The Sales Training Speech

I'm speaking at my Toastmasters club again tomorrow. I'm working my way through The Professional Speaker series. It's five speeches, each of which are 15-20 minutes long.

Tomorrow's assignment, the third in the series, is the Sales Training Speech. I'm supposed to be pumping up the sales troops for a company. I've chosen Astrum Solar as my company. I'll be throwing red meat to my sales force to get them to sell solar collectors.

This book is driving me crazy. The typical assignment book requires 5-10 speeches, each 5-7 minutes in length. I feel like I'm working hard to get to my Advanced Communicator Bronze designation. When I complained to one of our Distinguished Toastmasters about it, he told me that the book used to be 20-40 minutes per speech. Another of our three Distinguished Toastmasters managed to get through the more demanding version. I shut my mouth and sucked it up after hearing that. Fifteen minutes doesn't seem so bad.

A friend of mine is fond of saying that everyone should have three jobs in their life: manual labor, customer service, and selling. I've done manual labor. Does working in a grocery store count as customer service? I've never come close to selling. This will be as close as I'm likely to get.

My goal is to finish off the last two speeches before the Toastmasters year closes on 30-Jun-2012. If I can do that, I'll have achieved Advanced Communicator Bronze status. It'll be another rung on the ladder. Can I make it to Distinguished Toastmaster? We'll see.

Here's the text of my speech:

The Professional Speaker Project 3: The Sales Training Speech

(The company is Astrum Solar, a company that installs photovoltaic panels in the area.)

Solar energy has had a long, successful history. The sun has been delivering 5900 times the amount of energy that humans consume today every day for the last five billion years! A small fraction of what’s produced – just 0.016% - would be sufficient to satisfy the current needs residential, industrial, commercial, and transportation energy needs for every individual on the planet.

The source has been holding up its end of the bargain. There have been no outages, no equipment failures, no CEO mea culpas, no angry customers.
It’s the harvesting end that’s fallen short. Fellow sales professionals, I’m here to tell you that the sales process is an integral part of breaking the stranglehold that fossil fuels have on the hearts, minds, and checkbooks of consumers. It’s time for us to recognize the crucial part we have to play in changing our energy production and consumption habits.

How are we supposed to do that, you might ask?

Before I go further, let’s talk about how not to achieve this goal. Let’s look at arguments that have been made in the past and see how they’ve failed.

Solar energy was a very hot topic forty years ago. The United States experienced significant disruptions in oil supplies in 1973 and 1979. There were lines at gas stations. Prices skyrocketed. Consumers were looking for any technology that could deliver them.

If that wasn’t enough, we had the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. Wouldn’t such an event, one that ended the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States, make a low-cost, low-risk alternative seem more attractive?

Alas, this has not been the case. Solar energy continues to grow slowly, but it still delivers less than 10% of total consumption.

You can make appeals to serving the greater good. Individuals can use the sun to capture energy for power and heat in their home, cutting down on their reliance on public sources.

Our reliance on imported oil would be reduced. Imagine how different the world would be if we didn’t rely so heavily on oil for our energy needs! Wars to guarantee our supply would be a thing of the past. The transfer of wealth to oil-producing countries would end.

We could continue to spur economic growth without worrying about the amount of carbon dioxide we pump back into the atmosphere. Concerns about climate change and environmental impact could be decoupled from the Hobson’s choice of ceasing all economic activity.

These arguments seem pretty compelling, don’t they? Do you see solar collectors on every house? No! Are oil tankers being converted into cruise ships in the Arabian Sea? I don't see them. The appeals to the greater good have not made a dent.

They were true forty years ago. The fundamental story has not changed in all that time.

Why have customers not been persuaded? Why isn’t solar energy more popular with consumers?

Initial capital costs are relatively high. No one is going to lay out a lot of money to buy equipment that won’t pay back in twenty years.
There’s a well-established infrastructure in place to transport heating oil, gas, or electricity to our homes and to make it usable.

Affordable…proven…reliable technology.

There’s a chain of contributors that must work together to change this industry:
• Scientists need to be hard at work in their labs, driving the efficiency of photovoltaic materials up above 10% while keeping costs low.
• Engineers need to be hard at work taking progress in basic science and designing it into robust, affordable systems.
• Machinists and assembly workers need to be hard at work plying their crafts to create high quality, affordable products.
• Field service personnel need to live up to expectations as partners and representatives of Astrum Solar.

All these things are in full swing, but they don’t mean a thing unless we can make the case to customers that it’s in their best interest to make the switch from electricity generated by centralized power plants.

Do you see a theme here? What are the two things that our customers want?

First, they want energy to be affordable. Heating oil is currently around $3-4 per gallon; prices are relatively stable. A homeowner using oil to heat their home can predict what their heating costs will be for a given heating season.

Second, they want access to energy to be reliable. Sitting in the dark and cold won’t do. Breakdowns must be rare. When they do happen, there has to be a person on the other end of a phone line who can quickly sort out the situation.

Affordability is a function of large economic forces that are outside the control of the company.
1. We can’t control the price of oil.
2. We can’t wave a magic wand and make a scientific breakthrough happen.
3. We can’t change the fact that the sun doesn’t shine on rainy days.

But we can influence how our customers perceive Astrum Solar. It’s our job to tell them that this is a reliable company. We need to educate them about the fact that our products can provide power with a degree of reliability that matches or exceeds that of traditional power suppliers. We must engage them as a trusted partner, one that will stand behind the product and make right any breakdowns in a timely way.

Do you remember fall of 2011? I do. I’ve lived in my house for a long time. The worse power outage I’ve ever experienced prior to last year was the three days without power after Hurricane Gloria back in Sep 1985. For almost thirty years I’ve been able to count on power and heat in my house without fail, except for a few odd hours.

That clean record was sullied in the last six months. I had to endure not one, but two nine-day periods without power! Thank goodness both happened before winter had set in. My pipes would have been in real trouble if temperatures had dropped below freezing. Repair crews were already having trouble keeping up in the relatively mild fall conditions. Can you imagine having to repair a state-wide failure of the grid in sub-freezing temperatures or in the midst of a blizzard?

When my power was finally restored in November, my first thought was prevention: How could I ensure that this never happened again? I went out and bought a gas-powered generator and had a transfer switch wired in, but it seems like a temporary solution.

I think it’s time for something more permanent. It’s time to install solar panels at my residence that will supply electricity sufficient to meet my needs and even allow me to sell excess back to the electric company.

So how can we help?

We need to address affordability.
• Sales people need to work with field service personnel to properly size equipment to meet the needs of each individual household, taking into account special features of each site.
• Sales people need to inform customers about all available energy conservation programs. Minimizing power needs makes the installation’s job easier. Most customers can benefit from better insulation in attics and weather stripping in doors and windows.
• Sales people need to explore every subsidy from federal and state sources that might defer portions of the economic burden of installing solar equipment.

We need to address reliability.
• Sales people need to educate customers about warranty agreements that guarantee the uninterrupted operation of their installations.
• Sales people need to ensure that field service personnel are partners with customers to instill confidence and ensure reliability.

One day I was walking on a beach where the tide had gone out. The sand was covered with starfish, left behind by the sea. I encountered a small boy who was walking along, bending down from time to time, and throwing a starfish back into the ocean. I watched the boy throw starfish after starfish, yet they still stretched out on the sand as far as the eye could see. I went up to the boy and said, "Give it up! There must be thousands of starfish washed up on shore. What difference can you possibly make by throwing them back?" The boy looked at me without saying a word, then he picked up another one and threw it as far as he could. It landed with a splunk! "I made a difference to that one!" he replied.

We can fulfill that grand, large-scale goal of moving this country to a sustainable, independent, renewable energy economy. But we’ll have to do it one customer at a time. We must make Astrum Solar a trusted partner whose reliability exceeds that of traditional power suppliers. I urge you to be the public face of Astrum Solar. Our future, and more, depends on you.

Keynote

I'm going to speak at my next Toastmasters meeting on Thu. It's the sixth out of ten speeches required to earn the Advanced Communicator Bronze designation. I'm working out of a manual entitled "The Professional Speaker." The first assignment is to deliver a 15-20 keynote address. It's easily the longest speech I've ever been asked to give.

I'm looking forward to it.

Here's the text of the speech. I thought I'd post it here for the hell of it. Plus if I lose the text before I speak I can always come here and fetch it.

“The Professional Speaker”
Assignment 1: The Keynote Speech

Target organization: young professionals at the start of their career.

Mr. Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters, and welcome guests:

Opening: One of the things that I love about working for a company like Travelers is seeing so many young people joining the firm. You see them walking through The Link, well-dressed, clutching a Travelers red umbrella like it’s a lost-and-found family heirloom. Eyes wide, ears open, frantically trying to remember the names in this maze of buildings so they’ll have a hope of appearing at their first meetings on time.

For some, this is their first job after earning a college degree. They’re walking with ten league boots: separating themselves from their parents, living on their own, paying bills, being adults. What a huge change! If we view life as a series of decades, each its own transition, this is the foundation for adulthood. This is when you start your career trajectory, think about marriage, and decide how you feel about children. It’s the basis for our entire society.

I remember my first day on the job very well, but my gray hair gives me away. It’s a distant memory: it’s been a long time since then. Let’s inject some humor into this keynote, shall we?

• There was no cable; no CNN or Fox or ESPN.
• There was no Internet; no Facebook or Twitter.
• There were no cell phones; no iPhone, Android, or BlackBerry.
• There was no e-mail.
• Computers were kept in a separate room, with its own air-conditioning under the floor, and shared by an entire department.
• Communicating with that computer meant some interactive terminals, but it also included punched paper cards.
• There was a vault in which vellum blueprints were stored for each component. Computer aided design and manufacturing was in its infancy.

Compared to today’s office, those early state-of-the-art facilities felt like a scene out of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol.” More coal for the fire?

The scope and scale of technological change is breathtaking, but the human elements are unchanged. As I look back on my career, I thought about what I might have wanted to tell that younger version of myself. Here are a few nuggets of wisdom that I offer for your consideration.

Story 1: Figure out what’s important to you.

What’s your goal? Is it money? Climbing to the top of a corporate ladder? Being an effective individual contributor with deep technical knowledge? Whatever that goal is, spend some time figuring out what is important to you. You can’t reach a goal unless you know what it is and the steps you’ll need to execute to get there.

There is a price to pay for everything. Positions of high reward come with great responsibility. No one will ask about your child’s upcoming weekend activity when they send the limo to your house to whisk you off for a business trip.

Pausing on the advancement ladder has a price as well. Choosing to be an individual contributor might mean enduring the frustration of Cassandra: a prophetess whose advice was ignored when she told the Trojans to leave that wooden horse left by the Greeks outside the city gates.

Know what you want.

Be prepared for the consequences of every decision you make.

Make your own measure of success. Take an alternate path.

Story 2: Consider alternative paths to success.

I grew up in a different time. The prevailing wisdom went like this: “Get a job with a well-regarded company. Work your way up the ladder as high as you can, then retire on the terrific benefits they provided.” There was an implied contract: be loyal to a company, and they’d repay you in kind.

That contract is long gone. Companies require greater labor flexibility, so employees need to take on more of the burden of managing and directing their careers.

Alternative paths are on everyone’s radar now. Your choice depends on your appetite for risk. Perhaps you’d prefer being a contractor to full employee status. Or maybe you’d rather go all in and start your own business. This is not for the faint of heart. There are no off days; all the success or failure will be yours to own. You have to learn how to do the work and all the marketing, too. It’s a balancing act: keeping just enough work coming in to make it possible to build your brand and deliver without working every waking moment or waiting for the phone to ring.

Each of the past three decades has seen defining technologies and companies that drove them: personal computers and Microsoft in the 80s; the Internet and companies like Sun, Cisco, and Amazon in the 90s; search and Google at the start of this century; mobile and Apple going on right now. All these sea changes produce opportunities that a smart person can capitalize on.

Story 3: Keep an eye on market forces.

This leads to my next bit of advice: stay informed about your field and those that affect it. You don’t want to be caught unprepared when the world changes. No matter how comfortable and successful you might be, it pays to keep an eye on world events and extrapolate. Have you noticed that every person in this room is likely to have an iPhone, Android, or Blackberry mobile device? If you’re a software developer, and you aren’t writing for one of these mobile devices, you might be doing your future prospects a disservice.

I went to a wedding recently. One young man, whose first job out of school is sales for Microsoft, was rhapsodizing about a recent company meeting he attended. As excited as he was about hearing Steve Ballmer speak, I hope he’s kept his eye on the rise of the mobile computer and the cloud, and the decline of the desktop. His company may not figure out how to replace their desktop operating system and Office monopolies, but I’m sure he’ll have to soon.

Story 4: Keep learning.

The people who were most expert in those technologies that predominated at the start of my career had to change and learn new things or be pushed aside. The cruel truth is that this situation is only getting worse every day. The pace at which new information is added to the world is only increasing.

I resisted the temptation to insert a statistic stating how many terabytes of information are added to the Internet every day, translating it into Library of Congress equivalents to make it meaningful to the audience. But for ever page of fundamental new knowledge there are probably tens or hundreds of pages of celebrity gossip and other meaningless chaff to sift through. I’ll summarize by saying that there are 6.8 billion people living on earth today, and those who are actively adding their bricks to the wall of knowledge are doing it at a rate that is increasing exponentially.

Chances are good that all of us will have several careers during our working lives. I can speak from personal experience: I’ve had two, and I’m expecting that I might have a third act in me. I would not have had that second opportunity if I hadn’t kept learning.

Story 5: Enjoy what you do.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” This quote is attributed to Confucius and others; it’s still just as true today. You’ll see a lot of stuff written about following your bliss, your passion. The implication is that you just might be able to turn doing something you love into that custom fit career. Whether it is photography or cooking or programming or speaking or something else, your chances of finding happiness pursuing a beloved activity are good. If you’re lucky, financial success and fame might even accompany it.

Story 6: Remember your co-workers.

I was laid off from the first job I got out of school. The economy was not very good at that time; in some ways it was worse off than it is now. Interest rates, inflation, oil prices, and unemployment were all high. A friend of mine recommended that I contact the Navy research lab in New London, CT. It was a department loaded with Ph.D.s; I saw no good reason why they would want a young man without a graduate degree.

Art Carlson, the man who headed Code 44, took pity on me and offered me a job. The two years that I spent there made all the difference in the world. I completed a Masters degree, learned a skill that I loved, and – most important of all – got my confidence back. I moved on from that job and managed to earn a Ph.D. of my own. After graduation I wrote a letter to Art Carlson to thank him for giving me that chance. I said that everything that happened to me subsequent to that interview was because of him.

I was told later by people I worked with that Art showed that letter to everyone he encountered at the lab. It might have meant as much to him as it did to me.

Work is a team sport. All of us are dependent on the good will of fellow contributors to meet our goals. Remember to be the kind of person that co-workers can recall with respect at minimum and fondness at best. You never know when you’ll encounter them again as you progress through your career.

Story 7: Don’t sell yourself short.

My father was an immigrant who came to America from Ireland. He didn’t want to be a farmer, so he left home to find economic opportunity in America. When he landed in New York and came to CT, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He worked at the utility company that maintained the water system in town. He was a backhoe operator; a union guy, through and through.

I grew up imbued with his work ethic. I worked for that water company during the summer between semesters in college, so I had a taste of what manual labor was like. I was grateful to study something that made brain work possible for me.

I’ve always loved the details of technical work, but I think I also absorbed the lesson that managing and directing work wasn’t for me. Underneath it all, I’m also a union guy, a laborer.

Part of me knows that this was a good thing, because I’m an emotional person with a thin skin.

But there’s another part of me that wonders why I never aspired to be the person who directed the activities of others. The people I’ve observed who have been in charge of things where I worked have been a mixed bag. A few have been inspirational, brilliant leaders, but when I think of the majority of them I can’t help but look back and wonder if I couldn’t have done at least as well.

The first step in becoming a leader is believing in your heart that you’re someone worth following; the second is persuading others that they ought to believe it, too. Work hard to have an idea of your own, a vision for how things could be, and then get to work persuading others that you’re right. Don’t hesitate to put yourself forward. You might surprise yourself.

Conclusion:

If I could choose one message that my younger self could have heard and taken to heart, I think it would have been the one about alternative paths to success. Oh, and maybe something like “Bill Gates will become the world’s richest man by writing a Quick Basic compiler and having the nerve to call IBM’s bluff over DOS” or “Page and Brin will make themselves the kings of search by solving an eigenvalue problem; you know what that is.”. All of us are limited by what we don’t know. People who prepare themselves well, are attuned to the opportunities that come along are the ones, and are bold enough to act on them are the ones who have the greatest career success.

If you’re one of those well-dressed, wide-eyed young people that I see walking through The Link, I hope that you’ll profit by taking my lessons that still apply to heart, that you are astute enough to spot the changes in the world that will invalidate some of my dogma, and that you derive as much pleasure from your life’s work as I have. Thank you.

A Leadership Role

As part of my ongoing efforts at self-improvement, I ran for a leadership position in my local Toastmasters club. The Toastmasters fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year, so elections are usually held in June. There are several high level positions, such as president and several vice-presidents, followed by lower level positions such as treasurer, sergeant-at-arms, and secretary. I decided to try for secretary as my first office. I thought it would be an opportunity to learn how things worked and observe someone up-close before making a run of my own for a higher office.

I ran unopposed, so my victory was a fait accompli.

I'm still pleased by the outcome. The incoming president is a dynamic, smart individual. I'm looking forward to supporting him and learning from his experience over the next year.

Claiming a leadership position means training, so I headed over to a morning of sessions yesterday afternoon. There was the usual "pump up the crowd" opening and closing gathering sandwiching hour-long sessions on a variety of topics.

My first session talked about record keeping for secretaries and treasurers. It was a cautionary tale that merely signing up for Toastmasters doth not a speaker make. The man who gave the presentation was awful:

1. His self-deprecation was merely annoying at first; it quickly made me wonder why he was chosen to speak at all.


2. He was unprepared. He kept telling us about all the other things he had going on in his life (e.g., children, grandchildren, etc.) that made it impossible for him to be ready.
   


3. His slides were simply atrocious.


4. His delivery was flat, monotone, and uninspired. Record keeping may not be an exciting topic, but that's no excuse for informing so poorly.


5. His speech was riddled with "ahs" and "ums" and lots of filler words.

I was nodding off in the back row. The audience was glad when the hour was over. There was an evaluation slip to be filled out, but I pulled the punch. The only criticism I wrote was "update slides".

I wanted to attend a discussion about Robert's Rules of Order next, a topic that I've heard about but never read. But when I peeked in the doorway I saw the presenter from the record keeping talk I'd just left setting up shop for his second presentation. Thank you sir, I'd rather not have another! I sprinted over to the "Evaluation Boot Camp" talk, and am I glad I did. It made the day worthwhile all by itself.

For those who aren't familiar, Toastmasters promotes the idea of developing speaking and leadership skills in a supportive environment. We're all familiar with preparing and delivering speeches, but feedback is rarely talked about. Every speech is given a 2-3 minute long evaluation. The evaluator has to listen carefully and critically while the speech is delivered, furiously write down their thoughts in the minute that follows, and then deliver an extemporaneous speech for 2-3 minutes that provides actionable recommendations.

It's not an easy thing to do. There are some telltale signs that signify "bad evaluation".

Evaluators need to resist the temptation to recap the speech: "They said this; then we heard this..." A recap isn't educational.

The manuals that guides members through a gauntlet of speeches has specific goals for each exercise. It's easy for an evaluator to read the objectives in a rote manner and check off how the speaker met each objective. It's slothful.

The worst of all says "Great job - I couldn't find a single thing to criticize! It was perfect in every way!" It might be great for the ego, but I won't learn what to do better from this.

Don E. Smith had some wonderful, actionable suggestions. He had an evaluation template that had space for comments on content, organization, and delivery (COD). He pointed out that there are only three kinds of speeches (PIE):

1. Persuasive - talk about Feeling, organized logically, with a call to action at the end


2. Informative - talk about Knowing, organized logically, without a call to action at the end


3. Entertaining - talk about Experience, organized chronologically

He recommended citing the type of speech right up front. This fixes the type of organization right away. The evaluation dives right into content, organization, and delivery once that's sorted out.

I think my future evaluations will be better after hearing this. My speeches will be too, because now I will craft them with an evaluation in mind.

I've always shunned organizations and forced behavior. Fraternities are not for me. Toastmasters is no different. I'm not a rah-rah cheerleader for the organization.

But I like the quiet self-improvement and social opportunities. As I've attended more of the meetings and functions I've started to develop a small circle of folks that I'm comfortable with.

My goals for this year are to learn about the running of the club, get through the first book towards Advanced Communicator Bronze, and complete the Competent Leader designation to match my Competent Communicator achievement.

First Competition

I took the next step in my Toastmasters competition last night after winning our club contest: the area contest. I was up against two winners from other local clubs. The prize? The chance to move on to the district competition and, perhaps, the international.

Contests are run very much like regular weekly meetings. Everything is very formal. I've been an observer at AA meetings for years. Toastmasters meetings remind me of them. They're structured and formal, with lots of applause and encouragement. The contests have judges and rules, prizes and protocols. There are two competitions: one for tall tales, where contestants speak for 3-5 minutes about the wildest imaginary stories they can think of, and another for international, which require 5-7 minutes talks on more serious topics.

I was one of three contestants in the international competition. I came in third, but I was happy with that. The other two speakers were both far more experienced that I am, and it showed. Their writing, rehearsal, and delivery were top-shelf. I had heard (and evaluated) the winner's speech a month ago, so I knew what I was up against going in. She didn't disappoint. It was a most impressive performance. I would have voted for her as the winner if I were a judge.

The second-place finisher at my club entered the tall tales battle and won, hands down. He's an incredibly accomplished guy and a great speaker. He has an instrument-level pilot's license. He went to the Caribbean on vacation with his family, piloting a 40 foot sailboat. His story described how he tied up the boat and went with his family to head into town on a windy day. They were strolling along the beach when they saw their $750,000 chartered boat had torn free of its mooring and was gliding into the harbor without a pilot. My friend jumped into a motorboat, climbed aboard, and stopped the vessel just a few feet short of shoals and a wall. He would have had an embarrassing call to a charter company and their insurance company if he hadn't acted so quickly.

The name of the boat? "Vela Via", Italian for "Sail Away". Delicious irony!

I enjoyed the competition very much, but it tells me that I can do much, much better. I have to work harder at improving my writing, rehearsal, and delivery. My inclination towards procrastination will be the death of me.

Competent Communicator At Last

Last Thursday I was working at my desk when an e-mail popped into Outlook. Thursday is Toastmaster's Day. I received a note saying that there was an open speaking slot available; the first one to claim it could speak.

I happened to have a speech written, printed out and ready to go. I hadn't rehearsed it at all, so I would have to depend on notes, my memory, and my passion for the subject matter. I immediately replied to say that I wanted the chance.

I felt some urgency for two reasons: first, it would be my tenth speech in the Competent Communicator series, the lowest rung on the Toastmasters ladder, and second, I would achieve the milestone within two years of giving my icebreaker speech back in Apr 2008. I had a seven month hiatus from September 2008 through April 2009 where I was utterly silent. I changed jobs and clubs during that time. It took me a while to get used to my new surroundings. But now I was on a roll. I wanted to make that first benchmark.

I bounced up the stairs to the conference room on the tenth floor just before noon, text in hand. I was the first speaker that day. I wasn't happy about my failure to rehearse, but I liked the topic and delivered it fairly well.

The president of our club happened to be talking about the requirements for achieving "distinguished club" status. Every club has a set of goals to meet in terms of new members, certifications earned, officers trained and such. When she found out that I was getting my competent communicator designation, she smiled and said "You weren't even on my radar!" Our club was one step closer to the highest designation as a result of my efforts.

I felt a great sense of accomplishment. It took longer than I'd like, but I've really picked up the past since joining this group. I delivered just three speeches in fifteen months at my first club. I gave four more from April 2009 through the end of the year. I've already stepped up three times this year, and March is just ending.

This club meets once a week, which helps a great deal. My first club only met on the second and fourth Thursday of the month, so the number of available speaking slots was cut in half. The drip, drip, drip effect of meeting every week helps - it's too easy to slide back while two weeks go by.

I have the district competition coming up on 14-Apr. I'm approaching it as a learning experience, with little or no thought about winning it. I want to see what accomplished speakers do and use them as an inspiration to progress further along.

I'm as comfortable as I can be with standing and delivering. I have no fear of it at all. I know my technique needs to become more conscious, more deliberate.

But the two things that I need to improve on most are writing and rehearsing. I should have a stable of talks on hand, ready to deliver at a moment's notice. People have to cancel all the time due to work obligations. I can make progress if I can jump in the way I did for my tenth.

It's the rehearsal that needs the most work. The way to become more conscious, more deliberate is to practice it in, to observe what you're doing, to think about how it all comes across. Speakers are no different from actors learning their lines. I have to have them down cold when I stride to the podium.

There are very few things in life that I'm naturally good at, but speaking in front of groups seems to be one of them. I'd like to see if I can polish this skill into something that will have a future use that I can't see right now. I'm always trying to figure out what my third act in life will be. First engineering, then software. If the world has changed, and we all need to change fields several times, I want to be ready.

First Toastmasters Competition

I entered my first Toastmasters competition on Thursday.

I won.

It was a bit of a shock for me. There were two other speakers entered, and both of them are among the most talented and prolific speakers in our club. I had heard the runner up's speech a week earlier at another local club. He's so talented, so precise, so conscious of what he's doing that I immediately resigned myself to accomplishing nothing more than completing the ninth out of ten speeches required for the Competent Communicator designation, the first rung on the communication ladder.

I wrote my speech at the last minute. It was a description of a recent event in my life that served as the basis for the tenth and final speech: "Inspire Your Audience". It was an emotional topic for me. As usual, I procrastinated and didn't rehearse as much as I'd like.

But I knew the story well enough to deliver it extemporaneously. I had the added advantage of speaking last. It's natural for people to remember the last thing they heard. Perhaps that factored into the thinking of the judges.

I get to try again on 14-Apr against some other local clubs. If that goes well I'll get to move on to the district competition on 22-May.

I've got to present my ninth and last speech soon so I can have that Competent Communicator designation in hand. I'd like to do it before 24-Apr, because that would mean that I finished the ten speeches in two years. I gave my first one on 24-Apr-2008. I had long stretch of six months where I didn't speak at all. I switched jobs and clubs, so it took me a while to recover my stride.

I don't know what the next steps will be. Toastmasters has two tracks: communication and leadership. I don't know if completing that first booklet and achieving a Competent Leader designation is a requirement, or if I'd have the option of going on to more advanced communication work.

Whichever I choose, I'd like to start accelerating my rate of progress. I need to be writing, speaking, practicing more.

This was a good start. It's astonishing how you can get better at something with regular practice. I've appreciated having the opportunity. I don't know where it will lead, but it feels good to continue to progress, grow, and learn.