Ed McMahon on Speaking and Selling

Ed McMahon, Tonight Show Emcee, star of hundreds of TV and radio commercials, pitchman, Hollywood movie star – has a new book out! And it’s a real winner. In this exclusive interview with PSP, Ed shares some of the highlights from his new book How To Master the Art of Public Speaking. He also tells stories that show his warmth, wit, and wry humor. Ed McMahon – a superachiever, superperformer, and superspeaker – regards himself first, last and always as a salesman. What higher praise could there be for the profession of selling?

PSP: Your new book,How To Master The Art of Public Speaking, has just been released. How do you feel about it?

Ed McMahon: I love the book. I’m very pleased with the way it turned out.

PSP: I’ve read it and what struck me was that your book gives excellent advice on what not to do and what not to say when making a speech.

Ed McMahon: Well, you know my original was What To Leave Out Of Your Next After Dinner Speech. But they didn’t go for that – they thought it was too cute.

PSP: Well I think what to leave out is really an art. Speaking of refining, how many pages was your original manuscript?

Ed McMahon: Well it was at least twice what it is. The book now has 123 pages, but I’m sure it was close to 300 pages originally. It’s very similar to making a speech. All good speeches have to be short and I couldn’t very well write a long book about writing short speeches that come to the point. It’s like Woodrow Wilson’s old line when he apologizes and says, “I would have written a shorter letter but I didn’t have time.”

PSP: What techniques do you recommend for overcoming stage fright?

Ed McMahon: Now this may sound crazy, but I recommend going down to a street corner and making a speech to strangers. Just force yourself to do it. That sounds weird, but if you can do it there, you can begin to overcome your fear of speaking. The other thing I suggest is to use your stage fright for energy. In the book, I tell about walking onto a Las Vegas stage one night and being very frightened. But I turned that fear into energy for the performance. I supercharged it with the fright and turned it into energy. The last thing to remember is that whatever audience you are speaking to, they came to hear what you have to say. So you really have no need to be frightened by them.

PSP: Is there a way to train yourself to do that?

Ed McMahon: Tape record yourself in front of a video camera and look at yourself and you’ll realize that you’re really not as frightened as you think you are. It feels worse than it looks.

PSP: Do you remember the last time you experienced stage fright?

Ed McMahon: Yes, when I opened on Broadway to replace Alan King in The Impossible Years. It was many years ago but walking out on a Broadway stage in a play and knowing you had a whole evening ahead of you where you couldn’t miss a line or a cue – that was a heavy weight to carry – I had a lot of stage fright. Again, I turned it into my performance.

PSP: It sounds like what you’re saying is that even when a person is very experienced and skilled and has reached the top, he or she still may have the same emotion, but you have more skills to translate that emotion into positive energy.

Ed McMahon: Anytime you go into a new situation, let’s say I walk onto a movie set to do a movie with Jane Fonda and George Segal – Well I have a little stage fright. I’m walking into where the heavyweights perform. But I’ve learned how to channel that into energy.

PSP: What is the fear?

Ed McMahon: The fear is of failing or looking ridiculous or messing up your lines or not saying things right – stumbling.

PSP: Some speakers have a problem with thinking of new ideas when they are out on stage and they make the mistake of sharing those ideas with the audience. They don’t stick to the main theme. Have you ever seen that happen?

Ed McMahon: Sure. It’s very easy to do that. That’s why cutting back to the bare minimum is so important. That’s the way you get rid of a lot of the junk.

PSP: If you do your homework, you can stay in focus much easier.

Ed McMahon: That’s right.

PSP: What do you think are the benefits are for salespeople giving public speeches?

Ed McMahon: Well, every sales presentation is really a speech. All the rules that apply to making a good speech apply to making a good sales pitch. You don’t want your audience’s minds to wander. You want to get right to the point an be as succinct as possible. You want to prove to them that there was a reason for them to give you their time. The best way to prove that is to give them a good presentation which is very similar to a good speech.

PSP: In the book you say that the ideal length for an after dinner speech is about 1,000 seconds – a little over 16 minutes.

Ed McMahon: Yes.

PSP: How do you prepare yourself for that so you don’t bore the audience?

Ed McMahon: First you have to have an opening and a closing. The closing has to be a summation of what you have stressed in the body of the speech. The opening should be a suggestion of what you’re going to be stressing. The three great rules of a great speech are 1) tell them what you’re going to tell them, 2) tell them, and 3) tell them what you told them. And I say, 1) have something to say, 2) say it, and 3) sit down when you’re finished. Most people don’t do those three very simple things. But the rules are always the same.

PSP: Every night you warm up the audience on the Tonight Show before Johnny Carson comes out. What is the secret for a good warmup?

Ed McMahon: The secret is to take 500 people who have come from different parts of the country and very different backgrounds and to weave them into a solid mass. What I like to think of it as is a crazy quilt – a whole bunch of different patterns but you put them all together and you’ve got a quilt. Or a necklace – a whole string of 500 different pearls that I string together and then hand to Johnny. I get them all to focus on me and I get some laughs out of them so they’re not fearful of laughing in that strange studio. Once I’ve done that and I’ve gotten them all focused on me and laughing, I turn that focus and laughter over to Johnny.

PSP: Do you still practice when you give a speech?

Ed McMahon: I don’t because I’ve got it down to where I don’t have to. But if I were called on to make a speech at a college, I would really work hard and I would practice.

PSP: You write in the book that you will always think of yourself first and always as a salesman. What is it about selling that you like?

Ed McMahon: Well I love the idea of being able to turn persuasion into success. What’s great about selling is the tangible reward. We used to have a thing when I was selling the vegetable slicer on the boardwalk in Atlantic City that we called “turning the tip.” You would entertain them, you would present your item to the people and then there was a special moment when you would do what we called “the tip with the audience – turning the tip” – you turned them into buyers. That’s a thrilling moment. I remember when I sold stainless steel cookware door to door in Washington. After you made your presentation and everything was laid out on the floor, that magic moment came when you said, “Now, if you were to buy this equipment, how would you be purchasing it?” And you’re turning the tip and making that sale and you get a check in your hand for $238. That’s the most rewarding feeling you could possibly have.

PSP: You used the alternative close – the “which form of payment would you prefer?”

Ed McMahon: Right. The same thing applies to speaking in front of a group. Don’t give them too much to remember. Narrow their choices and focus their attention on just the bare minimum.

PSP: You say in your book that when you communicate a warm emotion rather than cold facts you will be remembered longer. How can you do that?

Ed McMahon: One of the ways is to use a metaphor that anyone can understand. I like to say, “It was as good as a hot dog at the ball park.” Almost anyone knows what that tasted like and how satisfying that was. If you use colorful language that conveys emotion, with metaphors that are readily available to anyone’s mind, or that they can hear, smell, taste, or feel, they see a picture and that evokes an emotion in them. Telling stories can do that also.

PSP: What’s the formula for telling a good story?

Ed McMahon: First you have to know the story cold. There’s nothing worse than a storyteller who gets to the middle of the story and says, “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, the guy has a duck on his head.” You’ve got to prune your story so you don’t have any extraneous thoughts or words that are going to complicate the situation. And the story has to go to a logical conclusion. Most funny stories lead you down a pathway – you think you’re going to go straight and the punchline trips you up. It moves you off on a tangent. That’s what makes you laugh.

PSP: How do you prune or polish a speech?

Ed McMahon: Everything has to carry its own weight. Everything has to count. Look at the speech. If you start using references where three would do, don’t use five. Anything you can get rid of, chop it out – prune it off. I use several good examples of where the clutter of words confuses the listener. Remember, the listener has to hear it and absorb it and digest it all at the same time. You can’t expect the listener to go back and make sense out of your speech. Take out everything that interferes with your one clear single idea. Throw it out. Be ruthless. It hurts sometimes to cut away what you have written that you think is a gem.

PSP: What was the last speech you gave?

Ed McMahon: I did a speech on basic selling for one of my sponsors. Now, I have a lot of material but I held the speech down to sixteen or so minutes. I spoke at my son’s graduation and cut that down to seventeen minutes from thirty, which was what it was when I first thought it was finished – before I trimmed it down.

PSP: You seem to have developed the attitude that as a salesman and a speaker you are really a public servant. How do you develop that attitude?

Ed McMahon: You start from the premise that you are fulfilling a need – or at least a perceived need. You are providing the avenue for them to get to that. As far as a speech is concerned, the audience has contributed their time and gathered in an assembly hall and they are giving you twenty minutes of their time. It’s part of the human condition. You are not taking anything from them – you are giving to them and fulfilling a need they have expressed. Most good relationships are based on giving.

PSP: How should a speaker prepare for a presentation?

Ed McMahon: Start out with an abundance of material, and then cut it to the bone. Hone it down.

PSP: How do you psyche yourself up before giving a talk?

Ed McMahon: You have to be able to see the finished product. When I was going on in Las Vegas what I saw in my mind was my walking out on that stage and being successful. You repeat to yourself, “I’m going to walk out and I’m going to look good.” I was on a diet at that time so I would be thin on-stage, and I kept telling myself that I was going to look thin and successful up on that stage.

PSP: How far in advance did you do that psyching up?

Ed McMahon: I started when I first began to put together my act in little clubs all over the country. In clubs that you never heard of where I wasn’t exposing myself to many people at any one time. I worked myself up to the important dates but right from the beginning, I saw myself as successful on the stage.

PSP: How long was your act?

Ed McMahon: I had two. When I was opening for someone else, I had a thirty minute act, and when I was the main attraction, I had an hour act. It took a couple of years to get those together.

PSP: How long do you recommend a speaker should prepare for a talk?

Ed McMahon: You should give yourself a few months to prepare a speech. A lot of people wait till the last minute. They may give themselves three months but they don’t use it. Once you hang up the phone on an agreement to make a speech, you should start working right then.

PSP: And how do you prepare?

Ed McMahon: Develop an idea file for the speech. Break the speech down into four or five parts. And then, work on it one-half hour every day.

PSP: How do you avoid monotony in a speech?

Ed McMahon: Don’t write it out word for word. Write out the essence of it. When you’re psyching yourself up make sure you tell yourself that you’re going to enjoy doing this. Make eye contact with the audience so you see a reaction when you make a point or tell a story. If you see someone in the audience who is really soaking up your every word, that gives you energy and positive feedback.

PSP: How should you end a speech?

Ed McMahon: Leave out the “thank you” at the end. An example of that is Patrick Henry’s famous speech. He ended with “Give me liberty or give me death.” Now imagine if he had then said “thank you” and sat down. End on a high note or a strong point and then sit down. You can always stand up again and say “thank you” when you take an extra bow.

PSP: How do you develop and use humor skillfully?

Ed McMahon: That’s tough. If you don’t have that ability, don’t bother with it. You’re there to give the audience information. They didn’t ask you to come there as a comic. Your speech first should inform. If you can inform and entertain, then you’ve got yourself a winner. But if you can’t, don’t bother with humor. But if you do have the basic story telling skills, then the best way to get good at it is to tell stories at parties or other gatherings where you have a comfortable setting and people you are comfortable with. As you develop that ability, it will come naturally when you make a speech. Next, the story or joke in the speech should have some relevance to your subject matter. The mandatory “joke” is distracting and takes time from the important material.

PSP: How do you handle hecklers?

Ed McMahon: That’s an art all to itself. The best way is to throw the focus back on them. I remember when I was in college in Washington, I used to take variety shows out to all the hospitals to entertain the patients. During one of these, I was in a veterans psychiatric hospital – soldiers who had come back with shell shock and all kinds of psychiatric problems – and I was on stage reading from a piece of printed paper. And suddenly a very menacing looking fellow walked up on-stage and came over and stood right next to me. All the nurses and orderlies were very nervous that something might happen, and I said to this fellow, “Oh, I’m glad you came up, sir. Hold this piece of paper for me would you please?” And he held the paper and I did the rest of my routine and everyone got a big laugh and he enjoyed it, too. He got a big hand and went back to his seat.

PSP: What was the most meaningful speech you ever heard – the one that meant the most to you?

Ed McMahon: John Kennedy’s inaugural address. That stuck with me a long time.

PSP: What’s the best end for a speech?

Ed McMahon: When the people are jumping with applause and standing on their feet because they want more.

PSP: Applause!!