Presenters should avoid this opening phrase

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Many presenters begin their talks like this: “I’d like to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about…”

Don’t do this.  First of all, what you would like to do at that particular moment is of considerably less interest to the audience that what they are concerned about.

Second, such an opening is procedural rather than substantive.  You’re only describing your process for delivering your message: you’re not actually delivering it.  

Have you ever read a newspaper article that begins, “I’d like to take this opportunity to write a little bit about what happened in the stock market yesterday?”  No editor worth a grain of salt would allow such a sentence.  It’s a waste of column inches, and if you begin your talks the same way, you’re wasting people’s time and burning up their capacity to listen, which is limited anyway.

Finally, you’re blowing a huge opportunity to capture attention and create memory.  What gets human attention is the unexpected.

Our only poet-president did not begin his most famous speech by saying, “I’d like to take this opportunity to say a few words about this battlefield we’ve all come here to consecrate.”

Instead, he began with a sentence summarizing 87 years of American history, one that perked up the ears of the crowd and got them craning forward, as if to ask, “Where’s he going with this?”  

Don’t begin with the stale, the procedural, the predictable.  Begin with a substantive statement with which your audience can agree.

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

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