Start strong – 3 gripping ways to open your talk (Includes example opening lines)

Of the countless presentations you’ve likely heard, how many have really made you listen? Often, they can sound and look a lot like all the rest. That’s why, if you’re like me, they tend to leave you cold.

So when you present, you risk seeming just like all the other presenters. In which case, people can start to tune out – fast! That is, unless you start strong.

What’s the best way to start strong? Involve people emotionally! To do that, mention their hopes or fears surrounding your topic – while still being professional of course. That engages your audience because they’re drawn in at a gut level. And, it’s so different from the norm!

“We need audiences to feel first, and then to think.”
Helio Fred Garcia in Fast Company

Mention their hopes or fears…

I recommend 3 neat ways you can start strong when you present. Choose any 1 of them to open your talk:

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Engage people – give a personal talk [PACE principles, Part 1]

If you’ve seen the previous post in this PACE principles series, you’ll know I showed how you can start to engage an audience before you even speak.

To do that, you can make your talk’s title meet these 4 criteria, so it’s:

• P   Personal
• A   Actionable
• C   Conversational
• E   Emotional

In this post, you’ll see how to make your whole talk personal – to keep people engaged.

By that I mean using your content to connect with each person in your audience. As people are generally most interested in themselves, one of the best ways you can connect with your audience is to show clearly that you’re focused on them. After you do that, another great way to connect with and therefore engage people is to use genuine emotion.

So, how can you do those things to make your whole talk personal? Well for a start, try these 4 tips, which are arranged roughly from most to least audience-centred:

How not to kill your audience’s engagement stone dead [Welcome to the PACE principles]

Do you think you’d have bothered reading this post if I’d called it this instead:

“Audience engagement and contemporary presentation materials”

Not likely!

This post’s title deliberately uses 4 “keys” to engage you (in just the first 9 words). For a moment, look at the post’s title again. Can you guess what the 4 keys might be? (You probably guessed that their initials make up the acronym PACE.) Well, read on to see how many of the keys you spotted!

(And, for a very pleasant change from so many posts about presenting, this post has nothing to do with bullet points – despite the bullets in the photo above!)