When I used to work in a startup accelerator I heard TONS of elevator pitches. The trend I started to notice was that although the message of the speech was put together well I was bored or even worse I didn’t believe or trust the speaker!
Mistake 1. Frozen hands
The best speakers use their hands frequently but what most entrepreneurs who haven’t been trained in public speaking do is keep their hands by their sides almost the entire time. In his book Winning Body Language Mark Bowden says”Dropping your hands and standing still in front of an audience causes your unconcious mind to wonder why you have made yourself a static target.” (P. 30)
So while most people who hold their hands to their sides think that it is helping to avoid distracting the audience what it is actually doing is initiating a freeze response in your body and wasting one of your biggest nonverbal assets.
So, what is the solution?
Use you hands to punctuate and demonstrate your main pointsTurn your palms up and raise your forearms in front of you to convey openness and trustworthinessMake a flat hand and do a single or double ‘karate chop’ to emphasize your belief in a point (really useful for statistics.)Steeple your hands when you want to appear credible and confidentMistake 2. Nervous rocking.
The second mistake many entrepreneurs new to public speaking make is that they sway left and right during their speech. This nervous gesture is a way to expend energy and shows the audience non-verbally that the speaker wants to get out of there as soon as possible!
Solution: plant your feet facing your audience, and if you get nervous take a few slow steps and re-plant.
Mistake 3. Staring into the ether.
I call this mistake staring into the ether because many new speakers will look at the wall at the back of the room in order to seem like they are looking at the audience while still avoiding eye contact. It doesn’t fool anyone though. I’ll admit, when I first started public speaking I was a HUGE offender in this area.
Solution, “Square gazing”
I call the solution circular gazing. Here is how you do it. Look at one person in the front left of your audience, and speak directly to them for 10-20 seconds. After that, move to the rear left, rear right, and front right. Keep moving slowly through this imaginary square looking at new people each time and you are sure to keep your audience engaged.
Mistake 4. The question inflection.
This one is for all you valley girl entrepreneurs out there
Speaking in uptalk undermines your message and makes you sound like you are questioning if what you are saying is true. In order to overcome this nonverbal nightmare work on giving your speech with the tone of instructing your audience to do something.
So now I want you to:
Leave a comment on this post. What body language tips are you going to implement into your elevator pitch
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