A lot rides on a speech. The success of a project or an initiative. Winning a proposal. Getting the green light for a project. Changing people’s perceptions of a key issue. Your reputation. Perhaps even the future of your organization.
The problem is: it takes time to create a compelling speech. And who has time these days?
(By a compelling speech, I mean one that wins people’s hearts and minds, and stirs them to action.)
The answer is: put time and thought into creating a compelling speech and repeat it. Recycle it. Reuse it.
Three Reasons for Repeating a Speech
1. Repeating a Speech Saves Time and Money
Total up the cost of a speech — your time and other people’s time at the going rate — and you’ll realize how much giving a speech really costs.
If you only give a speech once, it’s a very expensive investment. But if you give it ten or twenty times (changing it slightly to suit the audience and occasion), well, that’s another story.
2. Repeating a Speech Makes It Better
Every great speaker knows this secret. A speech gets better the more often you give it. (That’s one reason why rehearsing a speech is so essential.)
The first time you give a speech may be good. But it’ll get better each time you give it. Say it again and again and again, and it’ll get better and better.
Repeating a speech improves its content. (You change it subtly, sometimes substantially, in response to your audience’s responses.) And it improves your delivery, making your more confident and more self-assured.
3. The Message is Worth Repeating
You can’t say the important things too often.
People don’t listen all that well to begin with, and they may miss what you’re saying the first time around. Or they may hear it and not really get it. Or they may understand what you’re saying and forget it.Or they may not think you mean it.
So say it again, Sam.
Sometimes, of course, you can’t or shouldn’t repeat the entire speech. But you can always recycle parts of it. You can tell a story or anecdote, cite a study or statistics, make an assertion that you polished and presented in one speech in an entirely (or almost entirely) different speech.
Try it. See how it works for you. Create a really great speech. And repeat it any time you get the chance. Once you perfect that speech, you can create another. (I recommend having three core speeches.) But always find a way to repeat, recycle, and reuse the speeches you create.
