Three steps to nailing your next pitch

With extensive experience in the field of presentations and confidence, The Voice Clinic's founder, Monique Harrisberg, shares her three steps to nailing your next pitch:

1. Frame your story

Ensure that your introduction is short, interesting and dynamic. Include a joke, story or quote to make sure it catches the attention of your audience. How you start your message is the most vital part of ensuring a successful presentation. Use different voices if necessary to bring out the true story or character of your joke or quote.

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A critical thing to remember about presentations is to divide it into five to ten major points, making sure that one point is discussed every five minutes.

2. Plan your delivery

Use the voice well by ensuring that it is warm, rich, and resonant. One must make sure about using the right words as your presentation is conveyed. Know the people you are presenting to and know how to influence them by getting as much involvement and input from the group as you can by engaging them.

The biggest mistake we see is that people move their bodies too much. People do this naturally when they're nervous, but it's distracting and makes the speaker seem weak. Make sure you use your body very well through smiling, eye contact, acting confidently and in a self-assured manner, even if you don't feel that way.

3. Plan the multimedia

With so much technology at our disposal, it may feel almost mandatory to use, at a minimum, presentation slides, especially when pitching a new corporate client.

Keep it simple; don't repeat out loud words that are on the slide. Not only is reciting slides a variation of the teleprompter problem, but information is interesting only once, and hearing and seeing the same words feels repetitive.

Many of the best speakers don't use slides at all, and many talks don't require them. If you have photographs or illustrations that make the topic come alive, then yes, show them. If not, consider doing without, at least for some parts of the presentation.

These three tips should have you nailing your next pitch without any glitches. For tips like these and other useful notes on confidence and credibility, get hold of Monique Harrisberg's book, Make Yourself Heard: How to talk, act & dress your way to success.