For the last two episodes, we’ve been engaging in a dialogue around using emotion in your business pitch, presentation or speech. Emotion is one of the three tactics we call Rhetorical Appeals which are used to help persuade or influence an audience.
This is all part of our exploration into the Eight Constant Factors of Platform Mastery and let me remind you what they are. A platform master Engages, Persuades, Impacts, and Compels and an audience with Passion, Purpose, Posture, and Projection.

In the world of platform mastery, it’s not just what you say that’s important, it’s what people remember. If you speak, and your audience deletes what you say within minutes… well, that’s a loss.

Platform mastery is about being sticky. Go back and listen to episode #58 Be A Sticky Speaker to hear more about that.

In the last episode we introduced Inclusion as the first of three tactics, that when you use them with passion, purpose, posture, and projection you will go a long way in helping your audience engage with you, and be persuaded with your use of the Rhetorical Appeal of Emotion.
Today we are talking about the second tactic... The Phrase That Stays!
To be a platform master, you need distinction… to be memorable… to be a stand out. This means you do... or you say... something that sticks in the mind of the audience. You are not easily forgotten.

One of my keynote speeches is titled ‘Kill Darius’ and it is designed to inspire and motivate an individual to reach for the big goals in their life and business. The message uses the story of the battle between Alexander the Great and Darius, the Persian King at a place called Gaugamela.
In that speech, I say these two words around 25 times. I weave it in and out conversations between Alexander and his men, between the generals and their men, around campfires and even ancestors retelling the story generations later.  I use it in the battle cry as they are riding into battle and I even ask the audience one or twice to say it back to me and for me.
I remember one day sitting in a café meeting with a client – it must have been about seven years after I first delivered this keynote at a conference, when a man walked up to me and said, “Kill Darius!”

A little surprised, I looked and saw he was holding his hand out, to shake mine, and then he said, “I was at that conference when you presented that message. I still remember it to this day.”  The Phrase That Stays!
Here’s the action point of the day.
As you prepare your next speech or presentation use these five points to help you create a Phrase That Stays!

* Make it short and sweet: 2 – 6 words... it has to be sticky!
* Make it a call to action, if you can. This means the first word is a verb... some kind of action.
* It summarises the main point of your presentation… or better yet, the title. Kill Darius!
*  It is repeated (called back) numerous times and in the right places.
* And remember, it is significantly more powerful when the audience help you say it.

There is more to come.