The First Trick of Presentation

In your professional ACCA career, there will be times when you have to deliver a speech or pitch to your potential clients. With potential clients sitting in front of you, it’s natural to be fearful or nervous. But with a good start, you can overcome your worries. With a good start… it could all be “plain sailing” from there on!

The very first trick of presentation is: storytelling.

· “I have often wondered what goes into a hot dog. Now I know and I wish I didn’t.”

· “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

· “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy is its own way”

These are the vital words in three different but wonderfully told stories: “Block That Chicken-furter”, a column in Life Magazine by the wonderful writer and writing teacher William Zinsser; A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens; and Anna Karentine, by Leo Tolstoy. They are all starting leads.

Each lead pulls us immediately into each story. Each provokes us with a good question. And each assures us we are in good hands - the hands of someone who will engage us for the rest of the story.

Your key sentence in every presentation should be your first. Your first sentence must make your listeners eager to hear your second; your second must make them as eager to hear your third…

Expressed another way, the first fifteen words are as important as the next fifteen hundred.

How do you write this most important sentence? Carefully. Give listeners a compelling reason to listen, but without giving away your ending. Like a movie trailer… hook the audience with something enticing, something different, something that stands out.

As models, consider two strong leads from two recent presentations.

1. “Anyone who questions the power of a brand”, the presenter begins, “surely has not considered the comical story of Rogaine.”
2. “The copy needed some spice, I realized,” the presenter begins, “so I did the obvious: I threw in a pterodactyl.

If you spend three hours writing your presentation, spend thirty minutes writing your leads.

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