What if I told you that by using some very simple techniques that you probably already know, you can increase your audience’s comprehension and retention significantly (maybe even double it)? Now what if I told you it takes very little additional effort to implement these techniques – would you want to start using them?

If you tell your audience something once, their chances of recalling it tomorrow are somewhat less than 50%. If you tell it to them twice, it increases to 70%-75%. A third time will increase the probability of recall up to 80%-95%. By simply repeating yourself you have increased the probability of your audience remembering what you said from %50 to close to %100. With very little effort you have almost doubled the effectiveness of your presentation in terms of recall. That’s a pretty high return on the effort that it takes to repeat yourself.

But how do you go about repeating yourself without boring or “burning out” your audience. The easiest answer is with the structure that you learned in high school English. Use an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. There is a popular phrase that goes… “In the introduction, tell them what you are going to tell them, in the body tell it to them, and in the conclusion tell them what you told them.”