Should you use quotes in your presentation or has that been done to death? I imagine you’ve noticed that the people who deliver effective presentations will more often than not use famous quotes to get their message across.
Why do they do that?
Well… it’s appropriate for me to quote Sophocles here, who said “A short saying often contains much wisdom.”
So why use quotes in your presentation?
There are a few good reasons:
You increase your credibility by association.
When you use quotes from someone famous or well liked by your audience, you will by association rise in their esteem.
It fills the “I know” factor.
People like to be proven right. In fact all people like to be right. When we see a quote that is familiar to us, or from someone we know, we think “I know that” and it makes us feel good inside.
When your audience recognize a quote, it adds to the rapport… because people now have another point of similarity and alignment with you.
Speech quotes improve recall.
When you teach a point, it may be remembered; but people are much more likely to remember a quote than a basic teaching point.
After all, as Cesare Pavese said “We do not remember days; we remember moments.”
The same can be said of seminars. We do not remember points, we remember stories and quotes!
Where can you find good quotes to use?
I usually search in Google by typing “quote: TOPIC” (e.g. quote: learning) which gives me results from various quote websites.
Or you could search directly in one of these quote websites;
- www.wisdomquotes.com
- www.thinkexist.com
- www.brainyquote.com
- www.quotesdaddy.com
Do use quotes in your presentation, but use them sparingly. You want the quotes to reinforce the learning points from your own content… not for the quotes to BE the content. Used effectively, they can be extremely powerful.
So this week, I invite you to collate a handful of quotes that are relevant to your topic, and save them together in one place. Then next time you are putting a presentation together, you will easily be able to incorporate a relevant quote.
Do you have a favourite quote? Have you a quote that you use more often than others in your presentations? Do you feel inspired to start using quotes? Let me know what you think by leaving me a comment below.
Well, I agree on this point that a presenter should use quotes related to the point
he/she is explaining. I often use quotes and they truly work for me.