Presentation Skills: Opening your presentation with impact

Public Speaking and Presentation skills: How to 'Grab 'em by the throat' and give a compelling reason to listen to you

Created by: Nick Skellon
Presentation Skills Coach

What Will I Learn?

• How to open a business presentation with 7 powerful, different, memorable ways so that they 'grab the audience by the throat' and give them a compelling reason to listen to the rest of the presentation so that they give the next 15, 20 or 30 minutes of their lives because they WANT to, not because they feel they HAVE to.
• Why the Opening is the most important step of any presentation or speech
• The 6 boring, low-impact, instantly forgettable openings most speakers use, and why they should be avoided like the plague (WARNING: be prepared to be embarrassed - you probably use at least 4 of these yourself!)
• How to open with humour (a joke, cartoon, funny anecdote or apocryphal story) in a way that's both businesslike and professional.
• How to open with a story or anecdote in a way that has your audience hanging on every word.
• How to open by personalising your opening, either to the date or the location (country, state, city or even building!)
• How to open using a 'Fascinating Fact': something genuinely interesting or intriguing that at first glance has nothing to do with your presentation topic - UNTIL you reveal the hidden link.
• How to open with a 'Startling Statistic': a big number or piece of data from the body of your presentation that when used upfront will make the audience sit up and pay attention.
• How to open with a quotation. Quotations are ubiquitous nowadays because of social media, but here you'll learn how to use them properly; how to select them, how to edit and adapt them, how to use images to give them impact and several different ways to deliver them.
• How to open using 'Priming' (often compared to a 'Jedi mind trick' but it's based on serious neuroscientific research!)

Requirements

• An ability to make basic presentations.
• The desire to take their presenting skills to the next level and become an interesting, impactful, memorable speaker

Target audience

• People who regularly make business presentations and are looking to take their skills to the next level and become an interesting, impactful, MEMORABLE speaker
• People with the desire to stand out from the crowd and NOT open like 95% of boring, instantly forgettable presenters