Pause right before an important point to create suspense and heighten the value of the important point because they need to catch their breath and wait a few seconds for the message.
Grab Attention when You Open Your Presentation
How to open your presentation
Your first words are important because your audience is judging you. They are scrolling through questions in their mind:
Should I listen? How long will this take? Do I trust the person? How painful will this be? When will we get to the relevant part? What does this mean to me?
The purpose of your opening is to grab their attention, establish rapport and set the direction.
Most importantly – grab attention. How might you do that?
Worst Presentation Ever: Part Two: Clear?
We Can’t Hear You. The next flaw was that we didn’t hear or understand many of his words. Why? He mumbled often. Mumbling is a sign of incomplete thoughts and the lack of editing your words for a clear message.
His voice often trailed off at the end of his sentences. That’s a common mistake made when a speaker is thinking about their next thought instead of finishing the current thought. He wore a lapel microphone and often turned his face away from the mic which meant that his voice faded. That’s a mistake made by novice speakers. He didn’t know how to use a microphone.
Orchestrate the first and last impressions of your presentation
Spend more time and effort getting your opening and close right.
When creating your opening and close, consider the possibility that they might only remember these two parts. If that was true, would they have received your intended message? If not, revise your opening and close. The body is the detail, the opening and close provide the motivation and the direction.
Two techniques to build rapport with your audience
Build rapport with your audience by demonstrating how you are like them. Imagine if you could be an audience whisperer.
How to Tame a Hostile Audience: Lessons from Marc Antony
What can you do when facing a hostile audience? How can you speak so they listen? How might you connect with them so they see your side of the message? Those are difficult challenges that we can learn to face by learning from Shakespeare – in particular the speech that Marc Antony gave after the death of Julius Caesar.
Notice the shift in tone of the audience and the techniques used to persuade the audience to change their thinking. Let’s visit the scene and listen to the speech and the changing tide of the audience.
Speak to an Audience of One
Presentation Tips 02: Speak to an Audience of One
Imagine how you might feel when you’re sitting in an audience listening to a speaker and it feels like the speaker is talking directly to you. It seems more like a one-to-one conversation despite the audience present.
Now imagine that you could convey that intimate feeling when you are the speaker.
The secret is to speak as if you’re speaking to one person. Sounds simple yet few speakers have mastered this technique.
Manage and Leverage Your Confidence
It is not about you. It’s about your audience. What did they see, hear, believe and feel? That means that during your presentation you might experience those moments of anxiety – but the audience doesn’t need to know. Confidence starts by becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.
The Chicken Was Better Than the Luncheon Speaker because…
Instead, he parked himself behind the lectern and boringly read the speech that someone wrote for him. Cleary the speech writer wanted to demonstrate his vocabulary by including several ten-dollar words. That doesn’t enhance comprehension, rapport or trust.
Establish Your Credibility and Build Trust
To persuade your audience to act on your message they must believe you. To be believable you must be both credible and earn their trust. If you don’t have credibility, no one will listen. If you have credibility but your audience does not trust you, they will not believe you.