10 Ways To Judge Speaking Success

 

I have a dear friend who works for a well known not for profit and speaks to community groups about cancer-related issues.  

Recently she asked me how she could judge her speaking success.  

Your community group may have a speakers program as part of its PR activity.  So how do you measure if speaking to other organisations is worth the time and effort that goes into preparing and delivering such a talk.

Some measures that might help you measure whether your next talk is successful, are:

• Did you motivate some-one in your audience to do something as a result of listening to you? Did they visit your website, ask for a brochure, call a hot line or come up to you after you finished to register their interest or continue the conversation? 
• If you had a particular call to action in your presentation, how many people responded?
• What reaction did you get during your talk? What was the mood in the room?  Were the audience engaged and interested or were they bored and tuned out as you rambled on?
• How many questions were asked during and after you spoke? The number and nature of questions and comments is often a clear sign if you have engaged your audience.
• How people collected a brochure, business card or other material you may have brought along and distributed?
• How many people accessed  your presentation online if you shared it through Slideshare or other  platforms. Or asked you to email them a white paper or more information?
• Did you receive any feedback a couple of days after the event?
• Did the organisers feel your presentation was of such value,  they donated funds (if that was the goal of your presentation) or did they invite you back to speak again?
• Did one speaking opportunity lead to another invitation to present.  I heard you speak at x.  Can you come and speak to our group.
• Did you speech get reported or were you asked for information for your host's newsletter, website, blog or elsewhere.

These are the effectiveness measures I look: but how do you measure speaking success in your organisation? 

Let's share some ideas.