You don't need conversational techniques or openers, you sound just fine. What you say in fact matters very little. You'll see Phil here having successes open with rape jokes and you'll see others having success with "Do you like custard?".

What matters more is your body language, the subtleties in your tone, your demeanour and how invested in the situation you are.

Start by looking into those, particularly the last one, stop caring and you'll see all the other things you do improve simply because by not caring too much you display all the right things.