Steemit Philippines Community Week Contest | My first professional speech at a seminar | #Club75

It was at the beginning of my career as a sales engineer for a multinational, in collaboration with Germany and Switzerland, manufacturing welding equipment, and special electrodes, representing a territory comprising two big states. I had just returned from doing my onsite training in a distant country and it was my first posting.

  
I am very proud to say that our company planned a seminar to further expand the business based on my performance and planned a seminar. Incidentally, the area I was representing for the last six months was a low-return area for our company’s products despite having enough potential for our products, but maybe our competitors L&T were doing better.

It was morale-boosting news for me, and I was thrilled. But being a good salesperson is one thing, and being an orator is quite another. I was a good sales engineer with a lot of talent as a marketing professional and convincing customers. But standing on stage in public and giving a speech was bothering me.

Our company invited all the distributors, dealers, and customers, mainly the big industrial houses of that region where I was posted. I was in charge of initial arrangements, including one of the best hotels with seminar facilities in the city. I had to take care of everything, including facilities for our guests, which I did with the help of my support staff.

Then the seminar day came, and it brought with it the responsibility and anxiety that were taking over my nerves. Our general manager, the seminar manager, and other managers had already arrived the previous night, and they were staying in the same hotel where the conference was scheduled.

The support of my seminar manager was crucial

The seminar hall was nearly full with almost 1,200 top-notch people from various industries in the area. The stage was set, the conference began, and the hotel staff served the guests as my seniors spoke one after the other and took their seats.

I was the junior-most and my number to speak was at the end, but trust me, my legs were shaking when I heard my name from the seminar manager. I approached the dice and took the mic.

How I wished someone had said, "Hey, enough of the speeches; time for lunch." But no, I was not that lucky.

My Legs were shaking

My legs were shaking at the thought of going to the stage and speaking in front of hundreds of well-known industrialists, senior engineers, and business tycoons who were present in large numbers.

Fortunately, my seminar manager was there right beside me to encourage me. I managed and delivered my speech that lasted for 6-7 minutes. If you ask me now, I don’t know how I did it, but I realized I was done with the job when I heard the loud cheering and clapping from the crowd.

I believe a person who has gone through this experience of delivering a speech on the stage for the first time would understand this.

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By the way, I knew more than half of the crowd as I had been meeting them during my visits to their companies for business-related meetings for a little over six months, but I could not look even at them. Despite spending 4-5 days rehearsing and revising the entire speech, I now don’t even remember what I said, and I was like, "Was this cheering for me and my speech?"

Note1- This seminar took place before the digital cameras arrived and the black & white photos I have of this seminar are not worth posting.

Note2- My first experience in Steemit Philippines .👍🎉