There is no one perfect way to start a presentation. You don’t have to tell a knee-slapping joke or start with a poignant anecdote. But you don’t want to start the way most presenters do. Why? Because most presenters start of by talking about themselves too much.
As a presenter, you have to make one fundamental choice about how you start: are you going to focus on yourself, or on your audience? If you focus on your audience, you will likely be a success. If you focus on yourself, no matter how polished you are, you will likely fail.
Here’s how most people start a presentation.

“Good morning. My name is TJ Walker (the audience already knows this because I was just introduced or my name is on the agenda).”

“I am the CEO of Media Training Worldwide. (Again, the audience already knows this because that’s how I was introduced or it’s on the agenda)”

“I am very happy to be here today. (Why should the audience care about my happiness at this stage of the relationship?”

“Before I begin (actually, I have already begun), I’d like to tell you about the history of my company, back in 1984… (Why does anyone want to hear my life story at this point?)”

“Now, let me tell you about all of the cities we are in. Currently, we are in Mumbai, Seoul, Bucharest… (Why should anyone care about all the cities they don’t live or work in?”

The problem with this speaker is that everything he is saying is about himself and is either boring, a cliché, or irrelevant to the audience. He might eventually get to some interesting content, but by then there is the real danger that half of the audience has zoned out or is fixated on his or her own blackberry messages.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Deep down I am an optimist and I believe that most people are good-spirited, but I do not think that audiences are primarily interested in the well-being of the person speaking in front of them. It’s not that the people we speak to wish us ill-will, it’s just that they are focused on themselves, their lives, and their careers. So the quicker we talk about them, the better off we are.

Here is an example of how I start a presentation when I am working with a small group of executives in a session on presentation training:

TJ, “So, why are we here? Jim, you mentioned that you are comfortable when you are sitting down presenting to a small group, but that you get uncomfortable when you have to stand and talk to more than 20 people. We’ll work on ways to overcome that.”

“Sally, you mentioned that you don’t mid talking to a roomful of strangers, but you get really nervous talking in your weekly staff meetings. We’ll come up with tips on how to get comfortable there.”

“Sandy, you feel like your PowerPoints are dragging you down. We’ll learn some new ways to make PowerPoint add to your presentation.”

Now when you are reading this, you might be thinking “TJ is not saying anything particularly eloquent or brilliant…it’s not even that interesting.” However, I can assure you that Jim and Sally and Sandy find this opening incredibly interesting because it is about them. They are riveted to the presentation because it doesn’t seem like a so-called formal presentation. It is personal and about them, therefore it is about the most interesting subject in the world to them.

How did I get all of this inside information about the people I am speaking to? Did I hire private investigators? Google search them for 20 hours? Interview their assistants? No. All I did was have a 30 second conversation with each one 10 minutes before the speech started. I listened to my audience and talked to them about their needs and personalized the start, that is why it is effective.

The technique I used works well with a small group of people or even just in front of one person. But it also works well in front of 1000 people. Obviously I can’t reference what 1000 people said to me, but by referencing what four or five people in the convention hall said, it makes the audience relate to me better and feel like I am giving them content that is fresh and relevant to them. It gives my presentation an “un-canned” quality.

The problem most people have is that if you have written out your speech or a speechwriter or corporate communications person has created your speech in advance, it is hard to know how to personalize your opening. Speechwriters may try to get you to be overly formal by thanking 22 people. Marketing experts who have a hand in your PowerPoint will want you to start by listing off your top five corporate messages. And you, because you are nervous, might try to memorize an opening to your speech. These are all mistakes.
There is no one ideal way to start of a speech. It could be with a question, it could be with a funny story. It doesn’t have to be witty or clever as long as it is interesting and relevant to your audience.

Most speakers feel the need to go through a series of boring, cliché-filled formalities before they start their speech in earnest. This is great news for you and me because it means we stand out as fantastic speakers as long as we don’t do the normal, standard boring speaker-centered opening. In my experience, audiences truly reward audience-focused speakers who concentrate on the audience right from the beginning. The people you are speaking to will reward you with what really counts—their attention, their focus and their memory.

Honestly folks, I’m really not judging politics here. I am simply attempting to look at how the authenticity levels of candidates are affecting their public speaking effectiveness. Here’s how I rate the top remaining candidates.

1-10 scale

10 equals perfect authenticity

1 equals phony baloney

Republicans

John McCain. Rating 9. McCain is an inconsistent speaker (his victory speech after the New Hampshire Primary was awful), but he does ooze authenticity. He’s not afraid to say unpopular things; in fact he enjoys doing so. His “let the chips fall where they may” attitude doesn’t help him in front of every crowd or on every issue, but over the long haul, it does cement his image of authenticity.

Mitt Romney. Rating 1. Romney has superb public speaking skills, but he comes across as extraordinarily inauthentic. Romney is obviously highly educated, extremely intelligent, very rational, and a huge talent. But he’s been a moderate/libertarian/liberal his whole life. When Romney speaks, you can almost see a thought bubble over his head that reads “I must tell these rubes this idiotic BS, because that’s what the polls say is popular. Once I get elected I can do what I want.” And now when voters watch him mouthing platitudes that he obviously doesn’t believe in, it’s comical. It’s like watching a public service announcement on TV starring Wink Martindale, the game show host (and Romney look-alike) warning kids about the dangers of watching too many TV game shows. It’s laughably un-credible.

Mike Huckabee. Rating 10. Wow, with Huckabee I get the feeling he could get elected as a member of parliament in Japan—without changing any of his positions. You don’t ever get the sense that Huckabee has any doubts when expressing his beliefs and positions.

Rudy Giuliani. Rating 2. Giuliani looks and sounds phony pretending to be a gun-toting, NASCAR loving, Rush Limbaugh fan. Giuliani is authentic when he talks about 9-11, but when he tries to worship at the alter of Ronald Reagan and pretend to be a conservative, the former mayor becomes a joke. Giuliani’s contempt for traditional values and the 2nd amendment are only surpassed by his love of homosexual cohabitation and cross dressing. Giuliani fighting to be the standard-bearer of the Right as the credibility of jess Jackson running to Grand Wizard of the KKK.

Democrats

John Edwards Rating 2. In 2004, the 50-year old Edwards ran for president as a conservative-centrist North Carolina Democrat. In 2008 he is a Huey-long, left-wing populist. Huh? Edwards takes a lot of flack in the media for fancy haircuts and his mansions because he seems so inauthentic. For goodness sakes, Edwards made nearly half a million dollars last year doing part time work at a hedge fund. Edwards would seem much more authentic if he just smiled and said “It’s great to be rich. I love money!”

Barack Obama. Rating 9. Like McCain, Obama has written a universally acclaimed autobiography. He has been candid about past traumas and drug use. It doesn’t seem to twist and turn with new positions on the campaign trail.

Hillary Clinton. Rating 9. I know I’m going to receive hate mail for this one. But I simply don’t think that the average voter who hasn’t been caught up in the Hillary Hating Media Industrial complex has negative views about Clinton’s levels of authenticity. Clinton is basically a very hard-working, centrist policy wonk. That’s how she talks and it appears to be consistent with who she really is.

Here is an interesting piece on CNN that compares this year’s crop of political candidates with leading orators of the past half century. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, the 2008 candidates, as a class, have been the best speakers I’ve seen in my lifetime.