Customers have been successfully trained to expect boring and trite presentation openings. They have witnessed the same dull and mundane presentation openers and crave the unconventional and unexpected. Thus, how you open your sales presentation can make or break your sales career. Follow this checklist for your next presentation and you’ll have a memorable and effective opening.

Does your presentation opening include one or more of the following elements?

1. A clear and credible statement of benefits
2. Something that arouses curiosity
3. A question to start
4. A startling statistic
5. A challenge to a societal norm
6. A contradiction of a recognized expression or tradition
7. An analogy
8. A reference to a case study
9. The repetition of a high-profile expression or theme known to the audience
10. The use of a one-word opener followed by a pause for impact

Words and Phrases for Presenters to Avoid
Now that you have your audience’s attention, what do you say? There are words heard in presentations, which are common and offend many sales audiences.

These words come easily to some of us, and to put it bluntly, they demean us as sales presentation experts. Hastily chosen words can successfully annihilate our credibility and dash any hopes that our sales audience will have faith in our opinions or knowledge. When you have a powerful message to deliver, don’t dilute it with wishy-washy words. You know the ones—timid space fillers that make a lot of noise about nothing. Choose your words carefully, and above all, deliver on your words of promise.

Top 10 worst words or phrases to use in presentations:
1. likely will
2. probably could
3. maybe
4. think so
5. I (we) believe
6. I (we) feel
7. kind of /sort of
8. try to
9. want to
10. should be

Take a look at the previous list once again. Notice that these are words frequently pounced upon by attorneys in court. The goal of the defence is to cast doubt, undermine credibility or create suspicion in the argument presented by the prosecution, who then take a similar position. If you use these words or phrases in delivering a message, while seeking to gain mutual agreement in a selling situation, or when trying to inform or educate an audience, how successful will you be?