You’ve been asked and tasked to do some very hard things.

Persuade. Motivate. Inspire. Raise people’s spending. Increase their giving. Make them care. Activate their emotions. Appeal to their reason. Influence their attitudes and change their behaviour.

Here are some ideas that can help.

One main idea. Maybe two.

When giving a speech, you’ll be tempted to speak to the group, not the individual. Best to speak to the person most of the time.

Best not to cover your powerpoint screen in notes. Just a few words as signposts.

If you do have lots of words on screen, people will read them. So read with them. Preferably out loud.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

If you ask too much, you’ll burn brand oil. So after a lot of asking, refill the oil. Remind people why they said ‘yes’ in the first place.

Some people think an Oxford comma looks wrong, awkward, and distracting. Others think that the absence of a comma before the ‘and’ is mistaken, ungainly and jolting. You won’t be able to please everybody, but try, because people have very strong feelings about punctuation.

Short paragraphs look terrible but are helpful to the reader. Hopefully like this blog.

Benefits not features. Or at least describe what’s beneficial about the features.

Wouldn’t you love to control the whole sales process? Many times your pitch will be passed on to a secondary person you never meet. Make it easy for your audience to pitch on your behalf.

What will get heads nodding? Focus on that.

Try not to mention negatives. Saying “I’m good in a crisis” immediately suggests something terrible’s about to happen.