is fully briefed so he or she can be ready.
Many people make the mistake of assuming that hiring a professional after dinner speaker will guarantee them a professional speech with no problems. To save yourself the tedium of listening to a speech which has been recycled and used on every audience the speaker has ever addressed, you need to make sure the speaker knows some basic details before he or she tailors a presentation to the audience.
One of the simplest things that you must remember is the most often forgotten: to give the speaker enough information about the audience. He or she needs to know the age and gender of the audience and the reason they are in a room together in the first place. Are they workmates? Do they belong to a club or organisation? All of this is important and affects the speech. You should also let the after dinner speaker know exactly what the audience will be expecting from the speech. Whether they are expected motivation, humour, advice or something else entirely will affect the speech.
It is to be hoped you watched the speaker in action before hiring him or her. You should therefore feel confident that they won’t be littering their speech with clichés which will bore your audience Don’t feel guilty mentioning this to the speaker though. If you believe that your audience will appreciate or detest certain jokes then inform the speaker well ahead of time.
When reviewing the after dinner speaker before booking him or her you hopefully saw how they captured the audience’s attention. This is important in any speech, but if you believe your audience will be restless then you should also forewarn your speaker so that they can prepare to include the more interesting content early to grab the audience’s attention.
July 17, 2010
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Posted by Jeffrey
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