Are You a Sexy Speaker?

Published by Mandy Bass in Speaking, 9 months 2 weeks 6 days 1 hour 19 minutes 44 seconds ago

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You know your strengths as a keynote speaker. You know your topic and how to reach your audience. Your five-star reviews on Free Speaker Match boast of your abilities as an inspirational speaker. But what makes you "sexy"?

Sexy sells. Great reviews are nice but they don't pay the bills.

Being sexy does not mean you have to start wearing low cut shirts or posing for suggestive photos. Being sexy is simply a term used in the media that refers to what is "hot" or what everyone is talking about.


While politicians and international celebrities pay BIG BUCKS to stylists and image "makers" to make them "sexy," you can apply the same principals on a smaller scale. Doing so will not take away from the integrity of your message, if you work it in the right way. So what makes you stand out from the rest?

Is it your personality? Think about your favorite celebrities. Do you like their sense of humor? Are they like Dr. Phil who puts things in a straight forward, in your face, but humorous way? Find out what it is about YOU that people like and then emphasize those qualities.

One way to do that is simply asking people you know and trust. And stay open minded. If they say you are quirky, don't take offense. Ask them what is quirky about you and then embrace it! A lot of people thought Richard Simmons as just too over the top, but his over exuberance is what he is known for and sought out for. His message of healthy living and weight loss was never lost in that personality, but simply carried along with it.


But being sexy does mean you have to be over-the-top. If you are more reserved and prefer to remain that way, your intelligence and expertise on a topic can also be "sexy." You just need to pull those elements out and magnify them. Just your topic can make you sexy. If health care reform is the "hot topic" in media and you speak on medical issues, working that topic into your presentation will not only make your speech more applicable to your immediate audience, it also makes you attractive to the media. By working in subjects that people know, it creates an opportunity to ride on the coat tails of that topic and get your message across.

Look at it like fashion. If the color for fall is orange, work a little orange into your presentation and you will draw in the audience. Then use that orange to lead them over to red or yellow... YOUR message.

Do some advance research into what the media is covering at the location of your speech. Local hot topics and how you relate to them is a prime way to get local media coverage. During the last presidential election, many celebrities made their way to small communities. Most had to handle questions about issues that were important to those small communities. They had to be prepared to address those issues and then explain why their candidate was the best one to tackle it. The better ones were prepared. For example, Julia Louise-Dreyfus lives in California, and called into a radio station on the border of Missouri and Illinois. Not only was she able to address national issues, but she also talked about her time at Northwestern as a student. She brought in that local angle and used it to her advantage.


The bottom line is that you are in control of creating who you want to be as far as how others perceive you. Be authentic and truthful. Believe in what you have to say, make others believe it, too. Your actions, your "image," and what you talk about are all huge parts of that. And the more "sexy" you are, the more successful you will be as a speaker.

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