20 Tips for Perfect Pitches
There are lots of different types of pitches. There’s pitching a deal to a potential customer. Or a new creative idea to your team. A business plan to investors. Or a potential product update to your boss.
But all of them follow the same basic pattern: you’re trying to get x to do y. And the bare minimum you need from that person is their attention.
But not only is attention really difficult to win when you’re pitching, it’s actually surprisingly difficult to give when you’re being pitched to.
Anybody who’s spent a full day listening to pitches will be familiar with the experience of time slowing and stretching out in front of you. Of ideas that fade in your mind seemingly as soon as they’re spoken. Of daydreaming about lunch/coffee/fresh air/mercy.
There’s no point pretending this doesn’t happen. The reality is that you’re rarely pitching to a rapt audience. So what can you do about it. The answer is, quite a lot actually.
Here’s an entirely unscientific list of 20 things you can start doing to help people listen more actively to your pitch.
1. Keep your slides short
This might sound obvious, but a lot of people succumb to the temptation to overload their copy with slides. One of two things happens at that point. Either they simply read the content on the slides because it details exactly what they want to say (which is boring). Or they ad lib around the slides precisely because they don’t just want to repeat them. As the audience you’re then caught between reading the slides (which is a natural human instinct) or listening to the presenter. Your attention is split, which means whatever you choose, you’re guaranteed to miss something. Keep slides short and actually reference the material on them directly. Don’t leave people to guess where their attention should be.
2. Make data obvious
Data wins arguments. So if you have data on your slides, great: make it super obvious. Don’t bury it in the middle of a paragraph and expect people to search the slide for it. If it’s important, make it big.
“Data wins arguments. So if you have data on your slides, great: make it super obvious.”
3. Include (lots of) visual examples
If you’re pitching something conceptual, like a creative solution or even a new product, help the audience out. Remember: they are either over or under caffeinated. Either way, they’re probably not going to be able to make any huge leaps of imagination on their own. You don’t even have to mock up the actual idea you’re pitching. It could just be previous work, visual references or case studies. Don’t worry that it’ll make your idea look unoriginal. Give them something. And preferably lots of things.
4. Be flexible but show some backbone
If you’re so wedded to your idea that you’re incapable of hearing feedback, that’s bad. But if your answer to every challenge is, ‘Okay we’ll change that’, then you clearly don’t have any faith in what you’re pitching. You don’t have to convince listeners that your idea is perfect, but they do need to know it has integrity.
5. Be aware of the temperature of the room
Not literally. But if you sense the atmosphere in the room changing, do something about it. If you can’t sense it then you’re probably not paying enough attention to how your idea is actually going over in real time. And if the atmosphere is changing for the worse don’t be afraid to hit the emergency brake and either address it directly or improvise until things are back on track.
6. Be really clear about partnerships
Not relevant for all companies, but there’s a difference between just selling yourself (if you’re, say, a boutique design agency) and selling access to a much bigger ecosystem that you may be part of (if you have international offices for instance). It’s worth being really clear about all the added value that comes with that kind of scale.
7. Show that you get the brand
If I was stack ranking this would be at the top. But it’s also easy to overlook. You might assume that just because you’ve been selected to pitch you obviously get the brand. And yet it shouldn’t go without saying. Of course this should come across throughout the pitch, but it’s worth doing something right off the bat that pretty literally says, ‘This is how much we get you guys’. It makes the client feel all warm and appreciated.
“You might assume that just because you’ve been selected to pitch you obviously get the brand. And yet it shouldn’t go without saying.”
8. Sound excited
Closely related to the above. And it also sounds obvious. But don’t forget to sound excited to be in the room. Yes, you’ll be nervous or focussed. But a little honest-to-god enthusiasm goes a long way.
9. Keep the energy up
Part three of this subset. Don’t let the enthusiasm flag. Even in a long, challenging pitch you have to sustain the energy — especially if you’re pitching to someone who’s been there all day because their energy levels will be flagging, too.
10. Results are great. But so is value
It’s great to be able to talk numbers and results. Like, ‘This idea is awesome and will reach 10m people and result in 10x ROI’ or whatever. But (personally) I like it when someone can also say, ‘And here’s what that means for your brand’. Then we’re talking about value, not just results. And value matters just as much.
11. Think deeply about the audience
E.g. ‘C-suite’ is not an audience. It’s five or six different audiences lazily grouped together.
12. If you have something new/unusual/proprietary explain it
See point 3. If you’re pitching a particular thing that the audience is unlikely to be familiar with and it’s important in the general scheme of things, take time out to really make sure they get it. This could be pretty much anything from a unique programmatic ad targeting system to a design methodology to a billing system or even just a metric.
13. Think beyond your platform
If you’re a media owner, it’s great to go into detail about what you bring to the table. But show that you’ve thought about the rest of the media ecosystem around you.
14. Be specific on what the client is getting for their money
There’s a much longer conversation to be had about how and when to start talking cold, hard cash, but I’m often surprised just how vague some pitches can be around costs and timings. They get relegated to the final slide (if at all) and that’s usually prefaced with something that amounts to, ‘We’ll figure this bit out later.’ Well… Maybe let’s figure it out now because this is pretty much the ball game. What are you doing? When do I get it? And what does it cost?
“What are you doing? When do I get it? And what does it cost?”
15. People expect data
Don’t be afraid of being super granular with data. The more the better. Contrary to point 3 above, your audience isn’t stupid. As long as you’re prepared to explain stuff, the more detail the better when it comes to data.
16. Don’t apologise for slides
Just don’t. Don’t call the data slides ‘the boring slides’, either. It’s sort of faintly insulting to everyone involved.
17. Make sure people can actually see what you’re talking about
It might be a big room with lots of people and a small screen. So if you have something that you think people need to see (and if you don’t, why is it on a slide?) make sure they can really see it. Blow it up. Zoom in on it. Cut it across multiple slides. Don’t just wave a hand at a tiny icon and say, ‘I know you can’t see that but…’ That’s lazy.
“…if you have something that you think people need to see, make sure they can really see it. Blow it up. Zoom in on it. Cut it across multiple slides.”
18. No questions are probably bad
You might have nailed a pitch so triumphantly that everybody is rendered dumb with admiration. But they probably just stopped paying attention half way through.
19. Talk to the room
Not your laptop.
20. Don’t interrupt the client
And especially don’t interrupt the client if she’s a woman and you’re a guy because that just looks terrible. If you do it, stop, apologise and let her go first.
And if you do all that… Well, your pitch still might miss the mark. After all, there are no silver bullets. But if you can avoid the obvious mistakes, then you’ll at least have a fighting chance of success. What else have we missed? Let us know!
Matt Bochenski is Head of Content for the Business Marketing team at Workplace. He has been on the receiving end of some great pitches and has inflicted plenty of duds on other innocent parties.
