One in two people between the ages of 55 and 75 will need long term care in a nursing facility or at home, with the assistance of a nurse or other health services provider.

Some will break their hips and others may develop Alzheimers, but still, the statistic is one in two.

How many of you have a long-term care health plan in place that enables you to choose to be treated in your own home or in a facility of your choice?

How many of you can afford the hundreds of dollars a day, six thousand dollars per month and more, year after year without selling most if not all of your assets or becoming a burden to your families?

Before you get swept up in responding to these devices let me say that Ive just exposed you to TWO great ways of opening a speech: (1) The Startling Statistic and (2) The Direct Question.

For time management purposes, I blended them, but you could use either one to grab your audiences attention. And that word definitely applies to the purpose of using a special technique to begin your talk.

You want to develop what is termed, A Grabber.

Ideally, this will snap people out of the doldrums and focus their attention right away.

Moreover, especially if youre in a commercial setting, and your purpose is to sell, these tools help you to establish a need and its significance, right off the bat.

Most well prepared speaker will have statistics and questions somewhere in their talks, but somewhere isnt good enough. They need to be strategically placed.

For example, the other evening I was assessing the skills of a group of financial services marketers that use the platform to sell senior citizens--you guessed it--Long Term Health Care.

But instead of placing the devices rightly, they erred by burying them in the body of the talk.

Still, that statistic that one in two will need this care is attention-getting.

Why wait until youre a half-hour into the chat to mention it?

Journalists call this habit of inserting the juiciest morsel too late, Burying the lead, and watchful editors catch this flaw over and again.

By insisting that you have a strategic grabber, youll avoid this tendency, make the most of your research and subject, and be much more persuasive and successful with audiences!