Crafting the Perfect Custom Speech for a Keynote Event

Seeking professional help in speech writing can transform your ideas into a compelling narrative that will help you to connect authentically and confidently with your listeners. 406 Strategic Communications offers expert assistance to ensure your speech is not only memorable but also impactful. Whether you're delivering a motivational talk, addressing a corporate gathering, or sharing your story at a conference, here’s how we can help:

Basic Speech Writing and Development Package

The basic speech writing and development package from 406 Strategic Communications comes with six, one-hour sessions. During these sessions, we will work together to craft the perfect speech. We often find that professional speakers are full of great ideas and stories but the struggle is in crafting them into a coherent, flowing speech that meets the time constraints of a keynote. Here’s a breakdown of how we’ll help craft your speech through the six sessions:

Hearing the Vision

We want to hear all about it! Who are you speaking for? What do you know about the audience? What are the speech parameters and the client’s goals for your speech? Have you given speeches like this in the past? Answering these questions will help us get on the right track for creating the perfect speech. If there is left over time at the end of the session, we will tack it onto our brainstorming session for next time! 

Brainstorm Session

In this session, get out all your ideas, thoughts, and stories you’ve been considering for your speech! At this stage, things don’t have to look pretty. By the end of the session, our goal is to have sorted through all the stories and ideas with you and chosen which ones will work best within the parameters for this specific speech. Your homework is to flesh out the stories we determined would go in the speech so you are ready for our next session, speech formation! 

Speech Formation Session

Now all your ideas are on paper, it’s time to put them in a logical order! In this session we will begin the task of weaving these stories into a well organized speech. We may pick up a few new stories along the way, or drop a few ideas. By the end of the session, we should have a clear beginning, middle, and end to your speech. Before we meet again, practice your speech at least a few times in your head or out loud and get a feel for how it sounds and if there are any areas that feel unnatural or disrupt the speech’s general flow.  

Rough Draft Speech Run-Through

Let’s hear it! In this session, we’ll jump right in. You’ll give your speech and we’ll be your audience. While you speak, we’ll take detailed notes on not only speech content but your delivery style, confidence, non-verbal communication and more. If there is time at the end, we’ll discuss notes together. If not, your task before the next session is to review these notes and implement the ones that speak to you in your continued run-throughs. 

Working Out the Kinks

Your speech is almost there! In this session, we can either go through individual parts of the speech that you have concerns about or do another full run-through. Our goal by the end of the session is for you to feel confident in your speech and speaking. You still may need to do a few more run-throughs after the session but at this point— you should feel just about ready to get up in front of your audience! 

Final Draft Speech Run-Through

This time, give your speech just as you plan to in front of the live audience. This means bringing in props, being full of passion, and having as few mistakes as possible. At the end, we’ll do a debrief and go over any final concerns you may have before the big day!  

Premium Speech Writing and Development Package

The premium speech writing and development package offers everything you’ll find in the basic package, with some important extras! In this package, you’ll also receive two hours of research assistance, two hours of assistance individualizing the speech for the specific client, and up to 500 words of promotional and informational material you can use to market this speech. We highly recommend this package if you are looking to tailor an evergreen speech to a specific client. Let’s take a look at each of these extras to see why:

Research Assistance

Bolster the stories from your speech with interesting facts that add to your credibility! We recommend you focus on the big picture and let us fact check the details. This keeps you out of the weeds and focused on what’s most important — practicing to give your most impactful speech yet! During our brainstorming session, we’ll come up with some research topics we can dive further into so we can give you relevant facts, statistics, and quotes to choose from for your speech.

Individualizing Your Speech

A great way to gain rapport with a client is to show you understand what they do in your speech. One of the best ways to do this is by referencing specific events, people, or statistics in their industry. Facts like these can easily be added to an evergreen or master speech (a speech you may use again with other clients) to make it special. Not sure what information to add and where to add it to your current speech? That’s where we come in. We’ll devote two hours to finding this information and adding it to your speech. Alternatively, if you would like to interview someone from the industry for insights, you can record it and we will parse through the interview to find quotes from them you can add to your speech!

Promotional Material

Does your client require you to write an introduction to your speech, objectives, learning outcomes, abstract or a general description? Leave it to 406 Strategic Communications! We’ll write up to 500 words of content to skillfully meet all of these requirements. If this isn’t required for the speech you are giving but you would like to use the speech we crafted as an evergreen or master speech in the future, we recommend having all these written materials anyway. They will make the process of submitting proposals for future events and keynotes smoother. 

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