And Here’s the Pitch
(Part 2: “Is Anyone Listening?” series on visionaries pitching bold ideas)
What’s the story about your big idea? Can you tell a story that engages listeners and is meaningful from their perspective (not just yours)?
In other words, you start by knowing your audience and anticipating their questions. Now you are prepared to open a conversation with them that leads to further discussion. In his book “The New Elevator Pitch” Chris Westfall stresses three characteristics of successful pitch conversations: Authentic, compelling and entices the listener to ask… tell me more. Westfall is known for saying, “In business, whoever tells the best story wins.”
Innovation and management consultant Julie Beckers suggests that a great pitch needs a hook. “For a compelling pitch, your hook must start with a solution to a real headache or big gnarly problem,” she says. “To hit the sweet spot with your pitch, your hook must grab the audience’s attention within the first three seconds. A great way to start is to create a visualization.”
At Imaginexxus, we encourage our audiences to “imagine” a particular change, type of innovation, atmosphere where something transformational happens or a specific, huge leap forward. This can be your hook.
It’s critical that you focus on the idea itself, not just on general benefits such as the monetary potential or “change the world” effect. What’s the emotional, inspirational, memorable and meaningful core of this idea that will drive benefits and, ultimately, success? An effective hook gets the listener’s attention and piques his/her interest in what you have to say. It leads to the thinking, “Okay, I’m listening. Now persuade me to consider taking some type of action.”
“I think the key to getting people to listen to you is careful framing and definition of the problem,” says Mark Reid Davis, business development and innovation specialist. “Distill it down to the essence of what you are trying to solve and most importantly, get your audience to empathize with the problem. Once they believe it’s a real problem, introduce your solution with a top down approach — identify the underlying cause and make your claims non-technical to build a logical argument that also leverages their empathy.” Reid Davis says that the second part of this opening conversation is to “…introduce the mechanism by which you want to leverage to solve this underlying cause (this is often the crazy idea).”
An aspect that supports the hook of your idea (or solution) is urgency. After all, there’s probably someone out there devising ways to chip away at your business or develop a product/service that renders yours obsolete. Jaime Villafuerte, expert in continuous improvement in business, suggests a situation that motivates managers to take action on even a high-risk idea is when it stands out to them as an urgent and relevant matter. Perhaps it connects with an emerging trend, a highly publicized development in the industry, a regulatory change or news about a competitor. He adds that your idea will be believable to your audience if you demonstrate your “credibility, high level of passion and commitment to the organization, and selflessness.” In other words, you must stand for maintaining the organization’s superior market position, staying ahead of disruptive competition and supporting an innovation-centered culture.
This gets back to hooking your audience with your fantastic idea by speaking to a “pain point” and clearly demonstrating how your idea solves it. Disruption and change strategist Anne-Marie Elias frames the idea story by addressing three questions: (1) What is the problem and why does it matter? (2) How are you solving it and what that means? and (3) What is needed to address the problem? “As in any pitch you would hinge your ideas to existing agreed mission statements and strategic directions,” she adds.
A creative way to think of a hook is to imagine the story about your idea as a movie trailer. Yes, you are indeed marketing your idea to an audience like studios market a film. How can you present your potentially scary, risky idea in a way that lets your audience “see” the idea in action and maybe the end result with your customers embracing the idea whether it’s a product or service? If your idea involves groundbreaking operational or business change, the audience should be able to visualize that new environment.
Of course a big difference between pitching your idea versus a movie is that your idea isn’t purely for entertainment purposes — unless you’re in that business — so it must make business sense. That is, not business-as-usual sense because any big idea brings assumptions, traditions, standards, “rules,” and biases into question.
More on opening pitch conversations in the next article in this series.
By Doug Freeman, Analyst-Writer at Imaginexxus, LLC
Imaginexxus wishes to thank the initial group of contributors to this project:
Julie Beckers, Principal Management Consultant, Founder of Innovation Creation and Design Thinking Specialist. www.innovationcreation.com.au
Mark Reid Davis, Entrepreneur at Pickens Innovation Center and AccentMarkets. www.accentmarkets.com. In association with Hobey Tam, NSF Fellow at Clemson University.
Julien de Salaberry, Founder and CIO of The Propell Group, The Global Cancer Research & Commercialisation Fund and Galen Growth Asia. www.propellgroup.biz
Anne-Marie Elias MA, Communication Management Associate, Centre for Local Government, UTS Social Change Strategist, Innovator, Connector. www.ChiefDisrupter.com
Moe Glenner, President and CLO, MGE, LLC training and coaching. www.moeglenner.com
Paul Hobcraft, Advisor and Facilitator at Agility Innovation Specialists and HOCA International Consultants. www.agilityinnovation.com and www.hocaconsulting.com
Daniel Huber, Head Management Center Professor for Innovation Management, Head EMBA in Innovation Management at Berne University of Applied Sciences. www.mzbe.ch and www.innovation-gap.com
Alfred Kwok, Co-founder of International IP Commercialization Council. www.iipcc.org
Steve McDonald, Senior Innovation Designer at Under Armour. www.underarmour.com
Janet L. Sernack, Educator, Innovator, Entrepreneur, Coach at Compass Learning Pty Ltd. and ImagineNation. www.imaginenation.com.au
Jaime Villafuerte, Senior Vice President and Continuous Improvement Director at US Ameribank. www.jaimevillafuerte.blogspot.com
