Your audience decides early. They don't do it consciously, and the decision isn't irreversible. Still, the attention they lend you in the first minute and a half is roughly what you'll have for the next twenty minutes, and it's much cheaper to earn than to win back.
Ninety seconds at a working delivery rate of 130 words a minute is 195 words. Subtract five deliberate two-second pauses, which the section on pace and pauses argues for, and you have 80 seconds of speech: 173 words. That's your budget. Write the opening out in full and count the words. Then cut to fit, because an improvised opening never hits a word count by accident.
Worked example: three openings for one distribution review
Take three openings for the same US distribution review. Each is inside the budget, and each is timed at the same rate.
Opening A is the throat-clear. It runs 172 words and reaches its first fact at word 96. You'll have sat through it. Thanks for the time, apologies for the reschedule, a sentence about how much work went into this, an agenda, a note that some of the data is still being confirmed. At 130 words a minute the audience waits 44.3 seconds for the first piece of information. That's 55.8 percent of the opening spent on material that's about you.
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Opening B is the agenda read. It runs 138 words and reaches its first fact at word 61, so 28.2 seconds of waiting, 44.2 percent of it spent before the content. It sounds more professional than A and it isn't much better, because a spoken agenda only promises information.
Opening C leads with the fact. It runs 149 words, the first fact arrives at word 4, and the audience waits 1.85 seconds. Of 34 distribution sites, 9 lose money at the contribution line, which is 26.5 percent of the network. Those nine sites cost $11.4 million a year, or $1,266,667 each, which is $24,359 a week per site. Then comes the claim that follows from it, and then what the meeting is for.
All three fit inside 90 seconds. Opening C, with its five pauses, runs 78.8 seconds and leaves 11.2 seconds of ceiling. Between A and C, the room spends 42.5 seconds of its patience before anybody learns anything.
Patience is the one resource in a meeting that doesn't replenish.
What shape should an opening take?
The shape that works is short, and it has four parts. First, the fact that shouldn't be true. Then the claim that explains it. Then what you're asking for, and how long you'll take. That's sixty to ninety seconds, and then you're into the argument.
Two openings feel polite, and you should avoid both. One is the apology, in any form, including soft ones like "this is still rough" or "I only had a week". An audience takes you at your word and discounts everything after it. The other is a self-introduction longer than one sentence, in a room where three of the seven people already know who you are.