Strategic Objectives: Achieving Secondary Objectives

Do you struggle with fear, doubt, and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmeads.

Welcome to the Unforgettable Podcast Strategic Objectives Specifically, secondary Objectives Why secondary objectives? Well, because primary objectives are obvious. As a speaker, if you are strategic in your career and strategic with every presentation you do, you're going to get better results. But you don't really need to think too much about your primary objectives. Why? Because you know what they are. If somebody's hired you to teach a certain HR principle and the latest legal updates in the HR world, that's what you teach. If you're there to sell your book, that's what you do. You know your primary objective, but the black belt skill is to understand that you also probably have a list of secondary objectives. Secondary objectives are a shopping list of things that might happen as a result of you doing your talk. And when you become clear about what your secondary objectives are for any given presentation, you have an easier time designing your talk, selecting your stories, and answering questions from the audience. You're able to be more strategic in the placement of the information. I'll give you an example. Many years ago, I first started contemplating the idea of becoming an author. I'd done lots of speaking and maybe it was time to talk about books. So I added to my secondary objectives that I would like to meet an agent. And in my story selection, I told a story about one of the books I was working on, and I mentioned I haven't yet selected an agent. I did that with intent. Guess what? In the lineup of people that came to talk to me and get their autographs and selfies, a woman comes up and she says, I'm an agent that works with a particular publisher and I'd like to talk about representing you. It happened that quickly, but I've had many situations like that happen. Years ago, I learned how important it is when I land in a new city to build in extra time for strategic meetings, media interviews, and podcasts. Now what I do when I'm giving a presentation is I tell stories about times that I've done that I tell stories about. Oh, there was this one time in Italy where I built extra time in, and I got to do this really great podcast episode. By using that story contextually with what I'm teaching or sharing at that time, it suddenly notifies everybody in the audience that I might be available. This became very powerful for me because there came a time in my career when at first I wanted interviews and couldn't get them. Then I was getting lots of requests, and I was saying yes to all of them. And then all of a sudden, I wasn't getting requests at all, and I didn't understand it. One day, I shared a story on stage, and in that story, I included this little tidbit that I now leave time whenever I travel to a city for strategic meetings. Media and podc. 4 or 5 came up to me after that event and invited me to do their podcast. I hadn't had requests in weeks, and suddenly I got four. I was curious. I asked them what made them ask. They said, well, you mentioned that you billed the extra time in, so we knew it was safe to ask. I said, what do you mean, safe to ask? Well, we've wanted to ask you before, but we assumed that you're way too busy. You see, what had happened is my career had taken off. When I was first starting out, it was hard to get an interview. Then the request started coming in. But when I became too big in their eyes, they. They stopped asking. By dropping that little story into my talk, I showed them that it was possible. There are countless secondary objectives that you can use to make your talks richer for you. What that means is you'll choose different stories, and when people ask you questions in the audience, as you're answering them, you'll have different answers based on what you're trying to achieve with that talk. It changes everything. Have a strategic approach to speaking, and you'll change everything.

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