Engage Your Audience With an Effective Opening

Welcome to your third edition of presentability matters. Each month, we provide you with tips to increase the impact of your speaking opportunities.

Whether you’re speaking one to one, one to an important few or one to many, the opening of your presentation sets the scene for your speech. It is vital to use it wisely to gain your audience’s attention from the outset and truly engage them from the beginning. That is why effective openings are the topic of our feature article this month.

We’d like to use this opportunity to welcome Greg Kennedy to the presentability team. Greg’s speaking and training experiences add an exciting dimension to our team.

You’ll also find out more about our upcoming presentability programs, in-house solutions, advisory services and coaching later on.

Engage your audience with an effective opening

Give your audience an incentive to tune into your speech.

Presentation openings are our secret weapon for increasing our level of audience engagement.

Should we rely on pot luck to get it right? We could do, but to consistently achieve outstanding presentability we need to unpack the secrets of effective openings.

Franklin D Roosevelt, elected US President in 1932, pledged a ‘New Deal’ for his people after the national banking system collapsed in 1933. His speech became famous for the phrase ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’.

Here is the second paragraph of his speech; what do you think it sets out to do and how does he achieve it?

This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

He uses the gravity of the situation to encourage and prepare the listener for ideas and actions that require meaningful change. He then paints a picture of the nation returning to health as the reward. It would lure the audience in, begging the question: how can this be done?

We don’t for one minute suggest that the presentations we do in our day-to-day work and community lives will have as much at stake, nor do we need to be adding theatrical flourishes into the openings of our business meetings, but we can use them to intrigue, command and captivate our audiences from the outset.

Crafting Your Opening For Consistent Results

You may have found that the same speech delivered to different audiences gets variable results. Is this an issue for the audience or us?

More often than not, it is an issue for us. We may not be creating the right environment for gaining attention. Here is a set of questions you can ask yourself when preparing your openings:

1. What does my audience care about?
2. What issues do they deal with and how can I add value to them, even if it involves simply drawing on parallel experiences?
3. How can I pique their interest from the outset, by delivering a teaser of something further to come?

Remember: the opening is not about you, it is about them. It doesn’t matter if you are hosting a client event, presenting at a conference or updating the finance department on your team’s expenditure plans, the audience needs a WIIFM hook – What’s In It For Me?

An attendee at one of our recent courses was a service provider to an internal business development team. He had developed a range of materials to help the BDMs and their sales force deal with client queries themselves, instead of constantly referring inquiries to him.

How could he craft an ‘opening’ to ensure that his message got through? The key lies in appealing to their motivations - increasing sales in less time. Expending excess time on client servicing gets in the way of those motivations

The opening to his presentation could be something along the lines of:

It’s great to have the opportunity to present to you because we’re concerned that you have to deal with a broad range of client queries at the expense of building your sales. We have developed some powerful tools that will dramatically cut down the time you will need to spend in this area.

By aligning his opening with outcomes that his audience are interested in – without giving away the whole solution – they are likely to be curious, attentive and want to know more.

Your presentation opening could be the difference between the audience switching on and switching off. Which do you choose?

Upcoming courses and events

The presentability programs provide a full range of training to give you and your team even greater impact and results from the boardroom to the training room, sales pitches, and at conference and event presentations.

Our public programs are currently run in Sydney’s CBD and we do in-house training tailored exclusively for your organisation in all locations on demand.

Our next public program is on Tuesday September 18.

Numbers are limited for greater learning and places have already been taken.

Click here for more about the course, including a special earlybird offer saving you 40% for a limited time.

Perhaps a tailored in-house program is more in line with your needs? Click here to visit the full suite of capabilities.

We trust you found some valuable tips in this edition and we would be more than happy for you to forward it on to friends and colleagues.

We love getting your feedback so that we can address your burning questions in future editions.

Until next time, keep improving your presentability.

Phil Preston and Michael Neaylon
On behalf of the presentability team
www.presentability.com.au
support@presentability.com.au