Self Help

Whether you are giving a speech to a public audience, talking with members of a company board meeting, or simply offering a sales presentation, there are many tools that can be implemented for success in delivering your speech. Such tools include explaining detailed examples, designing statistical charts, as well as providing influencing testimony. Below, we will add another public speaking skill to the list and explain four special tips for using “evidence” in a persuasive speech.

1. Use Specific Evidence: No matter what kind of evidence you employ - statistics, examples, or testimony - it will be more persuasive if you state it in specific rather than general terms.

2. Use Novel Evidence: Evidence is more likely to be persuasive if it is new to the audience. You will gain little by citing facts and figures that are already well known to your listeners. If those facts and figures have not persuaded your listeners already, they will not do so now. You must go beyond what the audience already knows and present striking new evidence that will get them to say, “Hmmm, I didn’t know that. Maybe I should rethink the issue.” Finding such evidence is not always easy. It usually requires hard digging and resourceful research, but the rewards can be well worth the effort.

3. Use Evidence From Credible Sources: There is a good deal of research to show that listeners find evidence from competent, credible sources more persuasive than evidence from less qualified sources. Above all, listeners are suspicious of evidence from sources that appear to be biased or self-interested. In assessing the current state of airline safety, for example, they are more likely to be persuaded by testimony from impartial aviation experts than by statements from the president of American Airlines. In judging the conflict between a corporation and the union striking against it, they will usually be leery of statistics offered by either side. If you wish to be persuasive especially to careful listeners - you should rely on evidence from objective, nonpartisan sources.

4. Make Clear The Point of Your Evidence: When speaking to persuade, you use evidence to prove a point. Yet you would be surprised how many novice speakers present their evidence without making clear the point it is supposed to prove. A number of studies have shown that you cannot count on listeners to draw, on their own, the conclusion you want them to reach. When using evidence, be sure listeners understand the point you are trying to make.