Five powerful ways to start your presentation

“Twelve years ago, in 2008, something shocking happened to me. It was November 10, a day before my birthday. The time was 4 pm, and I received a call on my office phone. It was an international call from Ireland. We spoke in length and seriousness. It was an extremely calm conversation. Coming out of the call, I was completely lost. And that event led me to what I am today.”

Do you know what the call was all about at the start of this video?

Well, I’ll let you ponder over it for a while.

Every presentation is an opportunity to make a lasting impression. You can either craft your pitch with relevant slides to build credibility, engagement, and buy-in or kill the chance to share your idea in a way that sells. No matter how compelling your message is, if you don’t capture the audience’s attention in the first 30 seconds, you will have failed to sway the audience to your side to stay with you throughout the presentation.

That first minute of your presentation is so important.

It is when you establish your command of the room. With your topic, build rapport with the audience and gain their respect by showing that you are the master of the subject. And know what you are talking about. And so finally, the audience can be at ease, relax and look forward to a great experience during your presentation session.

That was ideal; however, not always the way it happens.

In reality, this is what we hear often.

Hello, hello, (knock knock on the mic) thanks for being here

And if you were presenting on Zoom, it would sound like be this …

Hello hello, can you hear me, can you see me? Uh! Wait, let me share my slides… ok… can you see my slides

Here is a classic one that I see many presenters do.

Sorry ah. I am not supposed to be the one presenting today. I am just standing in for my colleague, so don’t ask me any questions … ok?

No! no no no no no!

A presentation opening is your promise to the audience that they will not regret spending time listening to you. These starters that I demonstrated earlier suggest that this meeting is going to be boring. A great introduction promises the audience that the presentation will be engaging, innovative, educational, and inspiring.

To do that, you need to be confident from the moment you start presenting.

Regardless of whether your presentation is for an internal meeting, a client-facing meeting, or a product idea sharing session, you need to start with an impact so that your audience will have the reason to stay with you throughout the whole presentation.

It is best to use something original, unexpected, and powerful. Your personal experience, encounter, and thoughts are as authentic as they can be. Craft them into the start of your presentation to build a powerful opening.

Here are five presentation openings that you can consider to get started.

Remember that your opening must always be relevant to the topic and leads back to the content of your presentation.

Let’s explore the first one.

“Six years ago, I never thought that” …

This is one opening that is easy to start. Just think of what happened to you 6, 3, 5 years ago before you started doing things that you are doing today.

For example …

“Six years ago, I never thought that I would be speaking here today. I was an introvert then and was afraid to talk to people. I was so bad that I had to ….”

The second,

“Imagine, imagine that …”

Here, you want to get your audience to feel your experience, asking them to imagine an event. You are asking them to follow you and think along with you. This is a very powerful start for a presentation to engage your audience.

“Imagine, imagine that you wake up in the morning from a good night’s sleep and breakfast is served to you on your bed. And as you savor your delicious breakfast, you….”

The Third,

“I always believed that … but I was wrong …”

This is a good way to get the audience’s attention. Start with something that is a common belief, and then you follow with a short story, telling the audience that they all believed wrongly.

“I always believe that beautifully designed slides will helped enhanced the presentation. Not until someone came up to me and told me. ‘You have beautiful slides. But I don’t understand what your slides are saying.’ I soon realized that I believed wrongly.”

The Forth,

“Something about me that you’ll never guess…”

This fourth presentation opening is effective when presenting to an audience that generally knows you but there might be things you seldom talked about or have never revealed about yourself to them.

“Something about me that you’ll never guess is that I have a pilot license and I can fly a light aircraft. I have over 100 flying hours, and 10 were solo hours.”

The last one,

“What would you do if …”

So, this opening asks the audience a question. You can ask any question, but make sure the question impacts the audience. Ask a shocking question. It will be powerful because it throws the audience off guard and gets their attention.

“What would you do if you walked into a presentation and realized one thousand pairs of eyes were staring at you?”

There you go,

I hope these five presentation opening suggestions will get you started thinking about how you will craft the opening of your next presentation. You might not get it right the first time. However, you will definitely get there after a few presentations.

You know the saying, “Practice makes perfect”. Try the different openings to see which you are most comfortable with when presenting. Whichever opening you choose, it must be relevant, and that you can link it back to your presentation content.

Remember that the first 30 seconds of your presentation will decide if your audience will stay with you throughout the whole presentation.

Until my next article, practice the above five ways of starting your presentation and make a difference in how you command the stage during your next presentation.

Follow me! ANG Tian Teck for ideas to design better presentations.