Committing to your "Pitch"

When someone has an idea that has been developed and nurtured we never want to let that slip away due to negligence. Unfortunately in the business arena, this happens all the time. In the board room, proposals are offered everyday in various industries on new ideas for products and services, and the best choices do not always win. Time and time again, you see the right company losing the bid for services.

Why is this? What’s happening?

I believe it may come down to the fact that we are not concentrating enough on committing to our pitch. Now my thoughts may vary from the normal definition of the “pitch”, which would be defined as; [To verbally describe something to a potential interested party in the hope it will be bought]. This is correct, but a pitch involves much more, it encompasses intangible elements that must be utilized in order to succeed.

“What are these intangible elements?”, “Where can I buy them?”

Ok, here is what we do. We need to gather all of our positive thoughts about this idea and start listing them in order of importance. When we get excited about our idea, think about what comes to mind in terms of its selling ability, list those things down, and then go back and assess the best sell. When you read the list of positive qualities, try and think in terms of the board of individuals you will be presenting to.

How will they view our thoughts and presentation, which of these selling points should we emphasize and which one should we maybe hold back on a little?

These are good questions to ask ourselves. Remember the decision is ultimately in the interested party’s hand, so we need to gear our pitch toward their likings. This does not mean we need to change our product or method of service or even our opinions on the marketability of the idea; we just need to understand the opinions the “board” will express and play into those for our benefit.

So in review, first is fine tuning our selling points, never overloading them with too much information unless they ask. Always be prepared to adjust our pitch according to the attitude, thoughts, or direction of the parties who we are presenting to.

Next is the timing of our presentation. Timing is everything in business. In order to seal the deal with the appeal that you are looking for, you need to follow a strict time guideline. Now we can’t stick to any standards here because each presentation bears its own set of weights, however, each presentation brings guidelines. When planning your pitch, make sure you scatter your selling points throughout your presentation for a more lasting affect. [For example, let’s say we are presenting an idea for a balloon that doesn’t pop that is just as cheap to manufacture as normal balloons. So we bring in a about twenty. Option number one is to start stabbing them as soon as we walk in, ensuring that the board will be impressed, but they probably will think we are a little overly excited and crazy. That would not be effective at all. However, if we calmly walk in and hand every board member a balloon to hold as we begin our presentation, this eases them into our idea. Then throughout the presentation we would select different sharp objects and walk over to different board members and ask them to pop their balloons. This would draw the board members into the presentation, and it preserves the selling point of the balloon throughout the entire presentation as the board members struggle to pop their balloons.]

The selling point in this example was that the balloons did not pop. While both examples demonstrated this, the second example would come across much more effectively in a board room environment. It takes into effect how the “board” will react to the presentation as we mentioned above, and it also introduces timing of selling points by scattering the main enticement throughout the presentation.

The last area we should talk about in “committing to our pitch”, is the crucial concept of understanding the financials. Every good idea has financial elements that are involved, and the financial elements are what sew together the lining of a beautifully woven deal. When we present our pitch to an interested party, we need to enter that room with a range of pricing that we are comfortable with, yet flexible in our basis. The reason this is important is because different individuals respond differently to presentation and proposals for ideas and investments. Some people naturally will not agree to your price, no matter how good our product is because they just want a discount. So to restate what was said earlier, we never want to let a good idea go to waste due to negligence. In this case, failing to recognize that all this party needs is a slight discount in order to close the deal would be negligence. This also reminds us why it is important to understand the financials of the deal. If we would have prepared our offer with a buffer layer of pricing, we would not have to worry about cutting our profit margin in order to accommodate an interested party.

Implementing tools that can better prepare us for our presentations are very important. These examples may seem simple, and they are intended to be, but correctly utilizing all the elements that make up your idea will truly have you committed to a successful pitch!

Committing to your "pitch"