In marketing — you are always pitching.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

One of the core concepts I teach to students is the idea of ‘always pitching.’ This isn’t in a sleazy way where you are trying to sell an idea or concept that isn’t worth selling but in a realistic — this is the marketing industry’s “product” type of way.

Season One — Ep. 6

Pitching gets a bad rap because we’ve all been hit with bad pitches. Ron Tite uses the phrase Pitch Slap in his book Think — Do — Say, and it is very apropos. People get Pitch Slapped when they receive a pitch they didn’t ask for. They’re Pitch Slapped when the information they are looking for isn’t provided, but somehow — magically, different (more sleazy) information is available. There are dozens of examples, but I hope you get my point. The act of pitching isn’t immoral, but the way people use a pitch can be highly damaging.

However, it is critically important as a marketer to become convincingly good at delivering a compelling pitch.

As a marketer, you have very few tangible products that you will create. Unlike some of your counterparts, i.e. designers, programmers, filmers etc., your output is often that of a presentation or document. This could be a report showcasing the results of a recent campaign, a concept that will take a company to 10x over the next few months, or a proposal that you are physically pitching to a prospective client. In any case, your product is the distillation of information — manifested into a, well, PowerPoint or Google Slide deck.

When you embrace this fact, much like when a designer embraces the tools she has at her disposal, the sooner you can “get to work” on accomplishing what you’ve set out to achieve — namely, influencing people’s behaviour.

For the rest of this post, I will describe my process for getting into a pitch mindset and how I create presentation decks. As you go through this process, I want to stress that you will have a different approach, and your mileage will vary. However, I do hope a few of these points guide you as you create a pitch mindset.

If you want to see my Superlative Retrospective (example used throughout), you can find it at the end of this post.

A few weeks back, my students asked me to participate in a fun activity/challenge and the other faculty members. They had creative superlatives that reflected each of them. However, they didn’t say who was who — that was our job.

The first member of faculty to reply to this challenge took 30mins (give or take). She opted for speed over everything else, hoping to capitalize on the freshness of the request. The whole class howled with excitement (an emojis as this was being conducted via Slack) as the first domino fell.

Shortly after the first faculty submission came another, and another. Within 2hrs, the other four faculty members had submitted what they felt would ‘win the day’ through a quick selection process. However, one of the faculty members picked up on something: everyone was essentially doing the same thing. The first two submissions were virtually identical. Sure, a few names changed here-and-there, but they both were completed in a standard — you asked for me to give you names, so I’m giving you ONLY names format.

The third faculty submission was slightly different. She spent the time to list the names and provide a rationale (a one-liner) beside each choice. Instantly this elevated the whole experience, and the class responded in kind. “This is incredible” would summarize the reactions.

• Pausing for a moment, this is the early stages of developing a pitch mindset. The faculty member who submitted her Superlative’s sheet WITH rationale picked up that she needed to do something slightly different from what was already being done. If she submitted a document (literally a Word / Google doc) with only names, she would be presenting a replica of what had proceeded her. But including a single line beside each choice, she blew up the concept of what the students had in mind, and in turn, elevated the whole experience.

Now back to the story.

At this point, the program’s leads (my co-lead and I) were all that was left to submit. Now, remembering this is a fun activity and, honestly, my co-lead and I have more work on our plates than we should (sometimes), he opted to submit the Superlative challenge without rationale. His thinking “I picked better.” The stage was set, and the class was calling me out.

• “Josh, are you giving up?”
• “Josh, where are your Superlatives?”

Although I could have taken the same path that my colleagues took, I had the inkling of an idea. This idea prompted me to ask the fateful question: “How much time do I have?” Joking, the class opted to give the same answer to me that we offer for all of our projects: “You have until midnight tonight, but honestly, if you submit it before 4 or 5 am, no one will mark that against you.”

Not wanting to stay up until midnight, I got to work on my Superlative challenge.

• Pausing again. At this point, I want to share where this “inkling of an idea” came from, as this is the core to developing a solid presentation deck/pitch. When I was scrolling through the reactions to what everyone had submitted, I noted that everyone was impressed with the selection. However, no other feedback was being shared — because why would it? I took a moment to think about the real purpose of this challenge from our students. Why did they give this to us? What are they really after here?
• On the surface, they wanted to see who we would put beside each of the Superlatives. With elements like “Who will be the next President?” you can understand why. But going slightly deeper, I felt they were looking for us to take a few moments and reflect on our experience with them — and how we saw them, not as students, but as people. This was the inkling of an idea. “What does it mean to be human?” I asked myself out loud. From there, I gathered my initial concept of connection and humanity. I still had no idea where it would lead, but I didn’t resist and become complacent with the task at hand.

And we’re back to the story.

I, however, was met with a secondary challenge as I began to work on my Superlatives submission — it was the end of the day, and my family was expecting me for dinner. Knowing that I had a bit of runway to submit, I took a step back and pushed everything I was considering to the back of my mind.

After dinner, I was washing the dishes thinking about a bunch of different things. “It’s getting late. We should likely start getting the kids to bed.” “If I just let this soak, will it be easier (and the answer is always yes).” But in the far depths of my mind, the Superlative activity was bouncing around, trying to connect points of inspiration that I have gathered through a lifetime. Then it hit me — “We are all a pale blue dot.”

• Quick pause: This idea of pausing is critical when it comes to developing a pitch. One of the worst things you can do is assuming you have all the answers instantly. Doing a bit of divergent thinking — aka, focusing on something else — allows your subconscious to kick in and take over. This is where the magic happens.

We are all a pale blue dot is a metaphysical journey created by Carl Sagan, an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. I had heard a recording of this on YouTube a few months back, and like a bolt of lightning, it came rushing back into my mind. “That’s it!” I thought as I finished washing the dishes, that is the theme of this pitch.

Once the kids were in bed and the kitchen cleaned, I cracked open my laptop and began to take what I had been mapping out in my mind for hours, translating it into a Google Slide deck. It came together quickly, as I had invested several hours of my evening towards thinking through the slides and overarching approach I wanted to take. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to put on each slide, but that was inconsequential. I knew what I wanted to do — and I executed the idea.

Once I finished, I submitted a Superlatives Retrospective to the class via Slack. It wasn’t perfect (but no pitch is), but it accomplished what I hoped it would achieve. The 26 slide narrative was in stark contrast to what the other four faculty had submitted. I manipulated the Superlatives themselves to further personalize their meaning and fit them into my storyline. The Carl Sagan video clip was included to reinforce my overarching idea: We are all a pale blue dot.

Within a few hours, the class had erupted in celebration. The following day, everyone in the class had seen the presentation, crowning me the Winner.

But there are a few things you should know.

1. I completely missed a Superlative in my first pass, thus missing a student. None of the other faculty had done this. However, because the students became overwhelmed with the pitch, only one person noticed (the student himself). I quickly corrected my mistake and won him over. But I missed a part, and only one person noticed, proving to me the pitch mindset’s power.
2. The other thing you should note is that in the first pass, I called my idea “We are all a blue spec.” This is NOT what Carl Sagan says in the video. I rushed and, like the missed student, didn’t double-check my work. However, my narrative was strong enough that this mistake didn’t seem to be noticed by ANYONE other than me.
3. Finally, I took advantage of going last. I knew that my pitch would stand out because no one else had submitted a deck. This wasn’t a bad thing. Going second/third has helped me many times, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it here.

Now before you go thinking, “man, this guy is an egomaniac.” (Ok — I do like to win) The point is that the class saw me at my best, and I took the care they wanted in this activity. And that is what is at the core of a pitch mindset. Look at what your audience is looking for beyond the surface level request and give them that. You’ll be happy you did.

The Superlatives Retrospective (names have been changed)