Avoid The Negative Power of Cliches

You want your audience t to get excited about what you say -- but they won't if you use cliches to illustrate or enliven your copy.

They're used by people all the time such as: "The  squeaky  wheels get the oil."  But they are are overused and instead of exciting our tantalizing your audience they deaden your listener's attention.

As Bat Masterson said in his Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywiring  such expressions "no longer communicate profound ideas. And they don't inspire people  intellectually."

He says they are killers in direct mail copy -- and they are just as big killers in live presentations. Rework them.  As he says the do contain a fundamental truth but they need to be reworked.

An example of doing (although admittedly not the best) would be to take the pun about the squeaking wheels and substitute ideas to come up with something like: "The noisy hinge usually gets greased first."

The trick is to get out that big piece of paper and Mind Map or Cluster that cliche to see what new ideas your mind comes up with.
Your audience will love you for it.

AS Good Illustration from A Crow

There are, of course numerous ways to begin your presentation: A clear statement of purpose; a quotation (with full attribution to your source); a question; a description of a scene  or event -- that is full of sensory details that appeal to as many of our senses as possible -- or a humorous or other type of anecdote that is closely related or that can be related to your topic.

If for instance you were giving a presentation on the need to  carefully examining what we read or are told you could the illustration of a little back bird that you offered a pieces of  shredded wheat cereal to one winter morning.

This little guy I saw was obviously hungry and looking for something to eat so I tossed it a few pieces of shredded wheat  near it on the ground thinking it would gobble them up.

But it this little bird  hopped over to it, picked it up. Turned it over a few times to check it out, then after looking at me as if to say" Common do you humans really eat this stuff?" hopped up disdainfully.

You could relate something like this for us to  be just as careful about accepting  things we are are told or we read.   We need to  examine  information and ideas offered to us by other carefully before accepting them.

Tying all of this into an introduction for a speech on topic could catch the interest of your audience where dry facts or other methods of introduction would no fare ass well.