Chapter Five. Capturing Your Audience Immediately

Company Examples

• Intuit Software

• DigitalThink

• Mercer Management

• Cisco Systems

• Yahoo!

• Macromedia

• Argus Insurance

• TheraTech

• Microsoft

• Network Appliance

• Cyrix

• ONI Systems

• Laurel Elementary School

Picture your audience at the start of your presentation. Imagine a group of potential customers who’ve come to hear you give a presentation about your company’s newest product, drifting into a meeting room one by one, sipping their coffee, checking their Blackberrys or I-Phones. Or a banker in a wood-paneled office, sitting behind a tall stack of documents, who must decide whether or not to lend your start-up money for expansion. Or, as with my IPO clients, a roomful of institutional investors in an elegant hotel banquet room, wondering how the NASDAQ is doing at that very moment in time.

Where are their minds? Chances are, not on you, not at the start of your presentation. Chances are they are thinking about an urgent message on their handhelds, the prior loan applicant, the mercurial NASDAQ, their next appointment, the report that’s overdue, or the fight they just had with their significant other.

If you were to launch into your presentation at full speed, describing your product, service, or technology, you would vault ahead of your audience, and they would be forced to catch up. Don’t make them think!

You can capture your audience immediately with an Opening Gambit, a short statement to seize their attention (and simultaneously, to help you launch into your presentation in a comfortable, conversational manner).

In this chapter, you’ll learn seven proven options you can use to craft your next Opening Gambit, with examples for each option.