Voice Tips

How can you connect with your audience to engage their attention and build trust?

It all comes down to eye contact.

Good eye contact not only helps you connect to your audience, but it also creates trust.

For example, if you’re delivering a pitch to secure investment for your product, then you need to convey that you are trustworthy to your potential investors. One way to do this is to use good eye contact. People we trust, people we believe in, look us in the eye.

Good eye contact with your audience benefits both them and you. Here are five reasons why:

• When you look people in the eye, they’re more likely to look, listen, and engage with you and your message.
• Eye contact can also boost your confidence and authority.
• Increasing your eye contact gives you more power and presence as a speaker.
• It also gives you valuable feedback from your audience. You can see how they’re reacting to what you’re saying.
• Last but not least, eye contact makes you naturally slow down. And slowing down your delivery gives you more gravitas.

Sustaining eye contact isn’t always easy though. Here are a few of the tips I share with my clients:

• First, be prepared. It’s easy to lose eye contact if you forget what you’re saying. The more prepared you are, the more eye contact you can sustain.
• Look for friendly faces before you speak. Scan the room for listeners who you think will engage with you. They will be the people you make the most eye contact with.
• Don’t overdo eye contact with an individual member of your audience. You don’t want a listener to feel uncomfortable.
• And always make eye contact when you deliver your most important points, including your opening, and your closing.

So next time you’re in front of an audience look into their eyes as you speak. It will increase your sense of connection to them, and their trust in you.

I teach this and other presentation skills that all keynote speakers use, including the Grab And Deliver Technique, in my best-selling video course Unlocking The Power Of Your Voice. This course is a complete voice transformation system that will give you powerful vocal techniques that you can start using immediately.

Are you ready to get started? Unlocking The Power Of Your Voice

Watch the video below to learn all about using eye contact more effectively.