Fast-Start Speaking

by Scott H. Lewis

"Rosebud."
That whispered word, uttered by a dying man, was the first line of Orson Welles' 1941 film masterpiece, "Citizen Kane."

It is a great opening line because it creates suspense and prompts questions: What does it mean? Who said it? Who or what is Rosebud?

Just like a great opening line in a film rivets viewers to the screen, the opening line of a presentation should capture your audience immediately.

Forget the traditional, rambling opening that begins with "Thank you for inviting us here today..." and rapidly segues into a boring recitation of your - or your team's - credentials. Or worse, it becomes an exposition on your audience's company and its accomplishments: a topic they already know all too well.

It's best to leave this dry material out of your presentation. Include it in handouts, instead. If you absolutely must include it in your presentation, be aware that it is an invitation for minds to wander, so dispense with it quickly. If you are able, harness the deadening effect by sandwiching it between information that your audience will find useful and stimulating.

A presentation's opening is arguably the most important element of the entire effort. Get the audience's attention at the beginning and it isn't that difficult to sustain that interest. Fail to enchant them from the open, and it's hard to claim their imaginations later.

Imagine this opening line for a marketing pitch:

"Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick! In the last five seconds, Excel Electronics sold products worth $15,000 to Ukrainian consumers. In the next 15 minutes, the team from River City Marketing will show you how to increase sales by 20 percent in just five months."

Examine this open closely. I got my audience's attention with an unusual opening by marking off five seconds. Then I briefly demonstrated that I knew their company, its products and sales volume, using statistics. Finally, I reminded them of my agency's name, and made a promise that I could keep: I told them when I'd finish and what I could accomplish for them.

Do I have their attention? Absolutely.

Do they believe me? Not yet they don't, but I'd wager that they are intrigued. They are certainly listening to what I have to say.

Having established a theme - time - at the beginning, I'll let it follow me throughout the presentation. I may use a comparison, displaying a stopwatch on the screen, along with two counters: one showing sales mounting each second under the potential client's existing system, another running faster that tallies anticipated sales based on my 20 percent promise.

We use visuals to support our presentation, rather than relying on the visuals to carry the day. I'll return to the stopwatch visual and its changing numbers throughout my 15-minute presentation, interspersing it with the charts, graphs and other visuals that help my team to sell our services.

The stopwatch is a powerful visual device - not just because it holds me to my promised 15 minutes, and not just because of the mounting sales figures, but because it can be repeated and updated without becoming boring. It keeps the audience focused, and solidly establishes our product in concrete fashion. That's not easy given the sometimes amorphous nature of advertising, PR and marketing proposals.

With Ukraine-wide sales of $3,000 per second, my client will have sales totaling $2.7 million during my presentation, as revealed on my final stopwatch slide. Next to it, we show our 120 percent figure, $3,240,000 - a difference of $540,000 every 15 minutes.

This tactic not only captures the imagination, it obliterates the despised, "You're too expensive" objection. If we demonstrate that we can increase sales by more than a half-million dollars every 15 minutes (that's $2.16 million an hour, $51 million a day, and so on), price objections become fairly meaningless, don't they?

The key point isn't really about numbers at all. It's this: Grab the audience's attention early, and keep offering surprises until you're finished.

The nature of your service, your price, your product, your experience, your client list, your age, your education - none of it matters as much when a client's imagination has been captured and they've already intellectually purchased your proposal.

Whether you're using one presenter or a team of them, create a theme and carry it forward consistently. Keep the presentation moving briskly, and keep providing your audience with surprises that inspire curiosity. Answer each question you've raised, then ask for the sale.

Then, stop. Allow both you and your audience to catch your collective breathe, and wait. By now, they understand what each second they wait costs in lost sales.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick!

Scott H. Lewis is an executive vice president at Willard. He can be reached at scott.lewis@twg.com.ua