Skip to main content

Perfect Elevator Pitch

Lesson 11 from: The Power of Body Language

Vanessa Van Edwards

Perfect Elevator Pitch

Lesson 11 from: The Power of Body Language

Vanessa Van Edwards

most popular money & life

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

Lesson Info

11. Perfect Elevator Pitch

Lesson Info

Perfect Elevator Pitch

The perfect elevator pitch, so very briefly, I wanna have a Talk Nerdy to Me section. My Talk Nerdy to Me sections are when I ask you your thoughts, and then we go over some of my favorite facts and stats about the topic, so what do you think about your first impression? It's very important for self-diagnosis. When you meet someone, what kind of impression do you want to make, and what kind of impression do you think you make? I know that's a really hard one, but what do you go for? Jean-Marie how about you? I know you're very in tune to your own presence, which is wonderful. Well, I want to have a feminine warmth, but a strength and confidence. And, yesterday we talked about, since when you use the word warmth and confidence, so studies have found that leaders have very high levels of warmth and competence. Those are the two skills that leaders possess, so the fact that you would nail that, I think, for female power, is like a great one. Shashid, how 'bout you? What do you want fr...

om your first impression? I think I wanna add more warmth. When you were talking about introversion, that's what I do. I go into a situation, and first observe. Yeah. And then talk. Yeah. So changing that. And adding that warmth factor that you want to connect with people, got it. Okay that's great, Meg, how about you? I'll go with warmth. You'll go with warmth? So, what do you think your first impression says now? If I make an effort, it's warm, 'cause that's how I feel. Yes. But when I'm uncomfortable in any situation, it's what everybody say, I hold back, and I think I'm probably communicating that I'm not interested in people. Right, okay, so the warmth is really important for your interest, your engagement to show people that you're really there, that your introversion has nothing to do with not being engaged. We get caught up with our, I call them gremlins, our internal gremlins, right? We think oh my gosh, they don't like me, what should I say? I don't belong here, and that distracts us from having a really good engagement and authentic connection with them. Sarah, how 'bout you? Yeah, I meet with a lot of people that I want to create a rapport with very quickly, and I think that sometimes when I get into that zone, I can be, especially in less-casual situations, and more sort of business-y situations, I can get really aggressive and schmooze-y, and we're here because we wanna do business together, or we're here because we have real value together, and I want to work on maybe relaxing that a little bit. Being less sort of like, Detective? Yeah. So I totally feel you on this. So, one thing that happens to me when I get nervous is I over-engage, and I start pelting people with questions. So everyone when they're nervous, and I want you to think about this, when you get really nervous, where do you default? Right, do you go into detective mode? Do you go into closed off, do you become extremely closed off and you wanted to disappear? Some people get really aggressive and they try to dominate the conversation. So what I do is I go into curiosity, I try to figure out their story and so I just keep pelting them with questions and I end up getting like really, really close to them 'cause I'm excited. And that's just my default of when I'm nervous, that's what I do, so I completely understand what you were talking about that yesterday too, with your lawn stance, that you tend to get really direct with them. So that's good that you know that you default with that. So I want you to think about what your default is. Max. So in my industry, I communicate with a lot of people that are significantly older than me. So I feel that sometimes, I'm not competent to be talking with them, so I definitely become a little bit shy and timid to either make a cold call to them, or even talk to them before I've even closed a deal with them, so I would like to change my first impression for me to become more competent and for me not to judge myself based off of my age, but what I am capable of doing to help them out. Okay so competence, respect, and credibility. Credibility is what you're really going for in that first impression that even if they're older, you can still hold your own, okay so that's really good. Irena how about you? I would say friendliness, connected. Being connected, competent, and credible. Credible, okay, and also that friendliness factor is important for you, especially, I think, in your line of work, making sure that they feel they can trust you. Yeah. Okay, so that kind of rapport. Okay, perfect, that sets us perfectly to talk about the first impression. So, let me talk about a very interesting research study, where they had students take a semester long class with a professor, and they spent the whole semester with them and they did a course evaluation at the end of the course. Then what they did is they had other students who didn't take the class watch a 30 second silent video of that same course, silent. Okay, so they couldn't hear any of the words that were being spoken, it was a 30 second clip of the teacher speaking, what was amazing about this is the ratings were exactly the same. People who had taken the entire class rated the teacher, the subject, the way he taught the same as that 30 second video, so again, you should start seeing a pattern in all of these studies that I'm showing you that again and again and again we're seeing that what you say is not nearly as important as how you say it. People decide if they like us in the first 30 seconds, and it is mostly based on our nonverbal. The first step to your first impression. So when you get on stage or you meet someone at a networking event, your step one is to do power aiming. Power aiming is when we aim our torso and our toes towards the person that we're speaking with. And if it's in a group that's okay, you want to aim it towards the center of the group. Right, so if you're in a circle at a networking event or for an audience, you want to aim it towards the center. This is incredibly important, because it shows the other person's brain that you are engaged with them. It is a nonverbal sign of respect. So here are the three reasons why power aiming is so important. Again, it's toes to torso, T and T. That's what you wanna make sure you're aiming right towards the person you're speaking with. First, it shows your connectedness. So we talked a little bit about warmth and friendliness. This is the first nonverbal way that, when you walk into a room or you're walking up to someone, you immediately point your body towards them, it shows I am connected with you and I want to be connected with you. Second, it engages their brain. Someone in the chat room yesterday asked a fabulous question about, how do I keep them engaged? How do I make sure they're not bored with me? This is one of the ways that you do it. When you power aim towards them you're telling their brain, pay attention, stay awake, I'm here for you. So it helps them stay awake and pay attention to what you're saying. Third, it speeds up rapport. So warmth, I heard a lot of warmth and connectivity. Doing this helps them connect with you faster, because they can literally feel and see that you're on the same page. This seems maybe a little obvious, that's why it's step one, but if you go to a networking event, one of my challenges over the next few days is to go out to a networking event and just be a professional people watcher, or be a creeper, just sit in the corner and just watch, right? And you will see people don't do this. They will walk up to someone and they'll aim their body slightly away and then talk like this. So, we actually don't always do this naturally, to sorta swing forward, that's why with your launch stance yesterday we got really comfortable with aiming our toes and making sure that our torso was aligned, because I wanted to set you up for power aiming. That's why it's so important. And this is our tenth Law of Body Language. So in your free bonus materials, you have your Laws of Body Language handout. If you could bring that out, this is your tenth law. It is the Law of Engagement. The Law of Engagement says, to show we are non-verbally engaged we have to aim our torso and toes towards the person. That's a lot of Ts, torso and toes towards the person. T and T, that's what I think of as your step number one when you walk into a room. Does that make sense? I know that you guys have, and the reason why, by the way, I ask you to write it down is because studies have shown that when you write down something it's much easier for you to remember it. That's physical handwriting is even stronger than even typing, but either way if you can write it down it helps you code that into memory so that you can get it into muscle memory and then it becomes really natural. All right, so, step two after power aiming is to use your launch stance, right? So once you walk in the room, you've aimed your torso and toes towards the person you're speaking with and you want to get into that launch stance. So, remember the Law of Space from yesterday? Who can remember, who remembers what that was? Who can explain to me what you remember from yesterday? I know this is hard one, you're welcome to look back at your handout, yeah Irena, what? The box we have to stay, now our movements within the box. So that was the Law of Hands but to take up space, to take up space with your hands and with your body, the more space you take up, the more confident you feel, so that when you're in that expansive space, when you have your shoulders back and down, your chest up and your head up, not only do you look more confident, you also begin to feel more confident. Your testosterone levels increase, which is the strength and power hormone and your cortisol levels decrease, which is the stress hormone, that's exactly what you want when you're about to launch into your elevator pitch. Okay, so remember they were loose arms our launch base. Actually, could we stand up? I would love to see your launch stances. Did anyone change anything from yesterday, that I should know about, no? Okay we're good, perfect, love it. Yeah everyone's is slightly different which is exactly right, yup, we have our hands up. Perfect, yup, I love it, you guys all look good. So what they're doing is they're having loose arms, they make sure they have an open torso. So their torso is completely open and not blocked. Their shoulders are down, right? When we're nervous sometimes our shoulders can creep up towards our ears, I call that turtling, and then our head is up, fabulous, thank you. You guys can all sit down, here are a couple of examples for you at home, if you want to try to perfect your launch stance some other ideas, if you didn't get some from our audience. Remember everyone's is slightly different, 'cause what we did is I asked them to think about their proudest moment and remember, if you are forgetting your launch space, go back to your proudest moment in your head, think about what makes you happy, what makes you feel powerful, that will help remind your body of where it wants to be naturally, where it falls naturally. All right, step number three, we are speeding forward and I love it because this is my favorite section. Step three is vocal power. Using our voice to show authority, credibility, warmth, and competence. That is exactly what we want to do. So I want to share a study about the power of voice tone, remember we always start with the science then we go through examples, then we actually put it into action, so, this study looked at doctors and what the researchers did is they took ten second clips of doctors speaking, okay, ten second clips. And then they warbled the words. They took the words so they were unintelligible. But the volume, the sound was all the same. You just couldn't understand the words. Then they had participants listen to these ten second warbled clips and they had them rate the doctors on intelligence, credibility, and warmth. Okay, this is just a ten second voice power clip. They couldn't understand anything they were saying. What was amazing is the participant's statistics, how they rated the doctors, the doctors that got the lowest ratings in credibility, warmth, and intelligence had the highest rates of malpractice lawsuits. So what they found was that we judge right away how credible someone is based on their vocal power. Now, in the health care, I do a lot of presentations for health care professionals, on inner doctor-patient relationships. We talk a lot about vocal power because what they're finding is malpractice lawsuits actually have very little to do with who has been harmed and how much. It actually has to do with how much they like their doctor and how much, how credible they find their doctor. So it's a very interesting play on how we judge someone that our vocal power is that important. This is our law number eleven. So if you pull out your body language laws, the Law of Vocal Power, we can use our voice to increase trust, connection, and rapport. So if you remember yesterday, we talked about how much communication is nonverbal, and we said a third of our communication is the words we use. A third of our communication is our body and our face. And a third of our communication is our vocal power. So there's a lot of our communication that happens with the sound of our voice, the volume, the cadence, how much we lilt, how gravely our voice is. That's why when we looked at that clip earlier with Arlene and how she said she was a heavy smoker, our brain is pinging us that she has a gravely voice and it's saying that's probably true, that's probably true, and that's why very few people pick number one, I was so glad that Jakao picked it because I wanted to, I think Max did you pick number one as well, no? No, someone else did, Irena, yes, you did it. Because our brain was pinging us that her voice tone matched that as truth. Right, that's how important vocal power is. A quick reminder, remember this study that we talked about yesterday with the two different, the teacher who had the same class and he taught one class. He videotaped it, had the same script and the second class he added three things. Hand gestures, which we talked about the Law of Hands yesterday. Expansiveness, which is the Law of Space. And the third thing he added was vocal power and in that class he had higher ratings in everything. Instructor knowledge, and even text book quality. People thought that even the text book was better when he used more vocal power. Okay so, in this video what we're going to do is I want to hear, I want you to hear an example of low power versus high power. And I want you to take some notes, so at home I want you to listen to this and I want you to tell me what you think is the difference between the low power clip and the high power clip. This is the same script, so it's the same script but her vocal tone is different. So I want you to listen and see what you can hear is the difference and then we're gonna talk about what made those two clips so different. Okay, were gonna start with the low power clip first. My name is Angela and I run my own catering business called Gourmet To You. We take care of all your special needs, your special events. We do everything from birthday parties to weddings to baby showers. One thing most other catering companies don't do is help with all aspects of events, we not only do food, but we also do flowers and decorations. You should check out our website, gourmettoyou.com. My name is Angela and I run my own catering business called Gourmet To You, we take care of all of your needs for special events. We do everything! From birthday parties to weddings to baby showers. And one thing that most the other catering companies don't do is help with all aspects of the event. But we not only do food, we also do flowers and decorations. You should check out our website, gourmettoyou.com. Hugely different, right? Same script, but that vocal power was different and by the way, we're gonna watch this video in a second so you're gonna actually get to see her face and that adds a whole 'nother dimension. So what were the differences between the two, yeah, Irena? In the first, in the first clip she, her voice was going up all the time. The intonation was always up and each phrase was going up and the whole speech was, the tone of the voice was going up and up and up and up, and the second one it was more regulated up and down. She started with a lower voice and she was making more like statements which was grounded with the intonation down. Perfect, so you got two of them. The question inflection versus the use of authoritative voice, which we're gonna talk about in a second, and expressiveness. What else did we hear? Yes, Shashid. There were more pauses in the second one, and one. Slower. Yeah, and one thing I noticed was, and I'm actually curious to see the video clip which is when she was talking about flowers, in my mind she was smiling, from that. Okay so we are gonna have to watch and see. And I love doing these on silent first. We did that yesterday too, because if you're on the phone a lot, this still works on the phone. This whole section, including power body language, it all works when you're doing the phone as well. Just adding video or in person adds a little bit extra to your dimension, that's all. What else did we here that was different? You're right, the pace in which she spoke and her emotionality was also different. Anything else that we heard? There was a couple of other things. Yeah, Meg. In the first one I felt as though she was sort of talking into space and in the second one, I felt as though she was talking to me. Ah ha, okay, so sounding less memorized and more engaged, absolutely, any other comments? I think we actually got most of them but was there any other ideas? Yeah. I felt like she sounded slightly unsure in the first one and she Yes. I didn't, not I didn't trust her, like I didn't think she was lying, I felt like she might not be as capable in the first one as the second one. And that is echoed in the chat room. You're absolutely right, because Lasania is saying they felt the first one was, they didn't feel really confident but the second one they did. Yeah. They also felt the first one was patronizing. Green Machine has said that. Oh, patronizing. I love that comment. So credibility, right? We didn't think she was lying, we just didn't feel like she was competent. It actually came out in her voice tone and I love that you picked up on the patronizing tone. We feel patronized when we don't feel like someone is engaged with us, when we feel like they've given us a memorized pitch. So it's very interesting that you picked up on that in the chat rooms because that is exactly right. That is exactly the secondary emotion from what that she gives us as like, she can't even give us something authentic? That's kind of the feeling that we get. All right, so let's pick apart exactly what we learned. There's four different things that make up vocal power that you can use when you're doing your elevator pitch, your first impression, and when your on the phone or when you're in person. First, using a low tone, using an authoritative voice tone. So, our voices come in a natural range of pitches, right? So, when I am with my girlfriends, I tend to talk a lot higher, I am a little bit more giggly, I go up my voice tone, that is natural for me, that's just the highest natural end of my voice tone. When we are in business, we have to train our voices to go into the natural lowest level of our voice tone. You can do this with the power of breath. So when we go high, and this is for both men and women, we get nervous, and we get out of breath, and our vocal chords tense, and so we end up kind of talking like this, I cold called someone a few weeks ago, this was horrible, I hate cold calling, but it's really good practice if you're in sales, so I cold called them and I was really nervous, and I went, hello? Ah, because my vocal chords had been sitting there tense, and I made the mistake, I was in my seat, I had not power posed, I was sitting like this as I was calling, and so my cortisol levels were pumping, and it came out, I sounded like a little girl, and that is because it was the highest of the high. So what I want you to practice doing is taking a breath and using the lowest natural end of your voice tone, so if you just want to say your name for me and the audience, and you can practice at home out loud. Take a breath and then stay in that natural end. Sarah, would you mind starting for me? So. (deep breathing) Sarah Edie. Right, and if you get tense, you can even stop in the middle of your sentence, if you feel yourself saying Sarah, you can say Sarah Edie, you can say it on the out-breath. If it's really hard for you to get that natural tone, you can actually practice saying things on the out-breath. Okay, so Shashid, do you want to try it for me? Shashid Khapteb. Love it, that was really good. And you can hear that sounds natural, I don't want you to go home and try to go into the lowest end, this is the lowest end of your natural voice tone, using that breath helps you get it down there, and luckily if you're at home, you guys are so wonderful, you're practicing out loud, at home, you can practice as much as you want 'cause no one's watching, okay, Jean-Marie. Jean-Marie Melchovich. Wow, did you hear how much lower that was? So one thing that I was gonna tell you, and Jean-Marie sent me some of her videos, which were awesome, was that when you get a little bit nervous, you go up in your voice tone, so just practicing with that breath, taking those pauses, and going down. And by the way, in the chat room, you are welcome to call me out if I go high in my voice tone. Remind me to take a breath and I will go lower, I even have to remind myself to do that. Luckily, muscle memory works for me. The more that you do it, the more you end up staying in that natural voice tone. All right, Meg, okay, deep breath. (Meg laughs) Meg Zwieback. There you go, that sounds way more powerful. That was good, and it should feel good. So the reason why we're talking about low voice tone here is because people with high amounts of testosterone, both men and women, they stay in the lower end of their voice tone, have you ever noticed that men, very attractive, handsome men, they have these deep, raspy voices, right? Even women, ah, you know those sexy voices, those raspy, they also have high levels of testosterone 'cause it keeps their voice low. That's confidence, that's what we're hearing, that's what's sexy is they have that nice resonance in their voice, okay, Irena, are you ready? Deep breath. (speaking in foreign language) Okay, so we're gonna work on with you, I think it's the third one, volume. That's what we're gonna work on, so that was nice and low. Keeping your volume up is the next one, so just keep that in the back of your head. All right, Max, you're so good at voice because you are used to being on stage, let's try it. Max Dubois. Okay, perfect, so before you get on a call, before you launch into your elevator pitch, you wanna take a deep breath, and then go into your launch, so low voice tone, next, avoiding the question inflection. We picked up on this right away, I think that was Irena's first comment, is in that first elevator pitch, we use the question inflection. Here is the question inflection, it's when you say a statement that sounds like you're adding a question mark to the end. It looks like this, my name is Vanessa? Right? Is my name Vanessa? When you add that question mark, and unfortunately, movies like Clueless made the question inflection cool for a whole generation of women, that's how valley girls, I'm not sure? But we should go? Do you think we should? They always add that, and it's so hard with teen girls. I do a lot of work in high schools pro bono, and that is my number one thing that I work on with girls because they are so used to adding that because they think it's feminine and cool. So not using the question inflection. In sales, we're gonna talk about this later, the biggest nonverbal mistake I see is they use the question inflection on their price. So they say, so how much do you charge? And they say, I charge $500? You are begging someone to negotiate with you. If you use the question inflection, you're literally saying, I'm not sure if I believe this either, you're telling them to not believe you, that's why it's so important to avoid using the question inflection, you wanna say it, you don't want to ask it. I'm gonna bring you up in a little bit to practice your elevator pitches, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna nicely, non-judgmentally, help each other if we hear the question inflection, we just nicely say, use the question inflection in your name. Women typically use it on their name, and men typically use it on their business name. I don't know why. Women will often use a question, my name is Vanessa? And men will say, I work at Science of People? I don't know why, but that's typically where they fall, so we're gonna listen for that when we're doing elevator pitches. Number two, number three, vocal variance. This is about adding a varied pace, cadence, and tempo. When we talk about engaging the other person's brain, remember our brains are hungry toddlers, they're very demanding, they like lots of attention, so if you have a script or a pitch that sounds the same, even if it's very authoritative and it's very low, the brain will go to sleep on you. They'll think you're very credible, but they won't hear what you said. So adding in that vocal variance, that expressiveness is what keeps them awake and it adds in the warmth factor. That's where warmth comes from is vocal variance and vocal expressiveness, and that's adding in different pacing, so someone said they heard her pause more the second time, that is a way of adding vocal variance, also, emphasizing different words, so I think she said, my company is catering to you, catering to you, or you could say my company is catering to you, or my company is catering to you. I'm saying the same thing, but I'm saying it three different ways, that is vocal variance, so my challenge to you at home, especially 'cause you're by yourself, is to read through your elevator pitch at least 10 different ways, even if you have to add an accent to it, add an accent to it because that will get your brain in the habit of saying different words with different emphasis, and that adds warmth to your elevator pitch. Last, emotionality, okay, so this is where that authenticity comes in, so I want you to look through your elevator pitch and I want you to think of where you feel most emotion. That can be passion for your business, that can be connection to the person you're speaking with, that can be excitement for what they should do next, that can be wonderment or awe. Where can you add in genuine emotion that you actually feel to show the emotion with your voice? You're wanting to put emotional emphasis on your words, so I want you to hear the difference, so, my name is Vanessa Van Edwards and I run the Science of People, so that's one way of saying it, if I want to add emotionality to that, here's how I can add emotionality with my tone. My name is Vanessa Van Edwards and I run the Science of People, it shows that I am more excited, I am, I love my company, it took forever to start it and I'm so excited about it, so for me, I'm adding a genuine excitement, and everyone is a little different. Excitement for you might sound different, but I want you to tap into the true emotion behind the words and don't be afraid to use it, to put it into your elevator pitch, does that make sense? All right, so I'm not gonna let us practice that just yet, 'cause what I want you to do is think about how you wanna add it into your pitch, first I wanna explain nonverbal explanations, so this is step four. Step four is adding in body language or nonverbal expressions and explanations to your elevator pitch, when people are listening to your elevator pitch, if it's 10 to 30 seconds, that's actually a lot of time. That's a lot of time to be listening to someone, especially when they have no context for what you do. One way that you can help increase their comprehension and their understanding of what you do is to nonverbally explain what you do. This is a very, very different way of thinking about elevator pitches, and it's the secret sauce to making a really, really sexy elevator pitch. This also increases the use of the Law of Hands, so I'm gonna teach you how you can use your hands to explain concepts. Remind me what the Law of Hands was, and remember what that was yesterday, that was our fourth or fifth Law of Body Language, guys remember what that was? I know it's hard. Invisible? Yep. Yep, so you're absolutely right, keeping invisible and making them expressive because they are our true trust indicators. So the use of hands increases our trust and our honesty. Not honesty, trustworthiness and credibility. When people can see our hands, they're able to trust us more, so when you add in these nonverbal explanations, you're also increasing that law and the power of that Law of Body Language. So the three things that helps you with, adding a nonverbal explanations, and I'm gonna give you an example of what these are in a second, comprehension. We have said our elevator pitch and what we do hundreds if not thousands of times, we think it's so obvious. However, people you're speaking with often are totally lost. And if you just use words, you're only using a third of your communication ability. So if you add in nonverbal, you're using 60%, at least, and if we add in vocal power, you're using 100% of your communication ability, so it helps increase comprehension of what you're saying. Second, it helps keep their attention so they don't fall asleep on you. You're nonverbally saying, wake up, this is exciting, I have lots of good things to give you, and lastly, it makes you more memorable. I have practiced my elevator pitch thousands of times, I love going to conferences, 'cause I will try different versions of my pitch and rate the reactions that I got. And I find that when I use nonverbal explanations, people remember me the next day. Just that change, they come up to and they're like, oh, yeah, you're the one who runs that human behavior lab, right? But that doesn't happen as much when I don't have nonverbal explanations, so there's something about it that makes it more memorable. I personally think that's because most elevator pitches include no nonverbal explanation at all, so if you use that, it's like their brain goes, oh, something different, I'm gonna remember this person. All right, so here's a couple of ideas for how you can do it, combining, so let me explain how this works, if you have a concept in your elevator pitch that's one thing combined with another, you can actually use that with your hands. So when I work with entrepreneurs and they say, oh, yeah, I have an app, it's kind of like a Yelp meets Airbnb. That would be a nonverbal way to explain that, so if you have something that you're combining, or forces that are working together, I work with nonprofits and businesses, and I help them come together. If I don't use my hands, you're like, wha? But this, the brain gets, oh, she brings things together. I get it, and it gives them a hook to remember. All right, another idea for you. Numbers, this is really easy, if you have anything in your pitch that is a list of two or more, I want you to use your hands to show those numbers. That's because if you don't, it sounds very memorized. So if you say, our website, we take orders, we send out deliveries, and we love doing flowers, you don't even have to say one, two, or three. But that shows the brain, wow, look how much she does. You're actually showing the brain how much you do, so adding in numbers, see if there's something that you can list out in your pitch, and again, I don't want you to use all of these. I don't want you to be like, jazz hands. I'm showing you everything, we're trying to find the sweet spot, a couple of these should work for your elevator pitch, but these are just different ideas that you can use. Growth, so if you want to show, not tell, how successful you are, you can easily do this with your hands, for those of you who have ever pitched to venture capitalists, if you're an entrepreneur, you're raising money or you're trying to increase your sales, people love what's called the Hockey Stick Chart, this is a chart that looks like this, you know that chart where all the numbers are going up, traffic's going up, sales are going up, you can actually show this nonverbally. You can say, oh my god, it's been a great year. You can actually say that, and you're nonverbally saying to someone, everything's going up for us. You can nonverbally say, you can also do, if that feels not natural to you, you can say, it's been great, right, going up, and pointing up. That gets them to say, oh wow, everything's increasing. It's a nonverbal way to say, things are increasing. Fourth, personal passions, so if you have a pitch where you're talking about something that's very personal to you, let's say that you're a mom and you wanna share that you're a stay-at-home-mom, you love your kids, you can show this kind of intimacy nonverbally, so you can say, this is the universal nonverbal phrase for close to me, close to my heart, intimate. I actually saw during my expressive dance that you guys did for this morning, I think you actually had something that was like close to me, and that is, because that is the nonverbal gesture of it's close to my heart, so if you have something that's very precious to you, when I was working with someone who has a fabulous company, she does clothes that help you protect against skin cancer, so they have high SPF clothing, which I never even knew you had to do, she is a skin cancer survivor, and so in her pitch, that's very, very personal to her, so during that journey, so it doesn't sound rote, like she said it a thousand times, we added in that emotionality by adding in the nonverbal, so for her, she says, I'm a skin cancer survivor, myself. And she points to herself and she holds her heart, 'cause that is a very intimate experience for her. So if you have that in your pitch, you can also add that in as well. Before I go into classic pitch mistakes, what ideas do you have sort of so far of things that you can do for, you're at the nonverbal side of your pitch, ar things kind of clicking of what you can do? Meg, I see you shaking your head, what are you thinking? Well, I have to go back to my pitch to look at it, but the combining, I like. Okay, so there's something in there that we're combining, I'm gonna have you pull that script out later and we're gonna whiteboard it for you, any other ones that you think might be able to work for your pitch? Shashid, yeah? So, I use something different over email. Yeah. And I end it with, it leads to big changes in revenue. Uh huh. So I can just say that like, it leads to big changes in revenue. Right, and we're gonna practice making that. Something along those lines. Something along those lines. You can even make it smaller. You don't necessarily have to do the big one, you can say it leads to big changes in revenue. Right, even that is a symbolically, like, we're going up. We're going up together, right, perfect. Okay, so, the last section, step five of your perfect elevator pitch is avoiding the classic pitch mistakes, and these are the ones that I see all the time, do not worry if you make them. I hope that when you practice, maybe even some of you filmed it, that was my bonus challenge last night, you filmed your elevator pitch, you can go back and watch and see if you made any of these classic pitch mistakes. I'm gonna show you the video of that clip that we saw earlier, okay, I'm gonna show you how that elevator pitch looked, and then we're gonna dissect it, 'cause she made all five of the pitch mistakes. My name is Angela and I run my own catering business called Gourmet To You, we take care of all your special needs, your special events. We do everything from birthday parties to weddings to baby showers, one thing most other catering companies don't do is help with all aspects of events. We not only do food, but we also do flowers and decorations. You should check out our website, gourmettoyou.com. All right, so what, I know, don't worry. We're gonna watch the good one, so we gave her 20, 30 minutes, just like we're doing now, coaching, and then we have a really good one that comes up later, so it's a good story. It's a good story at the end. So what are the things that we saw there, yes? There's no hands. No hands! Most of the time, and then she start doing the hair. Self touch, right, self touch, yes. She was terrified. She looks terrified. She's got too much of the whites in the eye. What micro-expression is that? That's fear. Modified fear micro-expression, the whole time, absolutely, and we pick up on that. We picked up on it in the voice, just the voice alone, which is funny, 'cause you can hear that fear, that fear comes through in her voice tone. Max, I saw you raise your hand, yeah. Oh, I was going like that. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, she absolutely, that self-touch gesture, which is a self-soothing gesture, which we're gonna learn in a little bit.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Baseline Coding System Chart
Lying Red Flags
Positive Trait List
The Nonverbal Elevator Pitch
Laws of Body Language Answer Key
The Nonverbal Sales Pitch
Trivia Answer Key
Citation List
Elevator PItch Clinic
Laws of Body Language Worksheet
Self Diagnosis Chart
Syllabus
Body Language - Trivia
The Microexpression Chart
30 Day Action Plan.pdf
Action Steps and Homework
Resources

Ratings and Reviews

R. P. Getz
 

I loved this course! I've learned so much and Vanessa did a terrific job making it easy and fun. I loved learning that by paying more attention to body language, I'm becoming a better listener (and picking up on stuff I never caught before). ;) I recommend the class highly to anyone and everyone as all can benefit from being more aware of others and yourself!! My hard earned education $$ well spent here. :) Cheers to Vanessa Van Edwards and Creative Live!

Andrew
 

This was an absolutely fantastic course, it would be a huge understatement to say this course was worth the money. Vanessa provided tremendously accessible, highly actionable training useful for both social and professional environments. I couldn't recommend this course highly enough, and am heading now to purchase her next one! Thanks so much Vanessa and Creative Live, this is the course I've been hoping to find for years.

susan kinnel
 

I just found myself applauding in my bedroom as this program was wrapped up, Vanessa is fabulous! This was money well spent, loved every moment of it! I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the information, and soon felt blown away by how many micro expressions I could spot during the clips she showed. I was so impressed with how easy it was to pick this info up due to Vanessa's enthusiastic delivery. YAY vanessa!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES