From Scattered to Structured: How to Start a Presentation Right

Great presentations are all about communication. You need to share information in a way that means your audience remembers what you said long after you finish.

The first 30 – 60 seconds of your presentation are crucial for grabbing the audience’s attention. Get it right and they’ll relax, letting you guide them through your material. Get it wrong and you might lose them before you’ve started.

Good public speaking takes practice, but there are tactics you can use to make a strong first impression in those critical seconds.

For this guide on how to start a presentation, we’ve mined our personal experience and expert advice from professional public speakers for opening techniques that work.

We’ll walk you through practical sentences to kick off your presentation, each with an introduction slide example. And we’ll look at how to prepare so that your audience remembers your message long afterwards.

Once your presentation is written, Piktochart can handle your design with our AI Presentation maker.

Humans think in stories. Stories grab our interest and help us retain information. If you read a list of stats at an audience, no one will remember what you said 10 minutes after you finish. But if you wrap that same information in a good story, it’s much more likely to stick. And understanding what your story is helps you write a good presentation introduction.

Screenwriting legend and presenting consultant Robert McKee said, “If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.”

The power of story structure doesn’t just apply to movies. You might be presenting to a room of delegates at a national conference or explaining a software update to Susan and Ted from Accounts …  it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re communicating, story is where you start.

Well-known public speaking coach Graham Davies says that “…the bit that most people get wrong is the preparation process. They don’t have a technique for going form a blank screen or a white piece of paper to a finished, scripted presentation, and they just try to bluff it, reading bullet points off PowerPoint slides.”

Preparation starts with information. Whether it’s research findings, job qualifications, or a startup pitch, there’s something you want your audience to learn.

First, decide exactly what information you want your audience to leave with. This will guide how to introduce yourself in your presentation.

If you’re struggling with structuring the information, you can use Piktocharts AI Presentation maker to brainstorm. Just enter your information into the presentation maker and Piktochart instantly produces a slide sequence.

Now you know what information you want to deliver, you can structure it into a story. Here are some tips on how to do that:

• Who is the hero of your story? (Hint – it’s not you!) Make up an ideal audience member. What do they want? What’s stopping them getting it? What content from your presentation will help them achieve that goal?

• Write the ending first – what is the main take-away from your presentation? When you know that you can tease it in your opener and build up to it in the structure.

• What’s your beginning, middle and end? Write sentences for where your story starts, the juicy middle bit where you deliver the information, and the end where you wrap it all up.
  
• Think like a detective – how did you uncover the insight you’re presenting? That process forms a story. What clues did you follow? Where did you go wrong? How did you finally identify the murderer? (Sorry, solution.)
  
  

If you’re struggling with the structure of your presentation, check out some presentation design strategies.

The following tried and tested introduction ideas for presentations will help you work out what to say in your opening lines.

This isn’t a prescriptive list. How to start a presentation depends on who you are, the story you’re telling, and your audience. But these techniques are adaptable to your personal style or situation.

What every suggestion on this list has in common is engagement – they all work to grab your audience’s attention in the first few seconds and keep them with you until your conclusion.

Your name, why you’re here, and the subject of the presentation.This simple approach might be all you need as a first line.

It’s generally a good idea not to boast about yourself or your company in your opener. It’s the information you’re communicating that’s important, not you. You want people to come away from the presentation having learned something, and that shouldn’t just be how awesome you are!

This is true even in job interviews. You want your interview panel to know you’re the person for the job, but it’s better to show how you can solve their problems.

EXAMPLE:  “Hi, I’m Vikram Das, head of customer insight, and I’m going to share with you the key findings from our latest research.”

Useful opening sentences:

“My name is… and I’m …. today I’ll be talking about…”

“Great to be here, I’m ….”

Your opening sentence can simply tell the audience the structure of your presentation. Before you write this introduction, you’ll need to know the key points you want to communicate.

It can help to lay out your presentation structure visually, even if you’re not planning on using visuals. This process helps to clarify your main points in your mind so you can summarize them.

EXAMPLE: “In this session I’ll be sharing the four key things you need to include in a business plan – Executive Summaries, Competitive Analysis, Marketing Strategy and Financials.”

Useful opening sentences:

“Today I’ll be covering…”

“You’ll come away from this session with…”

“I’m going to run through…”

If you’re pitching a business idea or selling a product or service, starting with the problem that your audience faces is a powerful opening technique. Starting from the problem your audience has engages them from the get go.

Uber’s pitch deck from 2008 started with a problem statement that everyone could recognise: taking a traditional cab can be a hassle.

You can set up a visual summary of your problem statement like Uber did here using Piktochart’s AI Presentation maker.

You might be tempted to squeeze lots of information into a problem statement, but we recommend keeping visuals simple. Uber’s problem statement is just two points with supporting information. It’s better to talk passionately about your problem statement in your presentation rather than read out lots of text from a slide, as that will make you sound stilted.

Check out more pitch deck examples for inspiration on how to state a problem in a pitch deck.

EXAMPLE:  “Online retailers face a big problem; 20% of what they sell gets returned by the customer, costing them money and damaging the environment.”

Useful opening sentences:

“The top problem that affects….”

“Most of us in the room will have…”

“We all know the problem with….”

Why do YOU care about what you’re about to say? If you don’t care, why should your audience?

Injecting some genuine emotion into your presentation doesn’t mean you have to weep at the lectern. It can just be an honest statement of why this matters to you, and why it should matter to your audience.

TED Talk curator Chris Anderson says, “The most engaging speakers do a superb job of very quickly introducing the topic, explaining why they care so deeply about it, and convincing the audience members that they should, too.”

EXAMPLE:  “I’m going to be talking about an issue that homeless people are dealing with day to day on the streets, and run through a solution we’ve come up with that I believe will improve lives.”

Useful opening sentences:

“I’m here to talk about a subject close to my heart…”

“I’ve spent my career working on…”

Empathizing with the audience creates a rapport between you and them, making it more likely they’ll engage with you from the start .

This might take the form of a shared experience or frustration, or it could be a statistic that affects people in the room.

In one of the most famous speeches in history, John F. Kennedy used empathy to connect with the audience when he said Ich bin ein Berliner – I am a Berliner.

EXAMPLE: “I’m sure we’ve all been frustrated with data siloing within our business; we all know that data from other departments would be valuable, but we can’t access it.”

Useful opening sentences:

“I’m sure we’ve all…”

“Everyone here…”

“How many of you ….?”

Smiling releases dopamine into the brain, making us feel happy and relaxed—the perfect state for an audience.

Of course, it’s easy to suggest opening your presentation with a comedy zinger, but most of us aren’t professional comedians. So how do you write an opener that gets the audience smiling rather than cringing?

A good tip is to be honest and acknowledge the obvious. Stand-up comedians often play off what the audience is already thinking in their opening line. In a presentation, that might be as simple as acknowledging how nervous you are, or how relieved you are that your slides loaded. Everyone knows what it’s like to be nervous in front of an audience, and will be willing to help break the tension with a laugh.

You could also acknowledge what the audience might be thinking about the presentation itself or share a funny story from when you were gathering the information.

Whatever you say, do it with a smile (smiles get smiles back!). And if you do get a laugh, pause to let it subside it before moving on.

EXAMPLE: “Hi, I’m Vikram Das and you’ll be pleased to hear I’m going summarise the key findings from our latest report so that you don’t have to read it. I mean, I get bored, and I wrote it!”

Useful opening sentences:

“Hi, my name is … and yes, I know what you’re thinking….”

“As you can see, I’m very nervous but at least…”

This technique is used in online headlines designed to get people to click; promise the audience information, then delay delivering it. If they want it, they must stay until the end.

In a presentation, you can create a curiosity gap by mentioning the solution you’re going to share without saying what it is. Numbers can work well here; for instance, promising a list of five solutions or starting a personal story that sets up a problem situation, but not ending the story until later.

Be careful not to stretch the audience’s patience too far. We’re all so familiar with the curiosity gap headline structure that it can be irritating if overused. Make sure to deliver the goods quickly in the body of your talk, so the audience knows you’re going to deliver on your promise.

EXAMPLE: “Last year I went through a legal battle that nearly ended my business, simply because I didn’t know about basic copyright law. Today I’m going to tell you what I wish I’d known.”

Useful starting phrases:

“I’m going to talk about the top five ways to….”

“Why (doesn’t / haven’t / can’t etc.)….”

“Here’s what you need to know about…”

“I’m going to tell you how to….”

Think about what makes a good cinema trailer. It’s not necessarily showing all the best parts of the film up front. Good trailers get people excited about the promise of the film, leaving them wanting more. In an action film, it might be explosions; for romantic comedies, it might be a kiss.

Cinema trailer editor Jon Mesher says, “Movie trailers should show enough to engage an audience and at the same time leave them intrigued to know more. Teaser trailers are the most successful for me. They are the first impression, they set the tone for a film, often using limited dialogue and footage. And they don’t give away too much!”

In the opening to your presentation, you can use the same technique. You’re not going to tell the audience everything right away (after all, why would they listen to the rest of the talk?) but you can tease some of the highlights, or the most exciting idea.

EXAMPLE: “I’m going to take you through our latest software update, and I can’t wait to share how our simple solution to the column toggling issue reduces hours of work”

Useful starting phrases:

“I think you’re going to be surprised by…”

“By the end of this presentation you’re going to…”

“What would happen if…”

You often see advice to start a presentation with a shocking fact or statistic, and that’s easy if your presentation is about global warming or how many spiders we swallow in our sleep. But even if it’s about something more mundane like streamlining customer success funnels you can probably find a relevant fact to surprise your audience.

Is there something that you can tell them they didn’t know before? Or information that overturns an established belief?

EXAMPLE: “I’m here today to talk about our digital payment security system. Did you know that last year, over half of consumers in the UK no longer carry a physical wallet, relying on digital devices to pay?”

Useful opening phrases:

“Did you know that….”

“You might think that…”

“Most people believe that…”

“I was surprised to learn that…”

It’s hard to make yourself inspirational (our advice is not to try!), but you can inspire people to take action on a specific issue. A call to action in an opening sentence gives your story momentum, and makes a connection with the audience, showing them directly how this is relevant to them.

EXAMPLE: “It’s time we worked together to become a paperless company, and I’m going to run through six things we can all do today to move our departments towards that goal.”

Useful starting phrases:

“It’s time to…”

“For too long…”

“Let’s …

A presentation will feel more dynamic if you can get the audience to be part of it. 

We’re not talking about yelling at them to scream if they want to make a million dollars. It can be as simple as asking for a show of hands or for people to stand up if something applies to them. It’s a good visual way to demonstrate how many people are affected by an issue while adding movement and interest.

EXAMPLE: “I’m here today to talk to you about our password security solution. Just for fun, I’d like you to have a go at guessing what the most common password in the world is.”

Useful opening phrases:

“Does anyone here…”

“Let’s see how many of us…”

“Put your hands up if….”

“Would anyone like to guess…”

Mapping out the story of your presentation is the first step to crafting a strong opening. Knowing where you’re heading, and how you’re going to get there, makes it easier to know how to start a presentation.

Once you’ve done the hard part – creating the content you’re going to deliver – let Piktochart handle presentation design in a few clicks with the AI Presentation maker. Input your content, or even just the presentation title, and the presentation maker quickly and effortlessly creates a slide deck for you. You can then edit the design with a few clicks to add different images or content.

With your words and visuals in place, all you have to worry about is delivery. When you get up to speak, take some deep breaths, pause before you start, and choose four or five people in the audience to make eye-contact with during your presentation. Have your key points on prompt cards, so you can glance down at any point for a reminder.

And remember, the most important thing is to speak naturally and passionately about your subject. Public speaking expert Kristi Hedges believes we all have the skills required for good public speaking, even if we don’t know it. “Watch a few TED talks. You’ll find plenty of reticent, wonky presenters who are fascinating. What makes a person a strong presenter is that their presence shines through, showing their passion and expertise for their topic.”

If you’re looking for some inspiration on public speaking, check out the 100 Best Ted Talks.

Good luck, you’ve got this!