The beginning of any presentation is crucial: attracting the audience’s attention and convincing them to follow you throughout your speech is essential.

Sometimes, we are ineffective in those first few moments because we take for granted that our topic is important to everyone (it is not), interesting and that people will immediately understand why they should listen to us.

Other times, we waste the beginning because we need to figure out how to start. An interesting way is to highlight the problem we want to solve. We often think that our presentation does not solve anything, and this is where we are wrong: every presentation is the solution to a problem.

Are you launching a start-up? Indeed, your product or service solves a problem (all hiking bottles are terrible, but yours is innovative, lightweight, and keeps drinks cold for 20 hours). Are you presenting sales figures for the last quarter that are not in line with expectations at a meeting? Here is the solution to bridge the gap and sell more. A change management project? Change a process that is not working or improve it. And so on.

Therefore, an effective way to start any presentation is to precisely explain what the problem is and the solution you propose. In defining the problem, one must not be timid but describe it in detail. Nothing is better than a doctor who accurately describes your illness’s symptoms. This makes you understand that they know what they are talking about and that their solution will be suitable for us.

The same goes for presentations. The more you are good at outlining the problem and its implications for the audience’s life, the more interested people will be and will listen to you.

But it is equally important to be honest and realistic; otherwise, the audience will leave in 30 seconds. It is unnecessary to exaggerate a problem to give importance to your solution. The audience does not fall for these tricks. Describing current toothbrushes as the absolute evil of modern society and the cause of all the world’s problems is inconsistent.

Exaggerations are not necessary; what is needed is concreteness and usefulness for the audience. In this way, they can understand which problem you want to solve and why they should follow you. This way, you can make every beginning of your presentation enjoyable.