Public Speaking: One Line to Get (and Keep) Your Audience Interested

You’ve got a presentation to do.

You’re a bit panicked about it, worried about what to say.

The thing you’re most worried about is saying the right thing to keep your audience interested.

If you can just keep them interested you know your job will be so much easier.

You’ll be able to keep your nerves at bay.

You’ll avoid the trauma of talking to a group of disinterested Judgey McJudgersons.

What if you had one line that could do it for you?

…One simple throw-away line that guaranteed your listeners would sit up and pay attention?

…A magic line you could use whenever you needed to energize the people gathered in front of you?

There is such a line, and I’m going to give it to you.

But first, a word of warning.

You can use this line to stimulate interest any time during your presentation, but it can only be used as a launching pad to a new topic.

You’ll use the line to launch into a new topic, while leaving open the one you’re currently talking about.

It is the setup of an open loop.

Here is the magic line:

“, but before we do that…”

Short and simple.

Now, how do you use this in your presentation?

There are many ways to do it, but the easiest is to set up the conclusion if your presentation, then transition to a less interesting point the audience need to listen to.

Imagine your presentation will show the audience how to use some shortcuts in their daily data entry to save them a couple of hours a week.

Great news for them, but as part of this you need them to listen to you talk at length about some pretty boring information about backing up their data.

You could start your talk like this:

“Morning ladies and gentlemen. In my talk today it l’m going to show you some shortcuts to shave a massive 2 hours off your work week! But, before we do that I need to talk to you about the backup process which will form the foundation for this time saving. Are you ready to claim back those valuable hours? Okay! Let’s start with…”

The key to getting them interested and keeping them is all in the open loop. It’s all in one line:

“, but before we do that…”

What do you think? Let’s chat in the comments below.