6 Chapter 6: Pitches
Business pitches are short concise compelling presentations and proposals that outline the most critical elements of a business idea, a product, or a service. The aim of a pitch is to persuade customers, investors, and partners to sign on to your new idea. Pitches are exciting speeches full of energy and enthusiasm. Although they are short, they take a good deal of practice to prepare. The best pitch makers skillfully make their speech appear to be extemporaneous even it if it is well rehearsed. In this chapter will you examine why business pitches are produced what are the advantages of it of a pitch and how you may go about preparing your own business pitch.
Why use a business pitch?
Business pitches allow you to effectively communicate your ideas, vision, and values to a target audience in a short period of time. You can present complex ideas, give easy to understand graphics, demonstrate a product, and allow your audience to envision the future which would be so much better with your idea or product.
Pitches are frequently used to attract investment. This might occur by asking for money for a startup or expansion. It might also be done when launching a new product or entering a new market. A pitch allows you to showcase the awesome opportunity that you are providing, as well as discuss the ways that you audience will benefit from your proposal. This benefit will oftentimes be monetary gain for both you and the investors. But it might also be the acquisition of a product or participation in a form of altruism.
But why use a pitch instead of simply sending out a folder, binder, or a slide deck? Pitches are important for building partnerships between you and the people that are investing in your idea. A successful pitch allows investors not only to judge the product but also the team behind it. Remember that the judge and audience are examining your ethos and logos. If they believe that you are a like-minded person who behaves logically, they are more likely to want to invest their resources, expertise, time, network, and others services into your idea.
Pitches are often thought of as a way to start a new business. But they are also useful at the end point – when a product has been produced and now needs to be sold. Before internet-based marketing, one of the few ways for consumers to learn about new products was through grocery store pitches. Some weekends were essentially pitch days between supermarket isles. Around every corner was a different small table marketing a new product. Ofttimes speakers would ask shoppers to try a new flavor or test out a new cleaning product. Consumers were the audience for these very quick, but often compelling, narratives that were emphasized in a tactile way via samples. Although these pitches do sometimes still occur in grocery stores, they are far less common as marketing has moved online and also COVID changed so many shopping and pitching behaviors. However, these types of pitches continue in supermarkets as well as department stores where products that are best explained through demonstration and samples are found. For example, make up counters continue to offer pitches. So do toy stores and car dealerships. In all of these pitches, the emphasis made by the salesperson is in letting you know about the critical features and highlights of a new produce. Salespeople are successful in these pitches when they can quickly assess the person who they are speaking to and adjust their pitch to meet what they (perceive) to be the audience member’s needs.
While many pitches sell items, it is possible to also use pitches to advertise yourself. This is especially true when running for election, asking for a leadership position, and sometimes also when interviewing for a new job. In each of these examples, you are attempting to bring the audience member around to your thought process. This is done by building the audience’s confidence in both you and capabilities to do the job at hand. In making these personal pitches it is critical to emphasize but not overly accentuate your personal skills, capabilities, and attributes. You do want to be chosen, but after being chosen you do not want your audience to feel misled.
Successful Pitches
Successful pitches occur when you know your products or service as well your audience. This preparation allows you to know what type of information will be most compelling to decision makers. You need to know what the audience already knows, what needs the audience members have, and what alternatives they may have already tried. From this information you can then demonstrate how your product will meet a critical need. Sometimes the audience does not yet know that they have a need – so you will need to spell it out for them. Other times, the audience knows that they have a need but thinks that they cannot afford the solution. In these cases, you need to be able to explain how easily and affordably they can accept your proposal.
While some pitches are years in the making, we frequently encourage students and professionals to think about their ability to make a pitch in very short time frame. You never know when you might be stuck in an elevator next to a person with whom you’ve been eager to speak. Think back to the introduction speech – in that one we considered how to introduce yourself quickly. Now, we are concerned with how to pitch your idea in 90 seconds.
A quick pitch for your idea needs to adapt to the setting. When you find yourself next to a CEO in the elevator you should not pull out your slide deck and ask them to wait while a projector warms up. Similarly, when you are asked at a birthday party if you are “working on anything interesting” you should not begin with the details of your Excel table. Instead, use these times to develop or advance a personal connection. Just as when making a longer pitch, the most critical element is developing interest and getting the audience member to ask questions or come back for more information later. In doing this, you must adapt quickly – this includes changing your posture, wording, examples, props, and tone to better fit the situation. Just as you can’t yell in an elevator, you shouldn’t be sharing depressing facts at a birthday party. This does not mean that you need to put on a caricature – it is important to always be our authentic selves when making a pitch. Instead, it means that you should think through how you might adapt your pitch to many different situations so that you are prepared in advance for these kinds of chance encounters. And then when they do occur remember to think about your pitch as an appetizer. You are planting the idea that the CEO is desperate to hear more about. If your 90 seconds in the elevator go well then you may be invited later to make the full pitch complete with your well-prepared props and slide deck.
In class and in practice you might watch competitions such as Shark Tank to examine the many ways that entrepreneurs have made pitches for a wide audience. You might also look to platforms such as Kickstarter and Go Fund Me which allow people to ask for money from diverse audiences. Do remember, however, that what makes a successful pitch for one situation does not necessarily make a successful pitch in other situations. Commercialized entertainment shows such as Shark Tank are network produced television programs. While pitches truly are made, they have had years of consultation and have been prepared for a television studio (no matter how much like a board room that studio may be). The situations which you will experience at first in your career are different in terms of scale as well as audience. Yet, many of the critical skills are the same. Let’s look then at what are the some of the most critical elements of a pitch .
Elements of a Pitch
Speed
Pitches are fast. They quickly get to the point and they call the audience’s attention immediately. While some pitches are delivered at a quick verbal pace as well, it is important to read the room. Be sure that the audience can understand the speed at which you are speaking and that you are not speaking so quickly that you sound nervous or desperate.
In some speeches it is appropriate to begin with a quote followed by an introduction and preview for the speech. However, in a pitch the speaker usually skips these elements. They may pose an attention getting question, but it should have an obvious answer, not one that asks the audience to quietly think to themselves.
Images
Almost all pitches have a winning slide deck. Remember, however, that the slide deck is there to support your speech. It is not the speech itself. You want the focus to be on you because the audience is judging your character and deciding if they will invest in your idea. Your ethos is critical here.
Some speakers want to reinvent the wheel and come up with the newest type of slide deck, transition, or formatting. However, we advise that you resist the temptation to mesmerize the audience with your images. If the presentation style is distracting, the audience will be focusing on your images rather than the ideas and the products that you’re attempting to pitch.
Justification
A pitch is successful when the audience is convinced that they desperately need the thing that you are pitching. Put another way, your pitch needs to clearly indicate the problem which you are trying to solve. Take time to think clearly about the needs experienced by different audiences. For example, imagine that you are pitching for a landscaping company. You are going door to door, apartment to apartment, meeting with various managers and encouraging them to take on your services. Preparation work for this type of pitch most likely includes previewing the neighborhood, looking at various buildings, and noticing what they do well. You also will be noticing work that needs to be done. Then, use that need – the work which needs to be done – as your entry point. Be sure to highlight the work you’ve done in the past and how successful you have been. Then, you are well prepared to help a building manager to agree that their life would be much easier, and their business more successful if they had your services. When making this pitch, you need to be specific. There may be 100 different services that you can offer, from clipping hedges to removing dog waste to better landscaping. For each pitch you will need to be strategic about which services you list. Giving the whole list will be boring for your audience. Giving examples of things they already do well will make your services seem unnecessary. Highlight how you found an issue when you did your research and how you can resolve that issue – this ordering of problem solution followed by a specifically tailored pitch will most likely get you a contract.
Keep in mind that you need to be speaking about how the audience views themselves – not how you view them. A property services company might do well in some neighborhoods if they highlight the ways that their services will attract new and more desirable residents. However, if you are pitching to one of the most exclusive buildings (or a building which thinks it is already exclusive) then you don’t necessarily want to tell them that you’ll bring in new and more desirable residents. They already have the best of the best! Instead, you want to focus on how your services will keep their amazingly desirable residents happy.
Road Map
Have you ever seen a commercial where you think that they’re selling you one thing and then it turns out that they’re selling something completely different? The storyline of these commercials can be fascinating, but this is not the way to organize a pitch. Instead, you want the audience to know within 15 seconds what it is that you’re trying to pitch. You don’t have to reveal all the details at that time. But if you’re selling baby food the food and it’s desirability should be apparent quickly. The focus is on the baby food – not cute babies, not their diapers, not their clothing, not the balloons in the background. Just the food, front and center.
In many prepared speeches we tell you to introduce the road map with an enumerated list; “First I will address topic a, then I will address topic b…” When giving a pitch, you do not need to give this detailed roadmap. Oftentimes the audience knows they are being pitched to. What is important is that you meet their expectations for providing information. You keep their attention and if you notice that it begins to wain you are able to pivot and bring them back to the focus of your speech. While you will prepare your speech with an outline, be willing to talk beyond the outline. Add in a rhetorical question, or a quick example that brings their attention back to a place where they lost interest or became confused. One way that you might do this is by saying “now I see you thinking to yourself that I don’t really need this. And I thought the same when I was hired to work for this company. However, I want to tell you how much better things have been since I signed on for this service.” In this quick turn around, you have identified with your audience. You’ve acknowledged their skepticism, and you’ve answered it with the best argument that you could possibly use.
Organizing and Timing Your Pitch
Think of your pitch as occurring in one of three different levels of depth. This depth can be found and varies in a 5 second pitch, a 30 second pitch, or a 5 minute pitch.
5 second pitches are short, concise, and may only contain one sentence. These pitches rely heavily on immediate attention grabbing quick establish of ethos and pathos. For these types of pitches logos is either implicit or lacking. Think about a windy day. You are walking to work and already are running late. And then, it starts to rain. A man selling umbrellas on the side of the street may quickly reach out with an umbrella ask “5 Dollars?” His pitch is phrased as a question. It is only two words long and is delivered very quickly. Yet, this pitch might be immediately successful because you already have identified with the need (for an umbrella) and the only point of contention is if you will spend $5 for the umbrella. You may choose to haggle over the price, but most likely if you are late and fear of being drenched for the entire day, you will pay the $5. In this example the salesperson does not have to explain the logic, provide details or demonstration, all of those are already implicitly known to you the consumer.
30 Second Pitches
30 seconds is far longer than 5 seconds, but it is very little time in which to make a pitch. When making a 30 second pitch you want to identify the need, encourage the audience member to imagine how much better their life would be with your product or service, and make it clear to them how they can go about getting the product and service you are offering.
5 minute Pitch
In a 5 minute pitch you have enough time to use complicated rhetorical and persuasive strategies. One of the best things to use when you have this long for a pitch is use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. This speech pattern has existed for centuries, but is referred to by the name of the scholar, Alan Monroe, who studied and wrote about it in 1969. The sequence has 5 five steps. It is critical that you use all 5 steps during your pitch to be successful. The steps are :
(1) Attention (get the attention of your audience),
(2) Need (describe the problem, demonstrate a need for change),
(3) Satisfaction (present a practical, and concise solution),
(4) Visualization (allow your audience to picture the results),
(5) Action (request immediate action from your audience).
Why Monroe’s Motivated Sequence Works
Monroe’s Motivated Sequence works because it identifies for audiences what they need, it fills that need, and allow them to visualize their future in a warmer light. Put another way, it speaks directly to our problem / solution mindsets and makes us happy because the solution is right in front of us. This is done through a balance of persuasion and performance and can be adapted to a wide variety of audiences. As Monroe indicated in 1969;
“Although individuals may vary to some extent, research has shown that most people seek consistency or balance among their cognitions. When confronted with a problem that disturbs their normal orientation, they look for a solution; when they feel a want or need, they search for a way to satisfy it. In short, when anything throws them into a condition of disorganization or dissonance, they are motivated to adjust their cognitions or values, or to alter their behavior so as to achieve a new state of balance” (p. 42).
Step 1: Attention Step
The speech must begin by getting the audience’s attention. There are many techniques used to gain the audience’s attention, and we’ve listed some of them. These techniques can be applied to any motivational type of speech, be it a pitch or a pep talk for a sports team, or when asking individuals to sacrifice themselves in the name of a greater good. Each of these techniques works because it prepares the audience for connecting to and caring about the topic at hand. The techniques are:
- relating to the audience
- showing importance of the topic
- making a startling statement
- arousing curiosity or suspense
- using a quotation relevant to your topic
- humorous anecdote
- telling a dramatic story
- posing a question (maybe rhetorical)
- using visual aids for illustration
Not all of these techniques for gaining audience’s attention make sense in a pitch. Let’s examine them one by one. Relating to the audience is essential for a pitch. You want to make sure that the audience sees you as someone who should be trusted for great decision making capabilities (this is your ethos). Indicating that you have used the product or service before, or you’ve telling the audience why this product or service is needed allows the audience to stand in your shoes and understand why it’s necessary or at least theoretically possible for them to act.
Showing the importance of the topic is also incredibly important for a pitch. You need to make it clear that this is the only time, or the first time, or the best time for your audience members to act. You want to be sure that your audience members think that your idea is interesting. But also that they feel the immediacy of your proposal. They can’t just come back to your proposal later. And they shouldn’t shop around to find somebody who might do a better job. Instead, you want to them to be prepared to act now.
Making a startling statement is an option for Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, but is not the best option for a pitch. Startling your audience works in our rainy day example if an oncoming thunderstorm will appear in 3 minutes and you the umbrella salesperson can persuade you that you are about to be drenched. They might highlight the magnitude of this storm and its effect on your day by telling you that the whole day will be destroyed if you get soaked. But frequently when making a pitch, using a startling statement is seen as overstating your claims. This means that you are making a mountain out of a molehill or otherwise making something which is small seemed to be way too big. Problematically, this can cause the audience to lose attention or to not take your work seriously.
Arousing curiosity and suspense works well for a short period of time. However, remember, in a 5 minute pitch you don’t have all that long to speak. You want to make sure that you quickly get to the point and that you haven’t lost your audience’s attention by using too much suspense.
Using a quotation can work if it is short, sweet, and readily known or understood by the audience. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” phrase is known by nearly every American. If you use that as a quote appropriately you can immediately establish your ethos by connecting yourself to that your audience already holds in high esteem. However, if you use a quote from an obscure pop song, or an outdated book you run the risk of making your audience think that your product or service is not applied to them. When using a quote, be sure that it builds your ethos and does not distract, confuse, or insult the audience.
Humorous antidotes can work well when performed well. However, remember the warnings given when discussing speeches of introduction. Humor does not always translate well cross culturally. It does not translate well between languages, and sometimes it is difficult to explain or doesn’t live up over history. If you choose to use humor, be sure that you can use it well.
Telling a dramatic story can work exceptionally well if you can weave that dramatic story within your pitch. However, you do not want your audience to be so caught up in the dramatic story that they don’t actually get to the point of your pitch. If they love the narrative but miss what they should be buying or selling, or begin to be distracted and wonder about other plot points, your story has become a distraction rather than attention getter.
Posing rhetorical questions is a classical device to encourage the audience to think about your pitch. Rhetorical questions are often successful but come with the risk of seeming cliché. Rhetorical questions work because they ask the audience to answer (usually nonverbally) with examples that are persuasive to themselves. For example, if you asked “What would you do with an extra day off on the weekend?” each audience member would fill in the answer with a different example – some might spend time with their children, others might sleep, and others might play sports. If you can have each audience member envision their own activity and then tell them how they can make that a reality, you have a winning speech.
Rhetorical questions become cliche questions when they sound like an infomercial. This includes asking “who wants to make more money?” or “who wishes that they had more things?” These types of questions are over the top. And even if they are genuine, audiences often block them out because they sound like the beginning of a scam. As such, they should be avoided in your pitch.
Using interesting visual aids can work exceptionally well when you are presenting in person. This can allow you to demonstrate an exciting new product that virtually sells itself. Putting a product out in front of the audience also allows the speaker to skip much of the set up and instead focus on the new product. However, when using a visual aid, avoid the temptation to make a gimmicky grand reveal. This might seem like fun, but if there is a risk that the reveal will go wrong or not work, you may lose your audience’s attention or diminish your ethos.
Step 2: Needs
Now that your audience is paying attention how do you convince them that they desperately need your good or your service? In the need step it is important to seek clearly and to illustrate why your audience will directly benefit by signing on, by investing, or by purchasing the thing that you are pitching. You must demonstrate this need directly. This is not the time for saying that the world would be a better place, or our nation would be more united. Instead, focus on direct and personal needs. How would your pitch improve the happiness, health, or safety of the people attending the speech? Our goal here is psychological – you are developing a longing for your product or idea. You want your audience to be ready to accept this upcoming satisfaction to that need which you are proposing.
Step 3: Satisfaction
Your audience now has a need which desperately needs to be solved. You have been successful and have psychologically prepared them to identify with this need and their desire to find a solution. Now you need to go one step further, help them think about how satisfied they will be when they have your product, idea, or solution. To do this, the satisfaction step of the Monroe Motivated Sequence is broken down into five small steps.
Step One: quickly state the action or the product that you are pitching.
Step Two: give a concise explanation of your proposal.
Step Three: demonstrate your proposal. This either could be by showing them the product and how it works or by giving them a narrative that discusses how it would be delivered or how it would work.
Step Four: give real world examples of how proposal has worked in the past. Have other people bought this solution? Have other investors already been invited? If so, what have their returns looked like? In these examples, tell your audience members that they are joining the winning team. No-one wants to be the alpha tester – they don’t want to be the first person that’s bought into an idea. Instead, they want to know that a few lucky people have been given access to this idea. Those lucky investors are so much happier now, and your audience could join that small elite group of lucky people.
Step Five: provide support for your claims. This could be in facts, figures, images, testimony, or examples. Whatever the support is, be sure that it is stated in concise terms. And be sure not to lie or mislead. If your product or idea is not yet available, that’s OK. Tell your audience where it is in development, and when they can expect it to be ready.
Throughout the satisfaction step, you want to make sure that the audience has enough details that they can fully understand what you are proposing, how it will work, and what they need to do obtain their goal. You do not need, however, to explain every detail. Many times, speakers are tempted go into too much detail. They may get distracted by the first detail and then either lose their audience or they lose speech time. To prevent this from happening to you, think of this satisfaction as a hint. You are promising that more things will be possible and will be revealed in the future. But a short speech is not the time to lay out all the details. By accepting your pitch and signing on with you, your audience will get their time to learn those details as a participant, purchaser, recipient, or consumer.
Step 4: Visualization
Your audience now accepts that they desperately need a solution. But how do they know if your solution is the best one? And how do they know that what you are proposing will lead them to the satisfaction that they desperately crave? The visualization step helps your audience to see themselves as the one that is directly benefiting from your pitch. Visualization can occur in three different ways:
Positive visualization occurs when the audience members think about the conditions of the future. This is when your pitch has been accepted. To use this step you provide vivid, deep, and concrete examples of how happy they will feel. This happiness might come when they are driving home in their new car. You might help them imagine how their neighbors will see their new car and be deeply impressed. Or how they will impress a date, or employer, or their parents, with their awesome new car (and it’s implied class, style, or sound finances).
Negative visualization: occurs when you tell your audience how terrible their world will be if they do not accept your pitch. You ask them to imagine how sad they will be every time a better car drives past them. How in those moments they will regret having turned down the opportunity they have today to buy a new car. How their dates, employers, and/or parents will judge them negatively for driving a terrible car, and how they will always have a longlining for the product that you are selling.
Contrasting visualization: is used to ask the audience to compare both positive and negative visualizations. Sometimes the audience will do this for themselves, and the speaker does not need to say anything. Other times, however, speakers may choose to combine positive and the negative visualizations to provide a cause-and-effect speech. In this format, your audience is asked to think about the contrasting visualizations and then they are led to embrace the positive visualization (that of accepting your proposal).
Whatever type of visualization you use, the more vivid your visualization the more successful it will be. Take your time in this step and let your audience luxuriate in the thought of how wonderful the world will be after they accept your pitch. Or, let them pause for a moment and consider how terrible their lives will be if they miss out on this wonderful opportunity. The timing in this step is critical. You may feel the need to rush through the speech. But even a few seconds of silence from you allows the audience to think through the implications. When they fill in these visualizations for themselves, audience members will use details that are most persuasive to their own lives. This, in turn, will make your speech even more successful. Then, after visualization you can turn to the last step, action.
Step 5: Action
The action step tells your audience what they need to do to achieve their goals. You don’t need to restate those goals – the audience has just spent time visualizing them. Instead, you want to give the exact steps which they must do. When doing this, highlight that they must act now. Waiting until tomorrow, or next year, or simply later will be too long.
This step can take the form of signing up for something, for declaring an investment, making a purchase, or continuing to a new location. Clear directions are critical here. Remember even though you know exactly what to do, these may be new ideas to your audience.
Practicing Your Pitch
There are many competitions invitations and meetings in which you may choose to make a pitch. Always be sure that you fully understand the situation in which you are participation. Think through the time limit that you have given. And then work to make sure you are exactly within that timing. If they give you 5 minutes, make sure that you speak for 5 minutes. Do not speak for 4 or 6 minutes. Do your very best to adhere to the times that you’ve been given. The audience will lose focus and the event organizers will be annoyed if there is an awkward amount of time between your speech and the next because you didn’t use all your time. Or they will notice if the event manager must force you off stage because you spoke for too long. Both using too little and too much time will negatively affect your ethos.
When you are practicing, pay attention to your speed and try to best match the speed that you typically use when speaking in public. If you speak faster when practicing to yourself, speak in front of somebody else to make sure you don’t speed up too much. Many individuals must practice a pitch many times to ensure that it goes well. Doing so will ensure that you are comfortable when the opportunity comes to advance your ideas and proposals.
