Mastering Your Pitch: Start with a Bang to Captivate Your Audience (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Dominic Calenso and in this video I want to talk to you about how to start your pitch or presentation. They say it takes about seven seconds to make a first impression and that doesn't mean to say that if you do things wrong, if you kind of mess things up, you can't get it back. But what it does give us is a very clear window of opportunity to get our audience engaged on the side and listening to what we have to say. So the kind of most important thing to think about really is not to be boring. Now what do I mean by that? I mean don't do what everyone else does. I've sat through so many presentations where I've listened to someone say, good afternoon everybody or good evening everybody or good morning everybody. My name's Dominic, I'm from Inflow Training and I'm here today to talk to you about, well if you're here today to talk to me about, then just talk to me about it. Get on with it, get in there and tell me the interesting stuff that's going to get my attention. So what I'd recommend you do is this, I'd recommend that you start with a bang. I recommend that you do something a little bit different. I don't mean do anything crazy or pull a big stunt. What I do mean is start, instead of all that preamble, that good morning, good afternoon, start with a fact, with a figure, with a quote, with a story, maybe a bit of video or a bit of music, something that's going to grab the audience's attention and really get them engaged. Because what we don't want them doing, and this is what I see in so many speeches and presentations, is while the speaker's starting to speak, the audience are spending the first couple of minutes just finishing their emails or their text messages on their smartphones. And what we want people to do is to realise that you've started and to start paying attention to what it is you're talking about. So as far as I'm concerned, that's the secret to starting your pitch or your presentation. It's to start with a bang, grab your audience's attention, dispense with all the niceties and get them to engage with what you're saying straight away. I hope you've enjoyed the video. I'd love to hear your comments. Leave them in the comments box below or tweet me at Dominic Colenso. And if you're watching this video anywhere else but the website, DominicColenso.com, get yourself over there. That's where all the good stuff is. Until the next time, keep shining.