Compound Opening Gambits
You can actually combine some of the above options for your Opening Gambit. Remember from Chapter 1 how Dan Warmenhoven, the CEO of Network Appliance, began his IPO road show: He started with the line “What's in a name?” (an aphorism: Juliet's immortal query to her Romeo). Then he asked, “What's an appliance?” (a rhetorical question, followed by the answer): “A toaster is an appliance.” Then Dan used the toaster as an analogy: “A toaster does one thing and one thing well: It toasts bread.”
With this triple Opening Gambit, Dan surely had his audience's attention, so he moved on to link the analogy to the rest of his presentation: “Managing data on networks is complicated. It is currently managed by devices that do many ...
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