Practice makes (nearly) perfect communications…

We all know that preparation is key to perfecting important communications, but as Sandra Davis explains, how we practise can be just as significant.

Booked to speak at a large presentation? Check. Key messages mapped out? Check. Thoughts on how to engage the audience? Check. PowerPoint done? Check. Rehearsed your presentation out loud? Er…

We often find clients craft their speeches on paper and practise in their heads. But this has little benefit if the goal is to sound authentic and engaging. Why? Well when we write, we tend to do so in a linguistically and grammatically correct way. But as speakers in any native language, we are not perfect – we do all sorts of things that we wouldn’t do when we write: we use repetition, we abbreviate, and we use our voice to add meaning, for example by speeding up for excitement or slowing down for emphasis – a bit like an oral highlighter.

None of these things work on the page.

On the other hand, what we can process when we are reading, as opposed to listening, can be highly complex – long sentences, complex sentence structures, embedded clauses, indented bullets – all fine for the reader and hopeless for a listener. When you’ve spent hours drafting a speech, it can lose its impact once said out loud.

Bladonmore has created a solution to help – our Saymore app. Saymore is a tool that makes it easy for you to practise your communications anytime, anywhere. It allows you to prepare in the same format that you are delivering your story – out loud. And when you have a version that you are happy with, you can save it and export it.  

Instead of writing your presentations or messages, you simply recite them into the app. The app will record your words, create a transcript and give you feedback on things such as how quickly you were talking, your volume and whether you were using filler words such as ‘so’ or ‘you know’ which have little content value.

Then, the app can even act as an autocue, scrolling through your speech at the same rate you spoke and highlighting key words that you want to stress in your delivery.

So, if you are taking the time to deliver your message or story in person to people who matter, whether colleagues, clients or your community, then using Saymore to prepare will help you persuade more and achieve better outcomes.

———————————————–

The app is free and can be downloaded from both the iStore and Playstore for use on Android and Apple phones and tablets. You will need a user name and password which you can get by emailing hello@bladonmore.com.