Pitch Perfect

How to Say It Right the First Time, Every Time

By: Bill McGowan

Narrated by: Bill McGowan

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's Summary

Media guru and Emmy Award-winning correspondent Bill McGowan - coach to some of the biggest names in business and entertainment, including Eli Manning, Kelly Clarkson, Jack Welch, Thomas Keller, and Kenneth Cole - teaches you how to get your message across and get what you want with pitch-perfect communication. He is also a trusted advisor in the C-suites of tech companies like Facebook, Spotify, AirBnB, Dropbox, and Salesforce.com.

Saying the right thing the right way can make the difference between sealing the deal or losing the account, getting a promotion, or getting a pink slip. It's essential to be pitch perfect - to get the right message across to the right person at the right time. In Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan shows you how to craft the right message and deliver it using the right language - both verbal and nonverbal.

Pitch Perfect teaches you how to overcome common communication pitfalls using McGowan's simple Principles of Persuasion, which are highly effective and easy to learn, implement, and master. With Pitch Perfect you can harness the power of persuasion and have people not only listening closely to your every word but also remembering you long after you've left the room.

©2014 Bill McGowan (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers

Interesting Read

I loved the content. I actually was less enthusiastic by the authors reading style. I felt at times he appear a bit self-righteous. Overall, the information is applicable to anyone wanting to improve their communication skills. I'll probably re-read this book as I think it requires more than one pass to internalize the information. This may actually be a better book read in text than listened to.

Couldn’t force myself to finish...

Take this review with a grain of salt as I have not entirely finished the book. I’ve listened to about 2 hours of the story, but it is so dry and vague that I don’t think I will bother with the rest. I wanted to learn more about speaking in a professional setting to coworkers and management, but this book focuses more on public speaking. The guidelines are to non-specific for me to easily apply to general discussion, and the humor is dry. I was also slightly annoyed by his perception of millennials, but that barely affects my views on his book.

Self promoting, tedious, un-relatable stories

I am currently in chapter 4 and I am finding hard to listen to the book. These chapters have so far been used by the author to promote and praise himself on how good he is at communications. I am not sure why it has 4 stars. He claims he has changed people's lives, but he gives almost no pointers or techniques so far in the book, none that really relatable, I really hope it gets better and I am wrong. I will update this review, if that becomes the case...

Pretty bad

Well it’s hard to begin to tell you how bad this is. It’s all about the author. Do not waste your time. You’ll learn nothing.

Great descriptions

Great examples, clear descriptions, actionable advice. pitch perfect clearly explains all the tools needed to set you up for winning presentations and interviews.

Bill McGowan needs to heed his own advice

I picked up this audiobook in hopes of improving my public communication skills. While there were several great pointers throughout the book, I can't help drifting away while listening.

The author/narrator's presentation of stories were not well defined from the rest of the book's content. It can be difficult to know if the author is presenting a story or giving advice as part of its book.

The greatest flaw, however, is a mistake Bill himself mentioned in his book. The invention of terms/words. All of the seven principles mean nothing if you have not read/heard the entire book. They serve no purpose at all and would be forgettable, especially in an audio form when the reader have no convenient means to flip back the pages to recall what was mentioned about the principles.

After about halfway through the book, I had to force myself to listen till the end as I do recognise great material Bill McGowan presented in his book. But these material were so buried that it takes conscious effort to find them.

All in all, while I did learn from the book, the audio book is a disappointment, but it might be just slightly better if I had the print version. A rewording of the 7 principles will help the book tremendously.

A must have

It prepares you for every situation. Very entertaining too. I am happy with my purchase and will be recommending this to friends.

Great book with tips for everyone regardless of position

Loved this book! The examples and tips are applicable across all demographics, industries or positions. I wish I had read this book years ago!

Comprehensive and Interesting

This is a comprehensive and very well thought-out book about how to say things right the first time. It was very helpful and I will probably listen again. Toward the end, the variety of situations covered gets into some extreme situations that often don't apply. But more than anything else, I need to remember the 7 Principles, which are key and worth the price of admission. Highly recommended to anyone for those principles alone.

Outstanding Material

This book was as profoundly intrinsic as a communications class in the MBA course at Harvard. I don't fully understand all the negative sour Skittle faced comments on here, it's clear if you have skin thinner than rice paper, you are going to have some significant communication issues. The one thing you can absolutely take away from this is to learn how to communicate with authentic confidence in virtually any scenario that life will inevitably throw at you. As fledgling Strategy Writer and business owner, I found the material to be as extremely useful as having a one on one session with Tony Robbins, genuinely fantastic.

Exactly what I needed!

Loved the way this book is written: concise, comprehensive, with examples to illustrate the point!

Superior advise get this

I loved this book and intend to go over it several times and get it in print too . It will have you enraptured with the examples and have you thinking about how you conduct yourself with useful insights. Amazing for teenagers to give them a fabulous start.

Takes a long time to get to the point

spends several characters telling you to get to the point, while not getting to the point. It's slightly ironic that the book spends so much time telling you to get to your point while rambling and not getting to the point. A lot of the book is just the author boasting about his achievements.

Nothing to do with communication skills

This audiobook is all about the writer and his story. It’s very repetitive in nature and mainly focuses on some issues the writer (Bill) has faced how they impacted him and how he handled it. Nothing gained from this book in terms of skills -which is what it’s ‘Pitched’ to be. Disappointed. I cannot even return this title which is also very frustrating!

good book

it gives simple clear instructions and advice and needs to read more than once to practice all principles in real life