The opening is one of the most important aspects of your pitch. It determines whether people will be listening to your pitch. There are 3 ways you can use to start a pitch.
- A personal story
When you start your pitch with a short personal story, you build a relationship with your audience within a minute. A personal story helps them to get to know you better. At the same time, they feel sympathy for you because you opened up and put yourself in a vulnerable position.
- A question for the audience
This one works especially well with large audiences as it forces everybody to listen and put their phones away. A question stimulates your audience to actively participate in your pitch.
Very important: this question should always be a yes or no question, as you don’t want to start a long conversation with your audience during your pitch. A few examples:
- A bold statement
This is my personal favourite. Starting off your pitch with a bold statement usually has a big impact on your audience. A good bold statement has a small shocking effect, which will ‘wake them up’ and have them listen to you for the rest of your pitch. A few examples of bold statements:
- ‘95% of the pitches suck, well actually maybe even 99%.’
- ‘Every day 52,000 people are pitching to an investor. Almost all of them do a horrible job’
Want to know more about opening a pitch? Check out the Ultimate Pitch Guide.
Hi! I’m Ralph. I help startups to get funded by designing a persuasive pitch.
