It’s normal to feel pressure to be funny in talks or pitches. Humour helps people to like you and keeps an audience’s attention. But it can also sink your pitch in a sentence and often the risk isn’t worth the reward.
No one wants to be Liz Truss waiting for the pork belly laugh that never comes!!
If you’re certain humour works for you, then by all means raconteur away, but it’s far better to follow a few guidelines to connect with your audience without them feeling the cringe!
Here’s how to win over your audience:
👉 Focus on being warm and engaging. This is more important than being funny. The more authentic and natural you are, the more you’ll connect with your audience.
👉 Let stories do the work. Rather than telling jokes, tell entertaining stories to illustrate your points. You can even use funny images to back up a story if they help. Get sick of telling your stories because you know they work and because you’ve rehearsed them until they sound natural.
👉 Context can work well for humour, but base it around benign stuff like train strikes, how cold it is or how massive the boardroom is for three of you. Avoid humour that’s about what your client does or the industry at large, as you risk undermining the client’s efforts. Only use them if you know your client really well.
👉 The best stories are self-deprecating, where you’re the butt of the joke. But they should also elevate you in the eyes of your audience. So, they need to be high status, such as a story about the last time you gave a pitch to a very important client, made a funny mistake, but still won the business.
Need some help?
If you’d like some more tips and advice on how to engage your audience and give winning presentations, contact us here for an initial discussion.