I’m going to serve you up a piece of pie this month.  But not a tasty morsel of apple or banana cream – a PIE that will be a delicious speech for your audience to appreciate.  (and in this case, in a hurry)

   You’ve been asked to give a speech TOMORROW about the progress of your company and you think,   “No problem, I can talk about this for ages”. Which I’m sure you can and good for you! What if you need to present to a group who is going to invest in your company? Then the stakes are just a bit higher. You need to be really prepared. And you’re rushed. You only have a little bit of time to get this together. That is when you start thinking about PIE. PIE is an acronym for focusing on three important elements of your speech:

Point  –  Illustration  – Explanation

P: The point is your thesis. It is why you are speaking to the audience. In an essay, your main point usually occurs in the first paragraph and is written in one sentence. But you’re not writing an essay, you’re writing a speech.  So before your get into the main point, you need to hook your audience. You know, something that will catch their interest and make them want more. If you are giving the speech about your company’s progress, you could show a picture of the original building, an anecdote of how the founder worked weekends to make sure that deadlines were met or even a statistic from the number of employees you had when the company first began compared to how many are working there now. 

Now, you can get to the main point:

In this case your main point could read: “Through the years, we have become one of the most successful companies in our field.”  Simple and right to the point.

I: Now get onto the “I” of PIE, illustrating what you mean. Why are you the most successful? What has your company done to achieve success? Why should investors give you money? Why should the audience agree that your company is the best for the job?

E: Finish up with the explanation: this is where you bring in your own opinion. You analyze the facts that you just illustrated. You are engaging in the argument that your company is best. 

Conclusion: Now that you’ve given your speech, end it with a bang. It is the finale, like the desert at the end of a meal.  Delicious!