The Essential Part of a Presentation Most People Neglect or Even Forget

“I’m always a little shaky at first. But after 2 or 3 minutes, I get into my stride and I’m ok”.

When you are presenting you may have felt like this yourself or know someone who does and it’s something I hear all the time.

But the thing is you don’t have 2 or 3 mins to get into your stride! Your audience starts to judge you in the first 30 to 60 seconds! That’s all the time we have to get their judgments working in our favor rather than against us.

And that’s where the neglected part of a presentation comes in.

Most people when preparing to give a presentation think about 3 segments – the beginning, the middle and the end (although if you have done any of my trainings you know that this is over-simplified and needs to be broken down further).

But even so there is part that many “presenters” don’t even think about .

What is it? it’s The Greeting.

Your greeting is an essential part of your presentation because

It is your opportunity to connect and engage your audience – or not.
It introduces both you and your topic to your audience.
It gives your listeners a flavor of what will follow.
It opens up the communication between you and your audience.
It alerts an audience as to whether or not you’re going to be interesting so lets them know whether to carry on listening.
And it starts influencing and persuading listeners when they’re primed to pay maximum attention.

All of which can lead to the success or failure of the presentation.

As I tell my clients your greeting is a presentation element that absolutely shouldn’t be neglected.

Your greeting is of huge importance and it must be developed for maximum impact, not neglected or ignored.

Now this may seem obvious to you and if you are getting the response you want then that’s great but from my experience we can always make it a bit better with more thought.

The Five Elements of Your Greeting

There is a number of ways you can make an impact with your greeting and here is just one example that uses five elements that you can use in different presenting situations.

1) Begin with the requisite phrase depending on the time of day e.g. “Good morning,” and then wait for a response – most people don’t do this and so miss a great opportunity to get a response from your audience which means that unconsciously they are more connected to you that if you don’t

2) Identify yourself – give your name- if this is appropriate – you don’t need to do if you are presenting to people you know! and your position/company name,

3) Describe your expertise in terms of what is of interest to your audience – don’t go on about things that are irrelevant to them , even if you do provide that service/product.

4) Tell your listeners that you are delighted to be speaking with them.

5) Match your tonality to the different parts of your greeting. Make sure that you don’t convey through a monotone that you are bored!Invest it with passion and energy instead.

Then add your hook…..( more about this in the next post).

Here’s an example of what it would look like……

“Good Morning…..(pause for response).

I’m Wilma Blogs, Director of Collect-More Billing.

We help lawyers maximize practice revenue. I’m delighted to speak to you this morning.

Do you want to increase the number of clients you see while reducing your paperwork?”

using an appropriate tonality at each stage.

( The result was a more engaged and interested audience and more business!)

Above all aim to to begin pleasantly and professionally and practise until you have a greeting that immediately connects and engages with your listeners.

Until next time,

Cath

Cath Daley Ltd.

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