Showing a Clear Benefit Up Front

The need to show a clear benefit up front is important for so many reasons. Showing a clear benefit in the beginning of your speech can, many times, be the difference between delivering a speech that involves an engaged audience and delivering one where the audience is bored out of their minds. You’re taking the time out of your audience’s day for a reason and it is important that they’re well aware of that reason. 

Notice Jullien Gordon’s speech on ‘How to Graduate College With a Job You Love & Less Debt’. The speech is basically about the need for the combination of street smarts and book smarts required to follow through with graduating college with a job you love and less debt. In it, Jullien is able to deliver a very thought-provoking speech while consistently delivering examples, especially with money involved, of why it is important to graduate college. Once those benefits have been explained, Jullien moves on with the actual ‘how to’ of the speech.

Putting Yourself in a Position of Power

When you’re laying out the benefits of your argument up front, you’re putting yourself in a position of power from the beginning. Had Jullien told his audience how to develop street smarts before he talked about the benefits of attending college and developing those street smarts, the audience may have been questioning the need to even go to college or develop those skills. Therefore, it may have discredited his speech to a portion of his audience far too soon.

It is important that this method is understood in all speeches. If a clear benefit isn’t shown early and often, it is going to become much more difficult to engage your audience throughout. Once your audience is aware of exactly why they should be listening to your speech, it becomes that much more likely that you’ll be able to develop and maintain an engaged audience.

Overkill Issues

It could be said that Jullien actually spoke about the benefits a little too long, especially when compared to the time he spent showing the ‘how to’ of developing street smarts. While we can be critical of this, it is still clear that he showed his audience exactly why his argument was a worthy one. In the end, speakers don’t want to proclaim the benefits of their speech so much that they seem defensive, but still want to be able to show those benefits early and often. That line is a difficult one to walk but doing so successfully is one of the many things that makes a truly great speech.