Trouble getting consistent work out of freelancers? Use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

Know this, freelancers: If you can offer better than “a 70 percent solution” on a speechwriting assignment, you are way ahead of the game with these exec comms pros, who fail to get decent work out of PR agencies, and who wind up paying their freelancers not just to learn about the organization, but to learn the speechwriting craft.

Dow executive communication pro Fletcher Dean has found a tool called “Monroe’s Motivated Sequence” (he credits freelancer Bob Lehrman for alerting him to the method) that gives hired hands help with basic speech structure. Essentially, every speech must grab the audience’s attention, show them a need, satisfy the problem, visualize the solution (or the opposite) and tell them what they need to do.

If you demand that freelancer’s structure every speech that way, Dean says, what you get at least comes in the proper shape.

“Let me get this straight,” said thought-leadership consultant Pete Weissman, who went on to wonder aloud why companies would pay freelancers to learn how to write speeches.

Because we have to, was the consensus. —DM