The average person speaks about 25,000 words during the course of one day. Think about it, 25,000 words! How many of those words are spoken at work every day? Literally thousands.

With all those spoken words, can you imagine the incredible impact your speech has on others' opinions of you?

Remember, you can't outsource your mouth!

Professionals like you engage in public speaking every single day. Even when you're not on a stage with a microphone, you unconsciously rely on your public speaking skills to help you motivate your team, build support, or close a sale. Are closing sales, motivating teammates, and getting your ideas approved top priorities for you?

Perfecting the way you speak can make you better at all of these. And that means higher earnings, better promotions, and more attractive job offers. Your reputation rides on your "stage presence," which includes the little stage around the water cooler.

But the truth is, there is much more to presentation skills than vocabulary building and articulate speech. If you only rely on your “expertise”, you are taking a major risk! Without conveying the intended tone and backing that up with strong body language, look out.

It would be like sitting on a three legged stool only knowing for sure that one leg is strong and hoping the other two are.

Do you want to risk falling off the weak stool?

In fact, when any of the elements of your “three legged stool” - the communication factors- are not in alignment, you put your credibility at risk.

And if you don’t have credibility with your audience, forget it – you’re done.

The audience will use your expertise last when they assess credibility – it gets a measly 7%.

Believe it or not, your tone of voice gets 38% - more than 5 times more than your expertise.

And the biggest piece they pay attention to is body language - that's 55%.  That's how important body language is.  It's 55% of your credibility, and credibility is 100% of the game.

But there is good news: I can teach you to master your word choice, tone of voice, and body language simultaneously. The payoff is tremendous.

Once you've polished these skills, people will see you as more knowledgeable, more confident, and more credible.

Use punctuation when you speak - just like when you read. Make your questions sound like questions and your emphatic statements really sound emphatic. Here's how:

1. Pause and stop talking when you end your sentences.
2. Vary your voice's tone. If you have a question, be sure it sounds like a question.
3. Use energy to emphasize important points.

If you don't stop talking, your audience may indeed start to hear you as "white noise". This again is another way you give them permission to disconnect and start playing with their Blackberry. So, practice ending your sentences and stop talking once in a while. The sound of silence often causes people to listen and focus.