The Most Powerful Tool, Your Voice!

Control Your Voice, Control Your AUDIENCE

As a Presales professional, we have many tools at our disposal that can help us make a huge impact. Things such as advanced pointers, PowerPoints, amazing visual graphics, whiteboards, digital boards, software, and more. The most powerful tool you have at your disposal though is your voice. Your voice sets the tone for your presentation (no pun intended). How many times have you sat through a presentation that put you to sleep due to the monotone of the speaker? Here is an example of what poor voice control sounds like:

To correct this, we will focus on three key areas of your voice:

1. VOLUME - Our volume says something about our message. If you hear someone whispering, what first comes to your mind? You assume that the communicator doesn't want others to know what they are saying, they want to keep it a secret. What about someone who is speaking extremely loudly, to the point of shouting? You automatically thing that they are angry, upset, or maybe even frustrated about the message they are delivering. Sticking with one volume level creates a very boring, vanilla presentation and trains your audience mind to hear every part of your presentation the same. Use volume to grab attention, raise it or lower it to keep their listening active and the accentuate importance. Raising your periodically (not to a shout) will communicate that you are passionate and sharing something important. Lowering your voice (not to a whisper) can be used to draw your audience toward the edge of your seat and can help you communicate something serious. PRACTICE - Record yourself giving an introduction. In you introduction, include the following facts about yourself: Where you are from, favorite food, favorite vacation destination, what gets you the most excited, what type of car you drive, where you live, a cause that is important to you (i.e. raising money for childhood cancer). The first recording, keep your volume the same, the second recording, increase your volume during what gets you the most excited, then lower your volume on the cause that matters most to you. Review your videos.
   

2. PACE - Pace refers to speed at which you talk. Some people naturally speak very fast and some people speak slow. Similar to volume, pace can help you draw attention to your message. It helps you add variety to your speech so that the audience can maintain engaged listening. This can be demonstrated even in written word, for example, what...I...am...about...to...say...is...important. Notice that when you read the words with the multiple periods in them, you naturally slowed down, which makes you pay attention. Unfortunately, we are our biggest threat when it comes to pace. Too often, people often speak too fast during their speech as a result of being nervous. It is important to increase and decrease your pace (add variability), this will make your speech more conversational and your audience will translate that into you talking to them vs. giving them a speech. Two tips you can use to slow your speech down is to take a breath after each statement and to speak deliberately, think about each word you are saying. PRACTICE - Record yourself telling a story about your favorite vacation that you have ever been on. Don't practice it, just tell your story. Now that you have that recording, take out two sheets of paper, on one paper, write "BREATH" and on the other "DELIBERATE". With these two sheets of paper sitting in front of you, record yourself giving the same story, with a conscious effort to breath after every sentence and to speak deliberately.
   

3. PITCH - The pitch of your voice has to do with the highness and lowness of your tone. Pitch is one of the biggest attributes behind the emotion of your message. The less amount of pitch variation, the less emotion that will exist within your speech. Adding pitch variation has to also be deliberate and used in conjunction with volume and pace for maximum impact. Some words of caution when using pitch is that if the variation happens to quickly and not tied to making an impact on your message, it can come across as your voice "crackling", think about a boy at the awkward age where his voice changes, this would communicate nervousness, which is not the emotion we want to leverage. A higher pitch is typically related to excitement and passion whereas a lower pitch is closer related to a mood of seriousness and/or caution. PRACTICE - Record yourself answering the following two questions (spending no more than 30 seconds on each question): 1. What is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to you? What was the scariest thing that has ever happened to you? Now record yourself again answering those same questions, this time think about pitch and use highness in your variation for the first answer and lowness in your second answer. Notice the difference in impact as you compare the two.

Your voice is the most powerful tool you have in your position to make your speech memorable. As mentioned in my previous blog post, "Three Keys to Connecting to Your Audience" Maya Angelou said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." The most effective way to invoke those feelings is through your control of the variation in your volume, pace, and pitch of your voice. Finally, I leave you with a sample speech by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and as you listen, pay close attention to his command over his volume, pace, and pitch. Notice how he comes across as having a conversation and not delivering a speech, notice his emotion, his passion.