How to Hook Your Audience with a Great Opener

Want to grab listeners’ attention and engagement immediately? Here’s how to hook your audience with a great opener!

“I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of our country, of our empire, of our allies, and, above all, of the cause of Freedom.”

That’s Winston Churchill, in his first broadcast speech as Prime Minister on May 19, 1940. Most of us don’t have a topic as momentous as the “tremendous battle raging in France and Flanders”[i]to speak about—or a talent as great as Churchill’s. But we have just as much need to hook our audiences at the start of our speeches and presentations.

So how are you doing in this department? It’s not going too far to say that the success of your talk depends upon your getting listeners to get engaged and stay that way. That’s what a speech “hook” or “grabber” is designed to do.