Episode #265: Opening Our Presentation (Part Two)

Today we are going to look at Part Two of Opening our speech. In the last episode we used an analogy, the startling statement and starting with some good news. We also covered the dos and don’ts of how to use questions with the audience. Here are two more openings we can apply to our talks - storytelling and using compliments.

Start with an incident

Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools in the speaker’s toolkit. Every day we are bombarded with stories. It could be dramas on television, novels we are reading, movies we are watching and even the news programmes. When we were children our parents read stories to us at bedtime and so we are incredibly open to stories, in a way we are not open to hearing opinions or statements.

Stories do not have to be long. Today, with an abundance of impatience, massive distraction everywhere and people’s ever decreasing micro concentration spans, the opportunity to tell a long story in business is gone. We can tell a short story and still take our audience with us employing their mind’s eye to be with us in the location, in the season, with the people and absorbed with the drama of the situation. Let’s look at some varieties of stories we can employ for a business context.

1. Personal experience. This is the most powerful story because it is real life. We love to learn from the successes and even better, the failures of others. Which speech opening would grab your attention more, ”Let me tell you how I made my first ten million dollars” or “Let me tell you how I lost my first ten million dollars”?

I think we would all want to hear how I lost the ten million, because that sounds more dramatic and we can learn from other’s mistakes. Relating corporate victory after victory and outlining the perfect coalition of circumstances to explain what a triumph it has been for our organization is reeking of propaganda and our audience cannot identify with what we are saying.

Telling them war stories of failure and redemption tend to work extremely well, because in exposing our failures, we have shown we are like everyone else and the audience can more easily identify with us.

2. Third Party. We have a limited number of personal experiences to draw on, but we have unlimited experiences available, if we include those of others. Sometimes we prefer to use a third party, if we need some strong evidence or credibility.

We are exposed to third party stories all of the time, but we let them slip away. It may be something we saw on the news, or in documentaries or we read in magazines or in biographies. We come across a great story, but we just move on without thinking, “well that will be a great story for a talk, let me capture that and store it away for a future speech”. We should be trawling through whatever we are reading with a part of our brain looking for speech material and having a good system to be able to access it easily at a future point.

3. When we add our personal experiences, the experiences of others and then the entire history of experiences in the world throughout history, we have an unbelievable resource available to us to draw upon. There is an avalanche of material coming to us down through the ages, where people have faced similar situations to what we are facing today. We are often accessing this information, but not capturing it. We should capture it for our talks.

Pay a compliment

1. We can relate our topic to all of the people in the room in the audience. For example, “Have you heard that most people are scared of public speaking? This is only because they have not received any training. No one is born a gifted speaker, it is a learnt skill. If you get the training, then your fear of public speaking will disappear completely”. Every person has been scared of public speaking at one time or another, so they can immediately bond with us when we bring it up. They will be all ears to hear what we have to say on the subject

2. We relate our topic to the broader organisation, rather than to individuals. For example, “Your organisation has such a phenomenal reputation for excellence. Let me tell you why”. When you hear that opening, you are very interested to hear what comes next, because you like compliments and you are also keen to make sure what the speaker says is accurate.

3. We can relate what we are saying to one person. For example, “I was chatting with Tanaka san before we started and she made a very insightful comment”. Everyone will want to know what Tanaka san said and Tanaka san will be delighted with the recognition.

The speaker first impression is vital. We have to plan to make it a success and there are many tools available to us. Try the tools I have included in Parts One and Two of how to open your talk. Remember public speaking has never had this degree of difficulty ever in history. The internet is a click away and people will leave us in a heartbeat, if what we say doesn’t sound interesting or valuable. The way they determine if it is worth listening to, is from how we start. We must get the design right or our messages will not transmit to the audience and if that is the case, we have missed a great opportunity to build our personal and professional brands.

Find out how we can become better storytellers to persuade our audiences!