Never Get Stumped with Your Presentation Title Again!
Have you ever created a presentation but didn’t know what to call it?
Do you ever wonder why some speech titles grab your attention more than others and make you curious about the topic?
Do you know the essential ingredients behind a great title that sparks that curiosity?
Sam Wieder, author of the award-winning The Speech Title Cookbook, has created a masterpiece of proven recipes for titles that sell. Sam, an author, speaker and coach, is gifted at helping others speak with greater confidence and impact and he insists that the title better be good if you want to get people’s attention. The 182-page book with 28 chapte
rs is $19.95 on Amazon.
It’s a fast and easy read but you will want to take your time with it so that you can learn practical strategies to help you develop your winning title.
Sam divides his recipe for writing titles into seven parts and he cleverly uses the cookbook theme throughout.
Part 1: Prep Work for a Savory Speech Title
Part 2: Cooking up Challenges
Part 3: Serving up Structure
Part 4: Advanced Recipes for Creative Cooking
Part 5: Spices and Seasonings
Part 6: Setting the Table for Meeting Planners
Part 7: Master the Creative Cooking Process
When I recently received a booking for a presentation, the event planners wanted a title that would bring people in. I consulted Sam’s Chapter 7: “Time to Get Cooking: How to Create Urgency.” Since we wanted to motivate people to attend, we needed to talk about the pain the attendees were feeling. We landed on a title that reeled people in.
Here is Chapter 7, reprinted with permission.
Time to Get Cooking:
How to Create Urgency
If you are lazing around in your easy chair on a relaxing Saturday morning, you might ponder the possibility of stepping outside at some point to get some fresh air and sunshine. If you suddenly discover, however, that your house is on fire, there’s no pondering. You are high-tailing it out of there pronto.
By the same token, if you want to get the members of your target audience high-tailing it to your presentation, you may want to light a fire under them, so to speak. Your program title may highlight a solid benefit or two that would interest people in your presentation. But what would compel them to want to attend your program now?
Your target audience members may have busy lives, with many other things competing for their time and attention. Or maybe they are attending a conference where there are a few other break-out sessions being held at the same time as yours. Why should they make attending your program a priority?
Conference and event planners consider many proposals when booking speakers for their upcoming events. Why should they choose you over other speakers? And why should they book you as soon as possible rather than waiting a year?
To help prompt immediate action, bring a sense of urgency into your speech title. Give people a reason to act now. Just as a milk carton is stamped with an expiration date, you can stamp your speech title with the sense that your information is best if used as soon as possible.
To create a sense of urgency, you want your speech title to convey at least one of the following messages:
• Act now or lose
• Act now or a problem will get worse
• Act now and win
• Now is an especially good time to act (and benefit from what you have to share)
The desires to avoid pain or prevent loss are especially powerful motivators, playing a role in most every motivational message. Even if your message focuses on what people can gain from your presentation, you are implying that they will lose in some way if they pass up the opportunity to attend your program.
Speech Title Models that Convey Urgency
Model #1: Act Now or Lose
Specialize or Starve:
How to Capture a Market Niche that will Help Your Business Survive and Thrive in Today’s Economy
Legal Documents You Need Now to Safeguard Your Assets and Be Ready for the Unexpected
How to Reduce the Financial Bite of the Coming Tax Hike
Model #2: Act Now or a Problem Will Get Worse
How to Curb Your Growing Credit Card Debt Before It Spirals Out of Control
How to Keep Small Disagreements from Destroying Your Relationships
What’s Eating You?
How Your Fast Food Diet May be Steadily Gnawing Away at Your Health
Model #3: Act Now and Win
Jumpstart Your Business:
How to Prepare Now for Record Sales in the Coming Year
Secure Your Financial Future Today:
Five Steps You Must Take Now to Guarantee a Secure Retirement
How to Command Confidence and Be at Your Best on Your Next Big Job Interview
Model #4: Now is an especially good time to act.
How to Boost Your Sales to Today’s Top Growth Industry
Gain the Edge:
Be Among the First to Capitalize on the Housing Recovery
Essential Selling Skills You Need Now More Than Ever
Ready to create your own compelling speech title that spurs people to drop what they are doing and sign up for your program now? Here’s the recipe.
Recipe for a Speech Title the Conveys Urgency
1) Create a benefit or outcome-focused speech title.
2) Add a sense of urgency to your title using one or more of the four basic motivational models.
3) If you are using a title/subtitle combination and one of them is loss-focused, it is generally a good idea to make the other one outcome-focused.
4) Generate several possible titles using the above recipe and select the one that you feel will have the most impact with your target audience.
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You can easily get ideas to develop all kinds of titles beyond presentations, too. If you give webinars, write articles, or even subject lines in emails, this book will help you develop any title that grabs attention and makes your listener or reader curious about what you have to say.
I would love to hear examples of titles you have written that have worked well for you. Please post it in the comments below.
Your friends, followers and fans should know about The Speech Title Cookbook. Please share it on your social media sites. They will thank you!
Tags: compelling presentations, effective communication, executive presentations, meeting planners, persuasive communication, public speaking, Sam Wieder, speak with confidence, speaker tips, titles