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How to Rehearse for an Important Presentation
- Carmine Gallo
Great speeches are never an accident.
If you want to deliver a spellbinding presentation, rehearse far more than you’ve done in the past. But you don’t want to sound too rehearsed, so you’ll need to balance memorization with spontaneity. Nail down the first two and last two minutes of your speech, and leave room for improvisation in between. And practice under pressure. This mean rehearsing in front of one or two people to get your body used to being in front of a crowd. Then ask for feedback, and rehearse again.
Steve Jobs was the most astonishing business speaker of his time. Bill Gates once called him a “wizard” who “cast spells” on his audience. Fortune magazine proclaimed that his keynotes could set “ hardened hearts aflutter .” Jobs is one of the few CEOs whose presentations have a dedicated Wikipedia page ; his keynotes alone could spark a surge in Apple’s stock.
- Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman (St. Martin’s Press).
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