[8 Steps To A Live Presentation That Sells Series] Article #4 ~ Grab Your Audience’s Attention
How would you like to make five figures in sales from the stage, every time you speak?
I have your attention, right? If you’re interested in speaking for the purpose of sales, you’re going to keep reading, right?
The first step in crafting your 90-minute presentation is constructing your grabber.
The grabber is the first thing you say when you get up on stage. It’s a bold statement about the promise of your work. And it’s designed to grab the attention of your audience right off the bat.
Knock Their Socks Off
You may have been taught that you should begin your speech with, “I would like to thank everybody for being here today, the promoter, Joan Smith, for having me here, and everybody who made this possible….”
While there’s nothing wrong with a little appreciation, when you’re speaking for the purpose of sales, it’s not what you lead with.
You’ll sound like an amateur to your promoter. But worse than that, you’ve bored the audience right out of the gate. They’re shutting down before you’ve even had a chance to open them up.
Instead, you want to get up there on the stage with energy, power and promise, and knock their socks off with a strong and true statement about what your program can do. You want to say something like:
“How would you like to learn five steps that will help you double your income in the next four months?”
The audience is thinking, “Wow, really? This person is going to help me double my income in four months. Yeah, I’m listening to this.”
Step 2: Lay Out the Game Plan
After you’ve grabbed the audience’s attention, briefly lay out the game plan, tell them what you’re about to do. Here are a few examples, using the Step 1 illustrations from above:
Step 1, the grabber: “How would you like to make five figures in sales from the stage, every time you speak?”
Step 2, the game plan: “Over the next hour and a half, I’m going to share with you my eight-step formula for crafting presentations that will have your audience lined up in the back of the room.”
Step 1: “How would like to be debt-free ~ and I mean you don’t owe a dime to anybody ~ in six months?”
Step 2: “Over the next 90 minutes, I’m going to teach you the five secrets that credit card companies don’t want you to know.”
And here’s an example of how it all could flow:
“Would you like to throw away your insulin syringes and get your life back? [pause] Of course, you would. Over the next 90 minutes, I’m going to teach you my five-step plan that has helped thousands of people get off insulin and lead productive and healthy lives.”
If your audience has diabetes or debt that’s strangling them or they want to make a bundle from the stage, they’re listening to you with rapt attention. They’re hanging on your every word, just waiting for what comes next.
What comes next is arguably the most critical and ignored step of all. I’ll tell you all about it next time.
David Neagle, The Million Dollar Income Acceleration Mentor and author of The Millions Within, teaches entrepreneurs and commission-based sales professionals how to quantum leap their current incomes past the 7-figure income level, often in less than 12 months. As a world-class speaker, sales trainer, and success-mindset mentor to some of the globe’s top CEOs, David also privately mentors big decision-makers in their pursuit of quantum success and peace of mind.