Happy New Year! To get you off to a good start, I wanted to share a recent example of what NOT to do at the start of a presentation.

Recently I had the honor of being a guest at a weekly meeting of a large Seattle service club. They had a “spotlight” speaker that day, and he made three key mistakes in his first minute at the podium.

He began by stating he didn’t know he only had 10 minutes to deliver his message. In his second sentence he said he didn’t realize there would be so many people at the meeting. And for his third sentence, he allowed that he does roughly 75 speeches a year and this would be the first one without PowerPoint.

Talk about lowering expectations quickly!

The rest of his presentation didn’t go much better. He had a very compelling and timely topic, but spent 8 ½ minutes giving information that his audience probably already knew. It wasn’t until his very last two sentences that he made his main point. He missed a huge opportunity to make a major impact with a very influential civic audience.

The lesson is: a good start begins before you arrive at the podium. Here are a few tips:

• Know who is in the audience and what they care about.
• Become familiar with the organization and its priorities.
• Know how many people will be in the room.
• Be prepared to speak without your slides.
• State your key points early, don’t wait until the end.
• If you prepare, you won’t have to tell your audience you are unprepared!

Lorraine

*Part of the Give It A Lift! Series
Give It A Lift! is a Trademark owned by Lorraine Howell