Secrets to Engaging Speaking with Pitch Mastery

So how do you add variation to your pitch to increase interest and attention and emphasis when you're speaking? Well, there are several ways of doing it. One way people do it is by thinking of memorizing their speech. And this is what happens to their pitch. It sounds awful because it's too consistent. So that's when you do nothing. You're telling yourself, I'm just going to get every word right and it destroys the pitch. You eliminate all elements, pitch variation, to add emphasis and attention to certain concepts. Another way of doing this is to think about, what would a Broadway actor do? And now I'm intentionally going to go up and. And you're trying to control yourself. It's as if you have a marionette conductor controlling things, or you're trying to watch a conductor telling you, up pitch here. Don't do that. You're going to sound contrived, phony. You're going to sound like an actor because you are acting, but you're going to sound like a bad actor. One thing people all over the globe these days are good at is spotting bad acting. Because everybody, they have access to a phone, can access Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, the finest actors in any country are all available to people if they have a cell phone, an Internet connection. So people know what good acting looks like and sounds like. They also know what bad acting looks like because everyone has seen bad movies, bad sitcoms, people coming across, artificial, stilted, phony. That is how you're going to come across. If you tell yourself, I want to add the correct pitch into my speech or presentation to sound enthusiastic, don't do it. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button. Right now. Here's what really needs to happen. There's a procedure you need to follow. The first one is do not write out word for word your entire speech. The second you do that, you are essentially turning yourself into a Broadway actor, a West End actor, where you're trying to follow a script. It's very difficult to do and it's almost impossible to do without sounding phony and contrived. You're going to be so much better off if you start with a handful of ideas you really want to convey to your audience, and then you put it in a simple outline with bullet points. A few bullet points, ideally no more than two, three, four words per bullet. Point your entire outline on a single sheet of paper. You glance down at it occasionally, and then you talk using whatever words come to mind. Will you occasionally make a mistake? Sure. Chances are, nobody will notice it. Will you occasionally repeat a word? Will you occasionally start a sentence, stop mid sentence, start again and do it? Yeah, you will. But guess what? Your audience won't care. You will sound natural. You sound relax when you do it that way. The pitch variation comes into your voice. Because we all speak when we're comfortable, in a way, using our voice that varies the pitch, the tone, the speed that makes our words more interesting to people. That's why it's crucial you get to the point of sounding like you're just natural. Because chances are, your use of pitch when you're talking to your best friend about the worst thing that happened to you last weekend, perfectly fine, you're going to sound interesting and engaging because the pitch will go up. You can't believe what this guy did when he cut me off in traffic. The pitch is going to go up, the speed is going to change as you're naturally telling stories. This is what you want in any presentation, whether it's a job interview, whether it is a new business pitch, to investors, to prospects, to clients. Now, you might not use the same words, you might not sing anything obscene the way you might with a friend, perhaps, or off color, but you do want a variation of tone. You want a change in your speed, pitch, variety. That's what's going to make you interesting to listen to. So it comes from rehearsal and practice. Now, I know you don't want to hear me say this. This is my hobby horse and I've been wildly unsuccessful in communicating. Maybe not you, but a lot of folks like you to do this. But it's still the number one solution to pitch and every other problem in a presentation. And that is practice your presentation out loud while recording it. Listen to it, watch it, ask yourself with respect to your voice, does this sound interesting? Do I want to listen to this person? Because the vast, vast majority of the time, for business people, students, executives, politicians I work with, the first time they practice a presentation, even if it wasn't written out word for word, even if they're not using a teleprompter, even if they're not using a script the first time they hear it, the pitch is kind of low key and even and smooth and what they think of as professional. And it's boring because it's too consistent, the pitch is the same. You're not using the highs, you're not using the lows, you're not using the best, you're not using the slows, you're not pausing, and all of that makes for a boring presentation. That's not what you want. Your goal is not to simply make sure I got these words in this order out of my mouth, and therefore I can say I got the job done. No, that's not your job. Your job is actual communication. If you want to communicate, several things have to happen. Your audience has to understand your message, they've got to remember your message, and in order to do that, they got to stay awake and pay attention to you. And one of the biggest problems of not altering your pitch is it's so boring to the audience. Let's try that again. One of the biggest problems with not altering your speech is boring your audience. You hear how awful that is? You probably fell asleep right there. Same message, same words, but the pitch was the same, the volume was the same, the tone was the same. Same. And it's monotone. It's boring. And that shifts everyone in your audience to plan B, reading their cell phone and ignoring you, meaning absolutely zero communication took place. So, yes, you do need to be concerned with your pitch. Altering your pitch so you can put variation in your tones, so you can put emphasis in your words. But the solution is not to, in most cases, mark up your speech and have an arrow saying, oh, raise my voice here, or a down arrow, or underlining it to go louder, that can occasionally work. If you're using a teleprompter for certain very specific situations. But the vast majority of the time when you speak to people, especially if it's face to face, leave the teleprompters at home, leave the scripts at home, work from a simple outline, talk to people, and make this a real conversation. If you're telling yourself, I'm having a conversation with one person, Even though there's 30 people in the room, but you're using the same tones of a one on one conversation, your pitch will come across as natural, relaxed, varied and interesting, and you will communicate.