Opening’ Styles
‘Well begun is half done.’ The first few minutes are very crucial for your presentation. As you start, the people are still in their own inner world of distractions, judgments and opinions. In order to get their attention and arouse the interest in your topic, you need to quickly build a connect between their needs and concerns with what you are going to say.
And when you have done this part well, the rapport with your listeners builds up and your initial anxiety starts vanishing. Your self-consciousness disappears and your focus now shifts to the topic and you start flowing with it unmindful of you. To make this happen, first few minutes are very crucial. You need to be thoroughly prepared about the ‘opening’ and you must have rehearsed it so well that you have started on a comfortable conversation with your audience. Even most seasoned speakers who don’t need a written scrip for their talk do have their first couple of sentences written down. It helps in focus more on connecting with their audience rather than on the words they are speaking.
Presentations are like T20 cricket games, where you have to pile up your ‘runs’ right from the first ball. Effective openers
Plan an effective opening that provides the audience with an outline of the presentation you are about to give, informing them briefly of the points you will be making during your speech. Use anecdotes to break the ice and draw the audience into your speech in a familiar way. Always remember, however, that the audience is not at its most alert at the very beginning of your speech, so save your strongest point for a few minutes into the presentation.
Warm-ups
Here are some strategies for warming up the audience before jumping into the subject matter:
• complimenting the audience on a recent accomplishment of the group to which they belong
• recalling the personal connect you have with the place/ institution/ occasion/ people
• greeting the audience in their native tongue (if that is foreign to you)/ or
• greeting appropriately on festival in the locality, if any, at that point in time
• talking about a moment in history (at this time, at this place, fifteen years ago...)
Kick-starts
Here are a few opening styles that can kick-start the topic and you can pick the one that works for you.
• A Startling Statement/ Statistic: “There is one death every four minutes due to a road accident in the country and two wheelers account for 25% of total road crash deaths.” How about an opener like this for a talk insisting upon on ‘Helmet usage’. A plain shocking fact well-related to the purpose of the talk can have a big influence on the audience.
• Story/ humour/ personal anecdote: "Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation” Steve Jobs at the Commencement Address (2005) at Stanford University.
• Straight into WIIFM Factor: “Today you will learn three most closely guarded secrets of the most wealthiest person in the world”. If you are going to present something that has concrete take-aways, then you can think of a simple one liner that can capture the ‘what-is-in-it-for-me’ actor.
• Question: An effective way to trigger their thinking into your topic by asking a question first instead of launching into the presentation material. This will get them thinking about the material in the context you want. For instance, you could say “You might wonder why …”; “When I started to look at this issue, I asked myself …”; or “How much longer should we …?”
Be sure to consider your audience and the things they would wonder about, and phrase your questions so you answer those things for them, while at the same time advancing your message and your goals for the presentation.
• Time Travel: “10 years from now, you won’t be carrying a wallet with you when you travel” Taking them forward in time and constructing a scenario connected with your topic can be a good stimulator. Similarly, you can travel back to create an optimism of how far we have come.
Say ‘No’ to worn-out Openers
These are quick ways to lose your audience and you need to avoid them at all costs.
‘I would like to tell you a story....’
“Today I am going to talk about...’
‘Dignitaries on the dais,....’ or worse still, listing out the titles of all those assembled there.
Framework for openers
The following two chapters will provide you with a framework for organising your opening part of the presentation.