How to pitch with confidence

Nerves are normal. On a daily basis, clients recount memories of embarrassment, fear and vulnerability as speakers.

And I hear these stories from all ages, from schoolchildren to people who run global businesses and lead countries. For example, an executive told me that she remembers the moment she stepped up to give a speech at school, no notes in hand as her dad told her to learn it by heart. She forgot her words and everyone laughed. She decided that speaking was risky and that belief followed her for years in a highly successful career.

But though these moments connect us all, so does our capacity to learn from them and to improve. The executive can now say – with quiet pride – that many years on from her school disaster she has graced stages in front of thousands of people feeling in control, enjoying the experience. Hand on heart I can tell you that speaking with confidence is learned, not innate.

There’s no such thing as a ‘born’ speaker. It’s what you do, day in, day out, that makes you confident, not who you are. For 30 years I wasn’t a confident speaker. I rushed. I shook. I worried. But steadily, using the steps I’m going to show you, I found that my confidence as a speaker grew.

Got an important idea to pitch? Do you want to get information over to another person? Do you want to give them a true idea of who you really are or what your proposal can offer? Do you want to be yourself – only better? With gravitas. With impact. You at your distilled, authoritative best?

What matters most in these situations is getting the balance right between your gravitas and warmth. You want to be taken seriously and you also want to be warm and conversational. They want to see that your words and actions match, that you are congruent, trustworthy.

Why? Because they’re going to need and want to see you again. This combination of authoritative ease, warmth and credibility is powerful. To refine your delivery and ensure your message resonates, working with a pitch coach can help you develop clarity, confidence, and impact in your presentations.

Get ready – how to prepare

Getting interviews and pitches spot on involves a whole skill set of psychological and physical strategies combined with performance tactics that ensure you create the right impression. You can learn to do all this by becoming your own coach and breaking your preparation down into small tasks so that you can fit it in around the other demands of daily life.

Research ritual

The more you know about the person or people you’re going to meet, the better. Some clever research is a great way to spark your curiosity and interest. With so much information available on the Internet you can build up a picture in no time.

Find out who’s going to be interviewing you. If you can find any audio or video of them, even better. That way you get a sense of them being a real living, breathing person.

Here’s what to look for:

How you are similar. Find common ground. We like people like us and we like finding things in common. What’s your common ground? What’s your common purpose? What do you have that they need? What fear or problem do you have the answer to?
Their style. How do they look and what does that tell you about them? This might influence the way you dress on the day or even the way you choose to present yourself.
Their speech. Notice their voice tone and the words they use. Are they formal or informal? Fast or slow? Do they come across as long winded and verbose or concise and succinct?
Their attitude. Are they enthusiastic or thoughtful, introvert or extrovert? Are they serious or do they smile a lot?
What they say. Do they talk about what they want or what they want to avoid? Listen out for the words they use about themselves and what others say about them too.
Their profile. Do they write a blog or have a website? What does it say about them? Have they been interviewed in the press?
Their preferences. What do they love? What do they hate? What’s important to them? Can you find out whom they admire and what they fear?

You’re not trying to be a carbon copy. It’s about tuning in to the things that inspire you when you read about them and zoning in on the parallels between you. If you discover that their style is wildly different to yours, don’t go all out to try to be like them. Don’t try to be something you’re not.

See success

Inspire yourself with the vision of what it will look like to get the job or win the pitch. You have to see yourself getting through. This is a psychological must. You need to know what getting the job or winning the pitch will be like because they see it in your eyes, even if they don’t consciously know what makes you stand out. When they ask you questions and when they grill you on your skills, talents, aims and ideas they can actually see you seeing something powerful

Questions, questions

What are they going to ask? Will you have the answers? Will they trick you? What if you go blank? The scary part about interviews and pitches is the uncertainty. The trick is to get inside their heads and think up all the possible questions they might ask.

Mastermind the answers

The main challenge here is that you obviously know way more about your life than your interviewer ever needs to. So don’t shift into information overload. It’s useful to think yourself into the mind of a chat-show host. Handpick the most powerful stories. The most memorable ones. Then get them clear and concise so they are sitting ready for you if you need them.

Keep your answers simple and succinct. If the interviewers need more information, they will ask for it. Say only what is essential and then zip it. Having a simple structure to your answers works wonders:

Point – the key idea you want to communicate.
Reference – connect that point to a concrete example. Show specific credibility
Comment – make that point unique to you and give the interviewer a sense of how it will be beneficial. Your purpose.

Make sure your answers are punchy:

Drill down to specific facts, figures and stories. Don’t generalise.
Make your stories real – populate them with real people, places and events.
If you’re talking about your skills make sure you give a specific example of how you used them.

Keep a stock of stories that you can apply to any questions. Of course there’s always a chance you’ll be asked something that’s a complete surprise, but if you have a toolkit of information ready you can usually pull something together in the moment

Get set – perfect practice

Once you’ve got your head together psychologically it’s time to think about how to practise to get your mind, voice and body working in perfect harmony. You want your whole self to be working like a well oiled machine so that there are no rough edges or gritty hindrances to ruin the day. Practising makes all the difference to gravitas under pressure. No performer ever goes on stage without having rehearsed.

No sportsperson walks on to a field without hours and hours of training. Perfectionists among you – a word of warning! Be careful because you can be too rehearsed and polished. You want to avoid learning things word for word. You want to be organised but not overscripted – that looks fake. Practise in a loose way. Don’t fix everything. Practice is more about honing your awareness so that you know how you come across under pressure.

Sit up

Your posture must be as crisp as your delivery:

Sit up and back with a straight spine, keeping your tailbone to the back of the chair.
Project your voice to the back of the room with relaxed energy.
Make your words work for you. Speak them clearly and with commitment.

Clear your diary

It’s easy to treat an interview or pitch as just another date in your diary but it’s wise to allow yourself a quiet lead-in to the day. Don’t cram your diary. Keep the days before as clear as possible so that you can focus.

Keep things in perspective

Gravitas requires an ability to keep things in perspective, to be the cool, calm pilot of the plane even when turbulence hits. Pay real attention to how you’re currently feeling about the interview or pitch. If you’re like most people you’re probably feeling that it is a great big looming threat.

That’s mainly because things that feel threatening tend to be bigger than us, close to us and happening when it’s dark. If you change the way you perceive the interview or pitch you’ll start to feel more positive. Remember that you’re in control of your inner experience.

Just before you go through the door

A very good piece of advice for making a good impression – with gravitas – is to be responsible for the energy you take into the room. Set your intention. What do you dream of happening in the room? Take that energy in with you. Use an emotional memory to help you through. It could be:

A place where you feel relaxed.
A person who makes you smile.
Something you do that makes you relaxed and happy.
A compliment you’ve received to boost your confidence.
The voice of someone who supports you. Remember to breathe low and wide, ground your feet and be fascinated – think how you can help.

Good interviews and pitches are essentially great conversations. You need to be in a state of mind where you are prepped enough that you can walk in and be yourself. I’m very much of the belief that, as long as you are on good form, if it’s right for you it will go your way.

Tune In

When you walk in, tune in. Stop. Take a moment. Breathe and connect with your interviewer’s energy and match it.

Listen

The absolute most important thing you must do in an interview is be really fascinated by the panel. If you are going to be able to work with them there needs to be common ground.

A really great starting place for fascination is to properly listen and pay attention. Engage head, heart and gut. This creates a positive channel of communication that makes you memorable. Really, really, really listen. The kind of listening that you do when you are genuinely interested. Not faking it. You don’t have to overdo it. Show the listening in the focus of your eyes and your presence to them. That’s enough.

In general avoid too much nodding or eyebrow raising and uh-humming. It’s like a date – don’t try too hard to be liked. Be really interested in the job and what you can do for them with the confidence they’d be lucky to have you

Turn your inner camera out

Real listening makes things quiet inside your head because you’re paying full attention to the person you are talking to. If you struggle to really listen when you’re nervous because your inner voice is rabbiting on, then ration it.

Have 80% attention out there on the room and 20% attention in your head. Be quiet inside. If internal chatter comes, remember it’s only graffiti. Don’t interpret any meaning from it. Instead divert attention to your body and notice your audience. Respond to them rather than any anxiety about what you think they might be thinking.

On your pauses, pay attention inside your head. It may mean your eyes go a little dull, but that’s fine. It means the interviewer knows you’re thinking about something. Then work out what you’re going to say and go for it. From then on in, when you are talking your focus must be outwards. When you’re giving attention to the world your eyes must be alive. Really pay attention to the other person and notice them completely.

Choose your shoes with care!

Finally one piece of advice from the great Laurence Olivier who told actors to ‘Relax your feet and always have more breath than you need’. Your feet need to feel relaxed and comfortable for your system to feel truly safe. Choose your shoes with care: anything that pinches, hurts or physically takes you off balance may cramp your style or take you off balance in a bigger sense.

If you are preparing to speak, whether at a business event, a talk, or even a party, value your voice over your footwear! Choose shoes that help you ground your feet. High heels are tricky as they make some people feel more confident, but if you pay attention to your voice, they tend to curve your lumbar spine, send the breath into the chest and make you sound nervous.

A good rule of thumb is if you can’t comfortably walk in a pair of shoes (and teetering is not walking comfortably) they will affect your voice. Find shoes that you can move in naturally and that give you confidence with enough comfort to allow you to breathe and voice with ease.

The key thing to remember is – they’d be lucky to have you and your business. Own your ethos and trust that if it’s right – and there’s chemistry – it will go your way!

Caroline Goyder is an expert speaker and voice trainer. Having worked for more than a decade at London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama as a voice coach, her TEDx debut on The Surprising Secret to Speaking with Confidence has been viewed more than ten million times.

Clients have included Cabinet Ministers, a Queen, the magician Dynamo, and businesses as varied as Mastercard, Netflix, and Balfour Beatty. She’s the author of best-selling books Gravitas and Find Your Voice and the creator of two new self-paced courses Master Your Speaking and Master Your Meetings.