Powerful Public Speaking Opening Techniques

If you've done any public speaking at all, you've quickly realized that you've got to capture people's attention immediately.

Most speakers' openings are weak. They start out by thanking the hosts, thanking the group, asking "can the people in the back hear me okay" or even worse, "I don't usually do public speaking..."

While there's nothing wrong with being polite and thanking your host or your audience, it's frankly just boring with a capital B.

If you want to open politely that's fine, but there's a surefire technique to add spice and life to your opening: And it's called, "The Grabber".

The grabber has one job and one job only: to grab the attention of your audience and force them out of their half-asleep state and wide awake waiting to hear what you'll say next.

Here's 3 kinds of grabbers to get your creative juices flowing.

The Big Promise:
Making a big, hard-to-believe promise shakes people out of their slumber.

The more unbelievable and outrageous the promise is, the better it grabs people's attention.

Of course, you'll have to deliver on your promise.

For example, I've started out training on conquering stage fright and fear of public speaking by saying "I can take anyone in this room and totally, completely eliminate all stage fright in 5 minutes or less". That's pretty outrageous claim to make and a big promise, so people are glued to my presentation wanting to find out my methods.

What kind of outrageous claim and huge promise can you make? Just be sure you can back it up!

The Shocker:
This is simply a shocking statement that grabs people's attention.

Scary statistics make for good shockers. Think about your topic and area of expertise and see how many scary statistics you can gather up.

Tossing out 2 or 3 scary statistics right up front can really rivet audience attention.

The Hair Raising Story:
It could be your story, or it could be the story of someone you know like one of your customers or clients.

The hair raising story needs to be truly spellbinding and fascinate people. Adding a "cliff hanger" is an advanced application of the hair raising story. That's where you cut the story off at the point of the highest tension and say "I'll tell you what happened later" and people will be hanging on your every word and even be afraid to get up and use the bathroom for fear of missing the rest of the story!

Summary and bonus tip:
You can still start out polite saying "I'd like to thank my hosts and all of you for being here" then immediately shake them awake with your grabber. No matter which type of grabber you use, the basic structure of your grabber is to get your audience to react with, "What?-I've never heard such a thing before!" or "This I've got to hear!" or "That can't be true!"