Your Content Is Great. Your Voice Is Letting It Down | Elevated You

A few years ago I got the chance to spend some time with professional acting coaches. Not something most technical professionals ever do. But it was one of the most useful things I've done for my presenting.

We didn't focus on the content, not the slides, not the structure.

We focused on the voice.

Specifically, how varying pace, pitch and volume can completely change how an audience experiences what you're saying. The same words. The same message. But a totally different impact depending on how you deliver them.

If you work in pre-sales, consulting, customer success or engineering, you're presenting constantly. Demos, proposals, stakeholder updates, technical deep-dives. And if your voice is flat, your impact is flat too.

This becomes even more important on video conferences where you are just a few pixels on a screen and not a real human in a real room.

Let's fix that.

The Problem With Monotone

When people present in a single, unwavering tone at a constant pace and volume, two things happen. The content becomes harder to follow, because there are no vocal signposts telling the audience what matters. And people disengage, because the brain is wired to tune out uniform stimulation.  It's like white noise.

It's not about being theatrical. It's not about performing. It's about using your voice as a tool to guide attention, create emphasis and make your message land.

Here's how each of the three elements works.

Pace

Your average speaking pace matters. In my Technical Storytelling course I average around 130 words per minute. TED talks run a little faster, around 170. Audiobooks sit at roughly 150 to 160. That gives you a useful reference point.

But the important thing is actually variety. Pace is an average, not a constant. The most effective presenters are constantly varying their speed throughout a session. And each variation does something different.

Slowing down gives your words room to breathe. It tells the audience that what you just said matters. It gives them time to process. Use it for key messages, important conclusions, anything you really need to land.  It can come across as gravitas.  But overuse it and you'll bore people quickly.

Speeding up injects energy and momentum. It creates a sense of excitement or urgency. It's particularly useful when you're building to a point or driving through supporting detail that doesn't need to sit and settle. But overuse it and people can't keep up.

The pause is the most underused tool in the kit. A deliberate pause after a key point lets the audience sit with it. It creates tension. It signals importance. It can even pull back people who've drifted, because when a speaker goes silent, people look up to see what's happening.

Pauses feel much longer to you than they do to the audience. Hold your nerve. Let them land.

Pitch

Pitch is how high or low your voice sits. It's more subtle than pace, but just as powerful.

A monotone pitch is one of the fastest ways to lose a room. When your voice stays on the same note throughout a presentation, it becomes background noise. People stop consciously listening.

Moving to a slightly higher pitch conveys excitement and energy. Combined with a faster pace, it can really inject life into a section of content.

Moving to a lower pitch signals seriousness. Gravity. It works well when you're sharing something important, delivering a sobering statistic, or making a point you want the audience to really sit with. Combined with slowing down, it creates real weight.

You don't need dramatic swings. Subtle variation is enough. We're not busting out the inner Beyonce here. Just enough movement to stop the voice becoming a flat line.

Volume

Volume is the third lever, and it works in both directions.

Getting quieter is counterintuitive but effective. When you lower your volume, audiences lean in. It creates the feeling of being let in on something. A secret. A conspiracy. It builds intimacy and tension. It's particularly powerful in a quiet room or an intimate setting. In a noisy conference hall? Use it carefully.

Getting louder builds energy and underlines a point. Use it to drive home a key message or inject urgency into a moment.

The trap most people fall into isn't being too loud. It's being the same volume for the entire session. Uniform volume, like uniform pace and uniform pitch, tells the brain there's nothing here that needs special attention.

Putting It Together

These three tools work together. The real skill in Technical Storytelling is learning to combine them. Slower pace, lower pitch and reduced volume creates a moment of gravity. Faster pace, higher pitch and bigger volume creates energy and momentum.

The best way to develop this is to record yourself. Take a paragraph of your current content, or grab something from a news site, and read it out three times. First monotone, flat pace, same volume throughout. Second, overdo the variation, make it theatrical. Third, find the natural middle ground.

Watch yourself back. It's uncomfortable. Do it anyway. You'll learn more from two minutes of footage than from an hour of theory.

The goal isn't to sound like someone else. It's to sound like the best version of you. The version that's animated, clear and worth listening to.

Your content might be excellent. But if your voice isn't doing its job, the content won't land the way it deserves to.

Ben