Seven Classic Opening Gambits


  1. Question. A question directed at the members of the audience.

  2. Factoid . A striking statistic or little-known fact.

  3. Retrospective/ Prospective . A look backward or forward.

  4. Anecdote. A short human interest story.

  5. Quotation. An endorsement about your business from a respected source.

  6. Aphorism. A familiar saying.

  7. Analogy. A comparison between two seemingly unrelated items that helps to illuminate a complex, arcane, or obscure topic.

The Question

One excellent way to open a presentation is with a question directed at the audience. A well- chosen , relevant question evokes an immediate response, involves the audience, breaks down barriers, and gets the audience thinking about how your message applies to them.

Scott Cook, the founding CEO of Intuit Software, used an Opening Gambit Question to powerful effect. Prior to Intuit's public offering, Scott appeared at the Robertson, Stephens and Company Technology Investment Conference in San Francisco. Here's how he began his presentation:

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let me begin today's presentation with a question. How many of you balance your checkbooks? May I see a show of hands?" Naturally, almost everybody's hand went up.

"Okay. Now, how many of you like doing it?" Everybody's hand went down. There were chuckles in the room, and everyone was listening to Scott Cook.

Scott continued , "You're not alone. Millions of people around the world hate balancing their checkbooks. We at Intuit have developed a simple, easy-to-use, inexpensive, new personal finance tool called Quicken."

It would have been deadly for Scott to launch into his presentation with a detailed description of Quicken; had he done so, it's likely that his investment audience would soon have fallen prey to the MEGO syndrome. Instead, his Opening Gambit Question captured their interest and got them involved immediately.

But be careful with the call-for-a-show-of-hands question. It can be considered invasive. Many audiences have been there, done that, and won't appreciate being drawn out that directly. Besides, what if you don't get the show of hands you expect? The question backfires. Scott Cook pulled it off because he was a skilled presenter even before starting Intuit, having been a management consultant at Bain and Company.

An effective variation that avoids these dangers is to ask your audience a rhetorical question that is meaningful and relevant to them, and then to promptly provide them with an answer. Mike Pope, who started as the CFO of DigitalThink, Inc., a public company that provides custom e-learning courseware, succeeded to the role of CEO. One of Mike's first jobs was to announce a new strategic focus for the company to the employees in an all-hands meeting. He was well aware that the new strategy, which involved belt- tightening , would have an impact on some of the employees ' jobs. He chose an approach that emphasized the greater good for the company.

Mike began his presentation this way: "If I were to ask Fred here to define DigitalThink's strategic focus, he'd give me one answer. If I were to ask Lisa the same question, I'd get another answer. In fact, I'd probably get as many answers as there are people in the company. You'd all be right. That's because we're trying to be all things to all people. That won't work anymore. I'm here today to define our new strategic focus so that we can all be on the same sheet of music and be successful as a company."

Mike then proceeded to lay out the new strategy. When he concluded his presentation, the audience erupted in spontaneous applause and continued to buzz with positive feedback afterward. By offering them a plan that could produce better results (a WIIFY for them), Mike had prepared them to accept his new conditions.

The rhetorical question can be an excellent ice-breaker, as long as it's both provocative and relevant to your audience.

The Factoid

An Opening Gambit Factoid is a simple, striking statistic or factual statement: a market growth figure, or a detail about an economic, demographic, or social trend with which your audience may not be familiar. This factoid must be closely related to the main themes of your presentation, and to your Point B. The more unusual, striking, and surprising your factoid, the better.

Adrian Slywotzky is a leading management writer and a vice president with Mercer Management Consulting. Adrian often speaks to groups of big-company executives to explain his views about the sources of business growth of the next decade and the strategies business leaders must use to tap those sources. To capture their attention, Adrian begins his presentations with a slide entitled "The Growth Crisis." It lists several of America's biggest, most famous, and most admired companies, from a broad range of industries.

Against this backdrop, Adrian says: "Every investor is looking for companies that can offer consistent double-digit growth in sales and profits. Of all the many great companies listed here, none can offer that kind of growth. Not one! It's startling, but true. Our research shows that once you subtract growth from company acquisitions and other special circumstances, none of these leading firms has been able to grow at double-digit rates over the past decade."

By the time Adrian has finished communicating this factoid to his audience (which is made up of executives at companies very much like those listed on the slide), many of them are feeling anxious, but all are ready to listen closely to Adrian's suggested solutions to the predicament.

The Retrospective/Prospective View

Think of this approach as "That was then, this is now." A retrospective (backward) or prospective (forward) look allows you to grab your audience's attention by moving them in one direction or another, away from their present, immediate concerns: that urgent message on the handheld, the mercurial NASDAQ, or that fight with their spouse.

For example, you could refer to the way things used to be done, the way they are done now, and the way you project them being done in the future. The contrast can highlight the value of your company's product or service offerings, thereby framing an effective lead-in to your presentation's main themes and your Point B.

A technology company can quickly capture the evolving power of its solution by showing the speed and capabilities of its products five years ago (a lifetime in the high-tech world), the vastly improved speed and capabilities of today, and the still greater speed and capabilities of the new line of products that will be going on sale in six months' time.

The Retrospective/Prospective approach can also be used to motivate. James Richardson became the Chief Marketing Officer at Cisco, following a number of senior executive roles in his 13 plus years with the company. He took on his new job at a difficult time. In 2002, the stock market had been battered, the tech industry in general was seeing slowed customer spending, and the telecommunications sector, in particular, was seeing reduced sales of networking equipment.

At the Cisco global sales meeting that year, the company's sales force was feeling hard-pressed to meet their quotas. James was a keynote speaker, and he began his presentation with a retrospective view that he quickly turned into a prospective view: "I've been where you are. I remember when it was no problem getting orders from our customers. It was easier then to capture opportunity when markets were growing very quickly. But the world is different today. That demand has greatly slowed. Now it's time for us to go out and seek new growth markets and new sources of revenue, and start creating opportunity."

The Anecdote

By an Opening Gambit Anecdote, I do not mean a joke. I like a good joke as much as anyone , but my professional advice to you, and to every single person I coach, is never to tell a joke in a presentation. No one can predict its success or failure. Even if it does get a laugh , in most cases, it will distract from rather than enhance your persuasive message.

What I mean by an anecdote is a very short story, usually one with a human interest angle. Its effectiveness as an Opening Gambit lies in our natural tendency to be interested in and care about other people. An anecdote creates immediate identity and empathy with your audience. An anecdote is a simple and effective way to make an abstract or potentially boring subject come vividly to life.

Ronald Reagan, "The Great Communicator," never spoke for more than a couple of minutes without using an anecdote to personalize his subject. He was always ready with a brief tale about the brave soldier, the benevolent nurse, or the dignified grandfather as a way of illustrating his themes. Invariably, the tale would coax an empathic nod or a smile of recognition from his audience.

Newspapers and magazines regularly use anecdotes to capture their readers' attention. Just look at the front page of today's paper. You're sure to find at least one example of an Opening Gambit Anecdote. Every professional writer knows how well it works.

Here, from very different settings, are examples of how the anecdote can be used to launch a powerful business presentation:

In the spring of 1996, I worked with Tim Koogle, then CEO of Yahoo!, the Internet search engine company, as he and his team, including CFO Gary Valenzeula and founder Jerry Yang, planned their IPO road show. Tim and Gary would be the presenters, while the irrepressible Jerry would come along to answer questions. After considering several possible Opening Gambits, Tim decided to begin his presentation with a personal and true-to-life anecdote keyed to a concern he knew he shared with every member of his audience. His anecdote went something like this:

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. As you can imagine, going public is a very busy time: There are SEC documents to file, meetings with lawyers and auditors , a road show presentation to prepare, and of course, a company to run. Imagine how I felt last week when I suddenly realized it was April and I hadn't prepared my tax returns. I had a host of questions about my return, and I hadn't even had a chance to sit down with my accountant .

Fortunately, I work for Yahoo! So I logged on, clicked on the Yahoo! home page, clicked on the menu item called Finance, then clicked on the menu item called Taxes and the answers to all my questions were right there.

When you consider that Yahoo! provides this kind of powerful Internet search service for a vast array of subjects, from finance to travel to entertainment to sports to health, and then consider the growing legions of users of the Internet, you'll see that the advertising revenues Yahoo! can derive from those legions of users represents a very attractive business opportunity. We invite you to join us.

The Yahoo! IPO story has an interesting extra twist that sheds light on some other presentation principles. A key element of the Yahoo! business model was to promote its brand with a youthful, irreverent, and upbeat image, expressed by its name , its advertising, and even by the cartoon-like letters of its bright yellow and purple logo. In planning the IPO road show, the Yahoo! team and their advisors pondered ways to capture that brash image without alienating staid investors. At one point, they even considered wearing satin team jackets in the company colors for the road show, and distributing bright yellow kazoos emblazoned with the company logo. These plans were abandoned in favor of a short video intended to set the tone at the very beginning of the presentation. Shot in MTV fashion, replete with fast cuts and odd camera angles, the clip featured exuberant youngsters running, jumping, and performing antics while shouting, "Do you Yahoo!?"

By all standards, the video was very well done. And as a television veteran, you might have assumed that I'd have welcomed the idea of starting a presentation with a video clip. But as I always do when a video is considered, I recommended that it be relegated to second position, after Tim Koogle's Opening Gambit Anecdote. After all, I reasoned, the primary investment consideration was management, not slick videos . In fact, Tim had been recruited to run the upstart company because he had gravitas . He had served as the president of Intermec Corporation, a division of Litton Industries, and prior to that, had spent eight years at Motorola. Tim's history of success in these respected, "grown-up" businesses would go a long way toward getting the investment community to take the Yahoo! kids seriously. Why not make management the star?

The investment bankers underwriting Yahoo!'s IPO overruled my recommendation. It was probably one of the few times in history that the advice of a media person was rejected by an investment banker as being too conservative. The video ran first. In the end, it didn't matter much. Yahoo! was so hot that its bandwagon rolled merrily along, with legions of eager riders clamoring to get on-board .

Three years earlier, however, in a similar situation, my counsel was heeded. Macromedia, a company that makes software authoring tools for multimedia, engaged me to coach their IPO road show team. I didn't get around to starting my program with them until after they had used in-house resources to develop an animated film to open their road show. The film clip, in which a sparkling, animated, golden "M" danced onto the screen while performing spins and leaps to effervescent soundtrack music, was quite impressive. Nevertheless, as always, I recommended that the film be relegated to second position, after the CEO's Opening Gambit.

Then I helped Macromedia CEO Bud Colligan develop the following anecdote:

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Macromedia public offering. Last year, I was king of the hill at Apple Computer. I had a great job that provided me with boundless resources, deep staff, and abundant budgets . Why, you might ask, would I make the leap to this risky startup? The reason is that my job at Apple was to evaluate and develop new technologies. A lot of fascinating new programs and devices came across my desk, but the one that really caught my eye was multimedia.

Now I'm sure that you've all heard a lot about multimedia lately. The word seems to be on everybody's lips. But if you were to ask someone to explain the term , most people would have trouble doing so. So rather than try to define multimedia, let me show you multimedia.

Then Bud ran the film clip. Thanks to Bud's Opening Gambit Anecdote, the film was much more than a charming bit of fluff. It was also an impressive demonstration of the kind of creativity that Macromedia could make available to millions of customers, and therefore highly relevant to Macromedia's Point B.

Now let's consider an example from a completely different business setting: Argus Insurance is a Yakima, Washington-based company that sells worksite insurance benefit plans to company employees. These are customized plans that allow each employee to pick the kinds of coverage he or she most needs and wants to pay for, above and beyond the insurance provided by their employer.

Traditionally, Argus agents had simply visited companies, gathered employees in a room, and showed them a generic videotape about their service. The Argus agents then handed out pamphlets and waited to take orders, which were too often few and far between.

When I worked with a group from Argus, I introduced them to the concept of the Opening Gambit. With just a little help, Carol Case, an Argus Insurance agent, came up with the following Opening Gambit based on a real-life scenario:

Last year, one of Argus' customers had a fire in their home. They think an electrical short might have caused it, but no one really knows. Anyway, the home burned down, destroying almost everything they owned. Talk about a disaster! Not only did they lose their home, they were financially crippled as well.

Our insured, like many people, now realizes he could be just one step away from disaster. Luckily, we at Argus Insurance had a solution. Argus reviewed his previous insurance plan and found gaps in the coverage. We then provided quotes for comprehensive, low-cost insurance that provided coverage not provided by his previous policy.

Any human being can identify with this scenario. Carol is signing up many more Argus customers now than in the past, thanks largely to the power of a compelling Opening Gambit.

The Quotation

Another option is the Opening Gambit Quotation. I don't mean a quotation from William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, or even Tom Peters unless one of them specifically said something about your company. But if you can provide an endorsement or positive comment about you, your products, or your services from The Wall Street Journal or the industry press, then the quotation provides relevant value. An endorsing quotation can capture your audience's interest and give you credibility at the outset of your presentation.

Please resist the temptation to go down to your local bookstore or library and get one of those Ten Million Quotations for All Occasions books. Most often, all those quotations turn out to be inappropriate for any occasion.

When DigitalThink went public in 1999, Mike Pope was the CFO. At the time, the Internet was bubbling into high froth, and a host of other companies in the e-learning space were going public, too. Three years later, upon Mike's succession to CEO, I delivered my Power Presentations program to him, and I noticed that Mike smiled knowingly when I introduced the Opening Gambit Quotation option.

Why the smile? Mike explained: "The year we went public, almost every e-learning IPO road show used a quotation from John Chambers [the CEO of Cisco and a kingpin of the Internet]: Chambers said, 'The next killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make email usage look like a rounding error.'" The quote was a relevant, validating, and compelling start for any company in that space.

The Aphorism

An aphorism, or familiar saying, can make for an excellent Opening Gambit. But be sure to select one that relates naturally and credibly to your main theme, and to your Point B.

Here are a few examples of Opening Gambit Aphorisms: I once worked on a biotechnology IPO with a company that was being formed by the merger of three smaller companies with related sciences in cancer research. They launched their presentation with the following: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts ." The original axiom from Euclid, the founder of geometry, is: "The whole is equal to the sum of its parts," but the biotech presenters gave the familiar saying a little twist. In doing so, they instantly identified the synergies that the new company would enjoy by combining competencies and resources.

Here are a few other examples:

A company that made graphic display screens used "Seeing is believing" to immediately express the clarity and fidelity of their unique products.

A company with a speech recognition technology used "Easier said than done."

A company that played in a niche market between two giant competitors used "Hit 'em where they ain't." This aphorism, attributed to old-time baseball great Wee Willie Keeler, is a pithy way of saying, "You don't have to be the biggest or the strongest to win in a competition; you can succeed simply by focusing on an area that others are ignoring."

In each case, the Opening Gambit Aphorism triggered the attention of the audience at the outset, allowing the presenter to move them into the heart of the presentation. Grab and navigate .

The Analogy

The final option, the Opening Gambit Analogy, is my personal favorite. An analogy is a comparison between two seemingly unrelated items. In the introduction to this book, I drew an analogy between a massage therapist and an effective presenter. I hope that got your attention.

A well-devised analogy is an excellent way of explaining anything that is arcane, obscure, or complicated. If your business deals with products, services, or systems that are technologically complex or require specialized knowledge to understand, look for a simple analogy that can allow audiences to grasp the essence of the story.

The simpler and clearer the analogy, the better. If you were trying to sell investors on a company that had developed improved software for data network management, you might explain your business by using a twist on a familiar comparison: "Think of us as the people who repair the potholes on the information superhighway. We plan to collect a toll from every driver who travels on our turnpike!"

While the roadway analogy is a common choice for networking stories, I found an unusual variation of it for the IPO road show of a biotechnology company. TheraTech (now Watson Laboratories, Inc., of Utah) had a technology that enabled controlled-release drug delivery through transdermal patches. During the road show preparations with Charles Ebert, TheraTech's Vice President of Research and Development and a Ph.D. in pharmaceutics, he began to discuss the essentials of his core science. As Charles knowledgeably and thoroughly described TheraTech's matrix systems and permeation enhancers , I asked him to pause and explain those terms. Charles said, "Think of the matrix as a truck; think of the drug as its cargo; think of the skin as a border crossing where the truck has to stop; and think of the permeation enhancer as the motor that lifts the barrier and allows the truck to pass through."

Science is complex; by comparison, business is relatively simple. Often, it's difficult to combine the two. While the science behind the sequencing of the human genome is extremely complex, its business potential can be explained through an analogy: "Because our company's researchers were the first to locate and map the genes that cause several major diseases, we'll be in a position to require royalty payments from the big pharmaceutical firms working to eliminate those diseases. It's like owning the copyright on a hit song and collecting a royalty every time it gets played."

Vince Mendillo is the Director of Worldwide Marketing for Microsoft's Mobile Devices. He made the opening presentation at the Mobility Developers Conference in London that Microsoft organized for independent software vendors , or ISVs, in Europe. ISVs write the applications that drive thousands of mobile devices as well as countless other software products.

Vince began his presentation with an Opening Gambit Analogy, made even more effective by leading up to it with this gracious greeting:

Good morning! And since I am in Europe, I should add: Bonjour, Buenos dias, and as an Italian-American, Buon giorno!

I'm also a history buff, and I've studied the history of the homeland of my ancestors . For centuries, Italy was divided into many autocratic and warring states. But in 1870, as a result of the valiant efforts of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a guerrilla fighter who became a great general, Italy became a unified nation.

The mobile world today is very much like the Italy of yesterday , divided among autocratic warring factions. Now the battle is over technology, platforms and systems. You ISVs are suffering from the results of that factionalism. We at Microsoft hear you and understand your confusion. In response, we've developed an ecosystem of partners that includes Intel, Texas Instruments, and major carriers , all involved with Microsoft to create an open platform that will enable its members to participate in the deployment of 100 million Microsoft mobile devices. We welcome you here today, and invite you to become part of this ecosystem.

Vince's Opening Gambit was gracious, analogous, and unmistakably attention-getting.



Presenting to Win. The Art of Telling Your Story
Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, Updated and Expanded Edition
ISBN: 0137144172
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 94

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