It's all in the Pitch - Part 2

Stop, look, listen – and then speak!

Pause a long time before you open your mouth to speak in front of your business associates or in your case potential investor. Let everyone else see that you are thinking. This will give them the impression that you have control over what you have heard and that you are about to impart some intelligent feedback on the subject. Speak when the suspense is at its peak. The pause makes whatever you say more serious than it would be had you blurted it out. The pause helps underline the importance of what you say.

Consistency is the key to speaking well

It is unbusiness like to be inconsistent. You must learn to be consistent when you speak to your colleagues. Even in a conversation that is informal (and why would it be informal when meeting with an investor?) you must not change your mind in midsentence. Remember that contrary to what you may have thought, all speaking is public speaking, even if the public in this case is one solitary individual.

Speak softly and be heard further

I learned a trick of speech from one of my college tutors from many years ago. When he would hear students mumbling in the back of the lecture hall, he would deliberately lower his voice almost to a whisper. He knew that his soft voice is the one that everyone tunes into.

Always speak the truth about yourself

You may choose to lie sometimes when you are talking to someone, there are all kinds of reasons to do so in the game of business conversation. But always speak the truth about yourself. If you fail to tell the truth about yourself, your own body and body language may give you away. Do not pretend to try to cover up something about yourself.

Speak formally and avoid contempt

Familiarity, especially in business speech certainly does breed contempt. When you are speaking in a business like way you keep your diction as formal as you possible can. You can make a pretence of informality by your manner, but never let your diction lapse from the precise and accurate. Informality tends to make your grammar and diction sloppy. Never allow this to happen. Sharpness and clarity of speech make your image business like and crisp.

Listening is the first step in speaking

Be sure you learn to listen as you continue to learn to speak. The more you listen the more ammunition you will acquire when you speak and the more ways you learn how to express yourself persuasively and project the kind of business image you want. When you listen, listen creatively, working along with the investor who speaks to you so that you can almost guess what words he or she will say next.

You aren’t a comedian

Telling bad jokes is probably the easiest way to turn most people away from you when a serious discussion is under way. Leave humour to the professionals. It is the one way to otherwise ruin an impressive performance as a person with good commercial and business sense, trying to make people laugh. If you do they will think you are trivial.

Avoid obscenity like the plague

One of the worst habits is that of swearing and using speech with four lettered words. This unfortunately has become more and more common. You don’t know what the sensitivities are of your investor and although he or she may be very tolerant of this sort of thing, it isn’t worth taking the risk to try and find out. Nobody in their right mind is going to be offended if your communication is not littered with four lettered words.

Avoid euphemisms like the same plague

Another thing to avoid at all costs is the use of euphemisms. Call a spade, a table a table, things as they really are. Euphemisms appear around us every day. They are invented to obscure speech to avoid offence, to deaden pain. Sometimes pain should be tolerated. Simply use the proper term for what you talk about. A window is a window and not an ‘environmental access panel’.

Avoid slang, jargon and gobbledegook

One of the most difficult jobs anyone has these days is reading bureaucratic pamphlets or news releases. Nevertheless business, education, the law, medicine and all areas of endeavour manufacture jargon day after day and sometimes without even realising it. Always go for the real word, not the jargon that masks it from view and pretends it is something else.

Link
http://www.go-betweenuk.co.uk