Public Speaking – Does Your Intro Pass The Relevancy Challenge
I recently heard a great speaker who blew his chance by failing to answer one simple question in the first couple of minutes of his talk… Would you like to know how to avoid this mistake?
Whenever we start to listen to a speaker, we silently ask one question – “Why should I pay attention to this – how is it going to benefit me?” And if we don’t get the answer it within the first couple of minutes, the odds are we will switch off!
That’s what happened to my friend. Because he knew what he was going to say and how it should benefit the audience, he made the mistake of assuming that his audience did too and so he didn’t make it clear up front. The result was a mostly restless, quizzical looking audience who weren’t getting it.
To be fair to him, he did make great eye contact and I could see that he sensed that something was wrong. His response was to keep his enthusiasm and energy up in order to try and carry his audience along by sheer force of will but he was struggling all the way.
It could have all been so different if only he had remembered to answer the unasked question “how is this relevant to my audience” and to answer it out loud in his introduction.
Here are some examples:
- Ask simple questions to establish relevance e.g. “Would you like your staff to be more productive – Yes or No? or “How many of you here would like to be able to feel less nervous when you present?”
- Ask rhetorical questions e.g. “Now you you’ll probably be asking yourself what the topic has to do with me?” Well let me tell you…
- State the benefit up front. Tonight I’m going to share with you six powerful techniques that will allow you to communicate more effectively and win more business” or “In this share some of the biggest mistakes I made when I was a manager so that you can learn from my mistakes and void making them yourself.”
Get the idea! You have to sell your speech to the audience first. It’s not rocket science but if you don’t do it you’ll be making your job a lot harder.
