Nobody wants to invest countless hours writing and practicing a presentation just to have it fall flat with your audience. If your next live or virtual speaking engagement is fastly approaching, here are 3 proven techniques to keep your audience hanging on your every word.

#1 – Nail the opening! Get rid of those long, meandering, and uninspiring openings. Your first 30 seconds of a presentation is MAKE or BREAK. Start with a compelling question, a quote or a story [Our favorite at BSN is a story].

#2 – Nobody cares about your slides! We know you were up 2 AM making that last edit to the bullets on slide 54, but I promise you, nobody is going to remember that bullet point even if it is the greatest bullet point of ALL TIME. People will remember your stories and your take away message (if you have one). The slides are a complement to your presentation, not the star – that role goes to you.

#3 – Less is more! We know, you are the expert. We get it. But your audience is not. Furthermore, even if your presentation was 12 hours long, people cannot absorb that much information at one time. Focus on 1 to 3 main points.

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