Pitch Archive - Page 2 of 5 - This Moment Counts

No!

In elementary sales school you learn that a prospect’s “no” is short for “not enough information”.

And so, whole armies of salesforces bombard their prospects with ever more info when the prospect has already tuned out and started to feel annoyed.

A better way is to consider the possibility that your customers are actually, you know, smart and that they might actually know what they want and need.

Sure, sometimes a “no” means that you haven’t explained it well enough or that a crucial detail was missing. But other times, a “no” really does mean “no”.

If it’s the latter, rather than adding more detail you might want to consider fixing the product or finding a better match. Only if it’s the former will tweaking your communication have an impact.

(It helps, of course, to become good at distinguishing the two.)

There’s this certain breed of super charismatic founders. You could listen to them for hours and after the meeting you’ll leave with a feeling of excitement. Their enthusiasm was so mesmerizing and that thing they were telling you about really sounded cool.

So, you feel you just have to tell your friends about it. Which you do. Well, actually it’s more that you try to tell them. Because soon you discover that it’s actually pretty hard to explain. Somehow, you can’t quite put your finger on what the point really is. What sounded so cool when she said it, sounds rather confusing when you say it.

And so, your friends don’t quite get your excitement.

Which is not your fault. Because the one thing that the founder missed was to make it easy for others to pass the message along.

They won’t be in the room when the message gets passed along. And so the message itself must be crafted such that it captivates even when others share it.

How do you make it easy for others to pass your message along?

What customers want

Many failed products are built on what the makers think people should want. Successful products deliver on what people actually want or need (if not both).

Meta’s virtual reality products are built around what they think people should want: an artificial metaverse that looks kind of childish and that enables experiences that no-one has asked for. They try to conquer the world by creating something entirely new in the hopes that people would want that.

On Monday, Apple has unveiled their take on headsets. They chose not to create something entirely new. They built an (arguably) better way to experience the things that people already know. At the core, their headset is a way superior display compared to any other display that we used before. On that display, we can do the things that we already do, browsing the web, watching movies, enjoying family photos or collaborating with colleagues; most of these things seem to work better than on traditional displays. Movies will be more immersive, screens for our work will feel bigger etc.

Instead of creating something entirely new, the Vision Pro looks like it is about doing the things that we already love to do with the apps we already love to use, but better. That’s literally their pitch: “So you can do the things you love in ways never before possible.”

Apple doesn’t make customers want something entirely new. It tries to sell customers on a better way to get what they already want.

Jaws in Space – The shortest pitch ever?

The pitch for the original Alien movie is widely considered to be one of the best pitches ever made.

Legend has it that it was only 3 words long.

It could have been 3 hours long, explaining in great detail how the story works, detailing the dark mood, forecasting box office sales, introducing the creation team, diving into their track record, …

… and many more aspects that an advisor would recommend you mention in a pitch.

The creators chose to dismiss all of that. They saw two things that made all of it redundant information:

First, it was shortly after the mega success of Jaws which created a hype for the thriller genre.

Second, it was the dawn of science fiction, with Star Wars just having conquered the world and other films around the corner.

Hollywood wanted thrillers and it wanted science fiction. What it wanted even more was a thriller science fiction movie.

And that was all the Alien creators needed to know. Here’s their pitch:

“Jaws in Space”

These three words sparked the producers’ imagination: If we can make a film as thrilling as Jaws but located in Space, box office success would be a no-brainer. The future success felt so present for them, that it made them beg the creators to tell them more.

Now they wanted all the info.

And that’s the perfect moment to give the info. After your audience wants it, not before.

How can you create the urge for your audience to want the info before you give it to them?

The better deal

I’ve seen many pitches end in frustration as a result of begging for a yes. Sometimes that works. But often it doesn’t.

The thing is: a pitch is not about you making a good deal. It’s about the decision maker making an even better deal. They might be in the mood for doing you a favor. But don’t count on it. Usually, they are not. They are much more likely to give you a “yes” when they see how it’s a no-brainer deal for them.

That’s not about undervaluing yourself or agreeing to terms that are less favorable than you deserve. Nor is it about overpromising or making things sound better than they are.

It is about actually being the better deal.

The beauty of it is that in a great partnership, both sides feel like they got the better deal. They have money that you don’t have, you have ideas that they don’t have. They have connections that you don’t have, you have innovations that they don’t have.

So, why are you the better deal? There’s no need for begging when you are. (All you need to do is tell a true story about your idea.)

After the pitch

After your pitch what happens?

Often a pitch doesn’t lead to an immediate decision: “Thank you very much, we’ll think about it.”

That’s why great pitches make it easy for the decision makers to speak about your idea as they try to make the decision. A great pitch has a very clear take away message that’s easy to pass along among the decision makers during that process or when they bring in others into the decision loop.

What’s your pass along message?

The devil’s cute advocate

There are two ways to play the devil’s advocate game: the serious way and the cute way.

The cute way goes like this: Think of an objection to your idea. Be proud that you thought of that objection. Come up with some reply (mostly anything will do). Check the box and move on to the next objection.

The cute advocate is a low effort way of reassuring yourself that you’ve made some due diligence. It’s not so much meant to challenge your idea but more to soothe your conscience. It easily happens when you’re overly confident of your idea – which is when we tend to not take objections too seriously.

The serious way is very different. It’s a high intensity effort to question every little detail and make it your goal to spot even the tiniest of loopholes. You play the devil’s advocate with even more passion than you have for your own idea. You get joy out of crushing your idea. That’s why you don’t settle with your first reply. You keep on challenging it. Try to uncover contradictions. Find all the false assumptions …

The serious way can feel devastating. At times, you may feel like giving up because really, the devil’s advocate is right, your idea is just a huge pile of nonsense.

Which of course it isn’t.

Guess which of the two approaches leads to better ideas?

The players who prefer the cute version might appear to be more confident at times. And they might get away with it in the short run. But if you’re interested in making a difference, you might be better off if you didn’t try to be right but started to get it right instead.

The overlooked part of pitch preparation

When you’re pitching an idea, the actual pitch presentation is only part of the conversation. Sometimes a small part. And yet, it often gets all of the attention in the preparation process.

It’s just as important to prepare for the Q&A part. But how do you do that, given that you don’t know what actual questions are going to be asked?

My favorite way is to play the devil’s advocate game and to do it rigorously. Choose someone on your team to challenge your idea in every possible way and have an actual conversation.

Here’s the crucial part. You have to play it seriously. It’s easy to be satisfied with the first reply that pops into your mind and just check the box. Resist that urge and play it seriously! Challenge that reply again.

And when you’re done, repeat the whole process. Again and again. Changing roles in every cycle.

You will never need most of the situations you’ve gone through in that process. But remember that in order to appear as though you didn’t have to prepare, you gotta be prepared 10x.

Winning pitches

When you’re pitching an idea …

… clear beats clever.
… tangible beats sensational.
… plain English beats jargon.

I have yet to see an exception to this rule.

The slickness of a great pitch

A great pitch doesn’t succeed because it’s slick. It succeeds because it’s clear. Slickness is a side-effect of clarity.

With clarity comes slickness, not the other way around. You can design a super slick pitch deck that’s utterly confusing, has no clear message, and remains vague about the actual plan.

But make it super clear and it’ll be hard to make it ugly.

Copying the slickness is tempting. But copying the clarity is way more useful. But that – of course – means doing the work.

The good news is that once you’ve done the work, you won’t need to copy the looks anymore. You’ll automatically arrive at a tone that’s uniquely appropriate for you idea.

Posts in Tag: Pitch

No!

Charismatic founders