The
Universal Speaker's Law says: (1) Tell them what you're going to tell
them, (2) Tell them, and (3) Tell them what you told them. And, while
you're telling them, tell them over and over again. Certainly, you don't
want to repeat the same thing over and over again…to your audience,
you'll sound like fingernails on a blackboard. But you can make an important
point and use several different illustrations to drive that point home.
Listen to the pro's sometime and you'll see this done expertly.
Why
do you have to be so repetitive? Simple...if you want the audience to
remember the important points in your message, you have to make each
point in 3-6 different ways. According to one study, if you make a point
only one time, at the end of your presentation, just 10% of the audience
will remember it. If you repeat a point six times, retention jumps to
90%. Without repetition, 40% of your audience will forget virtually
everything you said within 20 minutes of your conclusion. Within 24
hours, 70% of the audience will forget almost 100% of your message.
Think
for a minute about some of the great speeches of history. In Winston
Churchill's "We shall never surrender!" speech, he says, "We shall..."
ELEVEN times. He says, "We shall fight..." SEVEN times. And he does
this in about a one-minute segment of the speech, but this is the part
we remember. Likewise, Martin Luther King's most memorable speech uses
the word "dream" NINE times and the phrase "I have a dream..." SEVEN
times, all within a three-minute time span.
Copyright
1999-2000 by William C. Wilson, Jr.
All Rights Reserved.