5 Steps to a TED-Style Speech: Citibank Article

You can have a great idea, a great sales proposal, or a great business story. But in the information age, if you cannot communicate your idea persuasively in a succinct, compelling pitch, it doesn’t matter.

Like it or not, presentations today are being judged by the standards of a TED Talk. The famous “ideas” conference sponsored by the nonprofit TED (for Technology, Entertainment and Design), which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, has become the gold standard for public presentations. TED Talks have been viewed online more than one billion times and are streamed two million times per day.

What can you learn from the best speakers about creating a presentation that your audience listens to, remembers, and acts on? Based on my analysis of 500 TED Talks, here are five techniques for a winning pitch.

1) Tell stories to bond with your prospect. This is the single best way to make an emotional connection with your listener. My TED Talk analysis found that stories make up 65 percent to 72 percent of the content. Researchers at Princeton University are finding that when someone tells a story, the same regions of the listener’s brain and the speaker’s brain light up. That means the two people are literally in sync. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg started a movement called “Lean In” with a TED Talk. Right before she got on stage, a friend suggested that she downplay the data and statistics and tell personal stories of her struggle with balancing work and family. She did and it made all the difference.

2) Stick to the rule of three. Simply put, we can only remember about three to five key messages in short-term memory. There’s a reason why the Declaration of Independence guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rule of three is well established among authors in the academic research on persuasion. The rule of three is pervasive in the most famous TED Talks. Sheryl Sandberg offered women three ways they can lean in to their careers. Many other speakers tell three stories or offer three pieces of advice. My suggestion: if you have a short pitch over coffee at Starbucks, stick to three, four, or, at most, five reasons why your prospect should do business with you. The magic formula is three to five points.

3) Keep your pitch to under 18 minutes. No speaker at TED is allowed to talk longer than this. TED organizers have found that 18 minutes is the ideal amount of time to have a serious discussion without putting your audience to sleep.

4) Use humor without telling a joke. There’s a real art to telling a joke in public, and not many people have mastered it. Nonetheless, humor is very important to tear down walls and to connect us to one another. Sir Ken Robinson, an educator, gave a 2006 TED Talk that has so far been viewed more than 26 million times. He was very funny, but never told a joke. He used anecdotal humor—personal observations to elicit a smile and not a belly laugh. For example, he said, “I was at a dinner party—actually, if you’re in education you’re rarely invited to dinner parties?” Keep it light, bring a smile to your audience, but don’t feel as though you need to tell a formal joke.

5) Practice more than you think you should. Most business owners I know practice their golf swings far more than they rehearse a pitch that can make or break their businesses. A Harvard researcher, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, rehearsed her TED Talk more than 200 times. That talk was viewed more than 15 million times. One of the viewers was Oprah Winfrey, and it changed Dr. Bolte Taylor’s entire life and career. When you have a pitch and the stakes are high, practice the entire presentation exactly as you plan to deliver it, and do it many, many times.

You have ideas that were meant to be heard. Don’t sabotage your potential by underestimating the ability to craft and deliver a pitch that connects to your listener and moves that person to action.