State an arresting fact

Making an opening speech in a conversational manner. An efficient way to discover whether you have an opener that is conversational is to try it out across the dinner table. If the way you open your talk isn’t conversational enough to be spoken across the dinner table, it probably won’t be conversational enough for an audience either.

Frequently, the opening of the talk that is supposed to get the listeners’ interest is, in reality, the dullest part of the talk.

One technique is that if you want to interest your listeners, don’t begin with an introduction. Begin by leaping right into the heart of your story like this “Shortly after I started out as a professional baseball player. I got one of the biggest shocks of my life.” And Everyone was eager to hear why and how he was shocked and what he did about it.   No preaching, No lecturing, No sermonizing. No general statements.

 I think it is similar to the previous chapter which is talking about “arouse suspense”. The key is obtaining the audience’s attention and I personally have the same reaction, when I listen to a priest’s speech during mass. Some priests prepare their talk on paper and start reading or constantly look down at the paper during the speech. Some priests started their talk by getting all of the children in front of the stage so that he can get their attention before he speaks and come down from the stage to be at an eye level with the audience.

During the concert, it is the same thing that singers can walk around every direction to get most of the audience attention and it all comes down to the one thing which is getting audience attention and this is key to a good speech.