There is nothing sadder than a great idea pitched badly. What starts as a promise ends with a flop, the death of a dream and the deflated disappointment of an audience.
A pitch should be an invitation, not an exhortation. It should beguile and intrigue, instilling the audience with curiosity, a curiosity in themselves as to how you and your idea could change their lives.
A good pitch is not about you, it’s about me. A pitch is about awakening a desire in an audience in such a way that they believe it is their own. And it will be their own, you will just provide the call to the adventure that will form in their imagination. You will create a world and beseech me to join you in it. And that’s where you and I will meet- in the shared possibility of your business, your app, your film, your great idea that will change the world forever.
Start with meeting me where I am. Think of me before you invite me into your world. What’s on my mind, why am I here, what am I seeking, what is missing in my life? How can your idea release me and inspire me?
Show me a problem that I can identify with. Not your problem, our problem. Why does it hurt that it is so. Who is suffering and why? What is the gap in the world that we could fill together? Connect with me by meeting me at the core of the conflict so that I share your belief and your need to act.
Then reveal the solution to our common need. Feel my mind go AHA! when you open it to the new possibility you have created. Paint pictures of what our world would be like when we both take the leap together. Remind me of whose suffering we can heal and how their world would be improved.
Your pitch should have as many questions as answers, leaving me to fill in my own gaps and become one with the idea.
But don’t merely use romance, don’t tease me without proving it could be so. Show me the way you mean us to go. Let me see that this could be real. Did someone do it before? Have we a path we can follow? Or are you asking me to take a leap too far?
Then ask me, ask me what you want from me. What do you need from me to create our common new world? You know I want to help by now, so don’t ruin it by asking for too much, just enough for me to agree to take the next step- The first tentative step towards the rich new world beckoning us.
And remember, the whole time you are pitching, I am watching you. I am watching the who behind the idea, my partner to be. Watching, listening and feeling. Your words are not your only communication. They help, but your pitch is the whole experience I feel as you woo me.
-Cilian Fennell, Stillwater Communications