Presentation Training Skills

Presentations Skills Training Courses

Presentations training courses are provided across the United States and Canada. Participants have three options to attend and participate in our presentation training. Presentations are delivered via public open enrollment courses in all major metropolitan areas and are also available to be delivered on-site via private courses. The 3rd option is to attend Online Webinar Presentations Skills Workshops. Our face to face presentation training courses can be provided as off-the-shelf sessions, ready to be delivered to a diverse audience or can be customized to provide a tailored and personalized presentation training approach based on client needs. All presentations courses are limited to a maximum of twelve participants so as to increase presentation course effectiveness and provide the individual level of face to face or online coaching and interaction that is associated with the Presentations Training Skills Center.

For more information on our presentations skills training courses please contact us.

Four Presentation Courses Tools for Opening Your Presentation - Get Your Audience to Listen!

Your audience is looking for you to give them a reason to listen to your presentation. Everyone has busy lives, and, as your audiences sits in front of you they have plenty of things, other than your presentation to think about. Whether it be an email that needs to be sent, a problem that needs to be solved, or even what they will be cooking for dinner tonight. You need to cut through the chatter that's going on inside their minds to get their attention. And, this applies, no matter how senior you are within your organization. You must give your audience reason to listen to your speech!

Your opening lines are critical - you need to demonstrate that your presentation is worth listening to. To earn the attention of your audience you need to do be different. If you are the same as every other speaker you immediately tell the audience that you will be like every other speaker they've seen... BORING!
You need to be - dare I say it... Interesting!

In a recent blog entry on my website I commented on the speaking style of Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft. His opening is certainly unique, and it may or may not work for your next presentation. So, below I have four types of openings that may be better suited to your speaking style.

Question
A question is a powerful way to get the audience participating immediately. It provides an avenue which can trigger each member to think about the answer to your question (that is relevant to the subject you will be speaking on). The question can be rhetorical, requiring the audience only think about an answer, or you can get some audience participation by having them raise their hands or shout out their answers. In my keynote speeches I often open with the question "Raise your hands if you've experienced a boring presentation in the office?" This generally gets everyone in the room raising their hand and nodding in agreement. I will then follow up with the statement "Keep your hands raised if you're the one delivering the presentation". This gets a few laughs and I have everyone's attention for the rest of the speech.

Startling Statement
A startling statement will prick the emotion of your audience. By delivering an opening line that startles or shocks your audience they will immediately stop listening to the internal chatter and listen to what you have to say. Your startling statement needs to be carefully considered from the perspective of knowing what the audiences' likely view on the statement is, and how you will guide them from where they are to where you would like them to be. If your statement raises the hackles of your audience too much they will be focused on your opening line and not on the rest of your speech. For example, if you were speaking to an audience who were victims of violent crime and the purpose of your presentation was to advocate alternative punishments your opening line could be "Judges are promoting violent crime with senseless sentencing of offenders!" This would have the effect of getting the audience to question why you believe judges are promoting violent crime.

Story
One of the most neglected areas of corporate presentations is the use of stories. Yet they make great speech openings (as well as meat for the body of your speech). But as an opening they have the potential to emotionally engage your audience from the first word. If you look around your business I'm sure you can find stories or anecdotes that you can use to illustrate your points. When using stories as speech openings, ensure the story is relevant to the overall message of the speech and short. A long rambling story will lose the attention of the audience as quickly as it initially captured them. In my opinion nothing can beat a short, relevant story to open a presentation because it can capture the attention of the audience (intellectually and MORE importantly) emotionally allowing you to move the audiences thinking with the rest of your presentation.

Quote
Google your speech topic and the word quote and I'm sure you will see plenty of potential quotes appear in the search results. Quotes allow you to borrow the credibility and thoughts of someone else while prompting the audience to think about the words you are speaking. This credibility will help break down any barriers between you and the audience while centering their thoughts on the topic you are presenting. Working with my coaching clients I advise them to take caution in using quotes. It can be easy to fall into the trap of using the most popular and well known quotes to open your speeches with. The unfortunate side effect with a well known quote is the audience will generally finish the quote in their mind before you can finish speaking the words - leading them to the next thought of "So what!" Aim to use quotes which are less well known and your audiences will want to hear what you have to say next.

There are the four different ways to open a speech. Each of them will help you get the attention of your audience when used correctly. There's no reason you couldn't combine two different opening tools together, such as combining a question with a story. I do in some of my keynote presentations to great effect. Try each one, or a combination to find which one(s) resonate with your unique presentation style.

Source: Mark Kyte link

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