1. Check the speaking coaches’ qualifications

There are a lot of people out there promising to help your personal growth. 

But if you really want to get results, you need to work with someone who has the right qualifications. 

So when you’re researching a communication consultant, make sure you check the qualifications of the people you choose. There is so much noise in the coaching space, especially in public speaking, voice tone development, and soft skill development. You really want to make sure that you receive practical skills from someone who’s qualified; getting an unqualified opinion is, just to say the least, risky. 

So head to their LinkedIn profiles, read their bios, scrutinise that person; it’s imperative because we have a lot of scientific research about what represents communication our listeners enjoy. So you need to work with someone at the level who is across the best up to date evidence so that your message can become more relevant, impactful and have the influence that you’re aiming to achieve in working with a speaking consultant.

 Promise me, you’ll follow that up. 

2. Consider the Speaking Coach and their specific skills carefully

Do some research about the person to determine how this person will help you fill the gaps. For example, if you want to improve your speaking voice, quality and tone, make sure your coach is not a leadership consultant. They need to be someone who understands the scientific principles of a healthy voice, like a voice therapist who works in the corporate setting. 

If you want to work on someone to develop your skills to be assertive, make sure that person has a portfolio that would demonstrate that they really understand environments where that is applicable. They shouldn’t be someone without a degree or qualification in communication theory. There are many good business people and many fantastic salespeople out there who have some natural communication skills. But the ability to train communication skills based on scientific research, away from personal opinion, is specialised. So make sure you get someone who really understands how it all works. 

3. Find some speaking output from the speaking coach your considering.

Are they producing content and material themselves? Do they have a blog, a website? What’s their writing like? What’s their social media like? Is their content consistent and high standard? Have a look at the style and the type of communications they produce. This is a really effective way for you to understand how thorough and detailed they are. You can also see in the public space pretty quickly how passionate that person is about communication. Because we leave our mark. There will be a lot of speaking based material for you to consume. 

You can also ask yourself how skilled is this person at distributing and disseminating information so that people actually enjoy it and get value from it? 

If I want to improve my skills in any area, I want to work with someone who delivers value before I even pass money to them. This is one way you can definitely do your research before you hand out your hard-earned cash to someone to work on such a personal area. 

Speaking coaching work is a high ticket. People are charging thousands for half-day seminars in a group, so be very careful because the industry attracts a lot of phoneys. 

Now, if you’re looking to improve your communication skills over video and choose a speaking coach for whom there is not one video on the internet, they don’t produce a YouTube channel, youtube content. There’s just Zilch, nada, video content. They don’t show up except for their sales page; run a mile. So why would you work with them? What is it that they would know that could take you to the next step if they’re not producing it or having some extensive experience in that themselves?

4. Pay high dollar amounts only if the speaking coach has the skills and qualifications to back it up

We need to talk money. Like any training, you need to be prepared to pay a premium. But only pay a premium if the speaking coach has the skills and experience to back up their fee. You cannot cut corners with your communication, so I’ve invested a lot of time, years, and study in making sure my services work. Hence the high ticket price.

We gotta talk about cheap programmes- they are usually a sign of a speaking coach who lacks experience. Now, this doesn’t mean that they won’t be good in the end or that they are not a nice person, but it’s a low ticket because they’re still learning how to do this. You don’t want to be their guinea pig, you need someone who’s got experience and qualification, and it takes extensive postgraduate training, and professional experience and expertise to build the skills in your own communication as a communication consultant, let alone to understand precisely how to level up your client’s skill levels. So please apply due diligence if you consider a speaking coach and make sure that their price backs up their qualifications, reputation and experience. 

5. Know What you need to Improve and let that drive your search for the right Speaking Coach

If you’re looking for a speaking coach’s programme that’s results delivered, check that the programme offers material on topics that you actually want to learn about. For example, let’s just say you’re freaking out about speaking up in meetings at work, and you find a public speaking coach, and you think, great, they’re going to work with me, they’re going to help me get my voice sorted, and they’ll help me prepare my message. But there’s no reference of how to build your communication participant patient and speak up in meetings at work and answer random questions, you want to see the specifics because if a website or service provider is not able to give you the precise info that you’re looking for, for their service.

You want to work on your communication, stop right there. You want to see in their website, in their blogs, in their sales page, reference to the pain points that you’re searching for. And if those reference points are missing, and you still want to work with them, send them an email, check whether they’re experienced and ask them questions. If they’re a good communicator, they will be so delighted to get a question from you. And that includes me. So always feel free to reach out and ask me a question because I’m so passionate about helping others express their message and get more comfort and confidence because one person at a time globally can make a huge impact. And this is what we’re here for.

Now, a lot of people struggle to know exactly what it is that they’re looking for. So over on the wwwsarageiger.com website, you can find a copy of the communication growth plan for work. This extensive checklist will take you through many skills that you might like to consider building upon. It’s a chance for you to check off areas that you could work on to learn what your core priorities are.