You’re mad at yourself. Your Toastmasters contest speech flew through the first two rounds without much effort. You figured you were going to sail on through the Division contest, too. You weren’t perfect - you had a few flubs, but nothing too bad. And watching the other schmucks give their speeches, you were still the best. Until the last speaker. You’ve seen the guy before and he was never any good. Until tonight. Tonight he was straight out fantastic. Your speech may have had a chance against him had it been perfectly delivered, but it wasn’t and you lost.

What went wrong? The winner practiced and the “you” didn’t. In weaker clubs and even some areas you may be able to coast through on skill alone, but at some point you’ll need some hard-core practice since your competition will be so fierce.

Let’s look at two examples of this, both from the Humorous Speech Contest. In 2004 I made it to Division with “How I Nominated Myself for the Nobel Peace Prize,” an extremely tacky speech that included jokes (plural) about Mother Theresa. For my practice, I literally just jotted down notes on the back of an envelope and glanced at it but did nothing beyond that. The guy I was up against at Division was a 15 year TM veteran who got past Area with a weak speech, rewrote it for the next level, threw every trick he knew into it, and creamed me. It’s the worst feeling sitting helpless in the audience when you know you have a winner but knowing it’s not enough. (I practiced like crazy and won the District Evaluation contest the next spring because I was still so angry over this experience.)

In comparison is Leo N. (previously Leo D., but he changed his name, another long story). Leo is the obsessive Russian immigrant who had an OK speech at the club level for the 2007 Humorous contest. Then he reworked it at the Area, throwing in more low brow ethnic humor at my urging. Then he reworked it again at Division and District, which culminated in him singing and dancing. We’re talking someone staying up until 2 in the morning to work on their speech.

The International Speech Contest is much harder than the Humorous Speech contest. The person who wins the world-wide contest quits their job and makes six figures for life (or so I’ve been told), whereas the Humorous winner gets nothing but a plaque and bragging rights. A lot of this gets down to how bad do you want it?

Practice is more than just talking in front of the mirror. You need feedback from others. My club has its contests two weeks prior to the Area. The winner is given feedback the day they win and they rework their speech for the next week, where they give it to the club again. We reserve about 10-15 minutes for a round robin evaluation, which is very detailed since we know what they’ll be up against. We also send winners to other clubs to practice, where they get a whole different set of eyes. And of course we go cheer on our champion in the Area/Division/District, where we provide additional support and evaluation.

The best speakers, like Leo, rework their speeches as they move up. There was a good article in the TM Magazine a few months ago about your gestures and vocal variety needing to be different at different levels of the contest since the audiences won’t be the same size. Leo’s singing and dancing would’ve overwhelmed a small room the club contest was in but not an audience of 300. You also should be reworking content at each stage, ruthlessly cutting anything that’s not working, and again you need the advice of others as you tinker with your talk. A mentor or mentors are also helpful.

Another good way to practice is by watching other Toastmaster contest speeches. It’s good first because it can be scary to see just how good other people are. My “Nobel Peace Prize” speech would’ve been much better polished had I known what I was up against. Watching others teaches the tricks better speakers use and shows what judges tend to like. In high population centers like Seattle you’re in luck since there’s so much going on during contest season you can just go yourself. Even if you’re in the middle of nowhere, YouTube has some good samples.

This is where being in a good club is a benefit for the long-term success in the contest. Sure, if you’re in a club with lousy speakers you can make it out to Area more easily. But your club may not have the evaluating firepower to help you take it to the next level.

It all kind of gets down to one thing. How badly do you want it?