A perfect pitch!

In just three minutes, you can sell even the toughest of audiences on any good idea, product, service, or business.

Imagine you’re about to have a meeting with some potential investors, customers, partners or collaborators. You’ve got an amazing idea, product, service or company to pitch to them. You know it’s a winner. The only problem is they don’t even know what it is or how it works, let alone why it’s so great. Heck, for all they know, you’re just another person with a bridge to sell.

In other words, you’ve got a lot of explaining and persuading to do – so you better pull out all the stops, right? Design an hour-long PowerPoint presentation that explains everything in meticulous detail. Fill it with a bunch of clever animations, jokes, one-liners and catchphrases. Practice all those tips and tricks you’ve learned about public speaking, sales, and persuasion.

That’s the traditional approach – but it gets everything backward. The truth is you’d do a whole lot better if you did the opposite. Simplify the PowerPoint – or even ditch it altogether. Cut out the fluff. Forget the gimmicks. Stop worrying so much about your delivery. Focus just on conveying your key information as clearly and concisely as possible – three minutes maximum.

That’s because in today’s fast-paced, digitally-connected world, people are constantly bombarded with information, advertising, and various other demands on their time, money, and mental bandwidth. As a result, their attention spans are short, and their patience is even shorter. They’ve got zero tolerance for hot air, long-windedness, gimmickry and anything else that wastes their time or insults their intelligence. They’re savvy, skeptical, and quick to pass judgment on whether your message is credible, relevant, and interesting to them.

So, sure, you might have an entire hour booked for your presentation. But by the end of three minutes, your audience will already be leaning yes or no on your proposal.

In other words, three minutes isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a rule. Whether you realize it or not, you only have three minutes to win over your audience. The question is simply this: Will you design your pitch around the three-minute rule to maximize your chances of success?

How on Earth do you squeeze all of your information into a mere three-minute presentation?

The short answer is: you don’t. You’re going to need to be much more selective with your content. The key is to realize that there’s a major distinction between what you think you need to say and what you actually need to say when you’re giving a pitch. And the problem is that many of us tend to think we need to say everything.

The first two questions for perfect pitch are: What is it and how does it work? These are the most fundamental questions to answer about your topic. By answering them, you’re going to enable your audience to conceptualize the thing you’re pitching. That’s a prerequisite to getting them on board with it. After all, they’re not going to sign up for something if they don’t understand what they’re being asked to sign up for.

Now, in answering the questions of what it is and how it works, you’re going to be making some bold claims about the thing you’re pitching. Naturally, your audience will want you to back them up. That’s where the third question comes in: Are you sure? To answer this question, you’re simply going to provide some facts and figures that will reinforce the claims you’ve previously made. For example, if you claimed the market for your invention was a certain size, you might provide some data to support that assertion.

At this point, your audience should understand how and why the thing you’re pitching represents a good opportunity for them. There’s just one question left to answer: Can you do it? For example, based on your answers to the previous questions, your invention might sound like a great idea, but do you have the ability to bring it to market? By answering this question, you’re going to reassure your audience that you can deliver on the thing you’re proposing.

You should now consider related questions your audience might have about the nature of what you’re pitching. If it’s a service, they might want you to explain what problems it solves, who it can help or what makes it unique. If it’s a business venture, they might ask about the potential payoff, or why this is a good time to pursue it.

In the same vein, the question “How does it work?” should lead you to anticipate other questions about how you’ll deliver on what you’re promising. For example, if you’re pitching a project, how long will it take? How will you accomplish it? What resources do you have at your disposal?

Likewise, the question “Are you sure?” encompasses any concerns your audience might have about whether you can back up your claims. For example, if you said your service was the best in the industry, what do your reviews say about it? What kind of stats do you have?

Finally, the question “Can you do it?” relates more broadly to your ability to deliver on your promises. For instance, if you claim you’re the right person to lead a project, your audience might want to know about your training and background. They may also ask how you’ve dealt with similar challenges in the past.

Make sure your pitch is filled with your most important and interesting information.

You should also leave out sentences that require too much explaining. You simply don’t have time for anything that gets too into the weeds of your topic, like technical details. Leave these for your follow-up presentation or a question-and-answer session, when your audience will be more interested in them.?

In the end, you should cut your material down to 25 sentences. As a rule of thumb, you should aim to answer the question “What is it?” in nine sentences, “How does it work?” in seven, “Are you sure?” in six, and “Can you do it?” in one. The first two questions are the most essential ones to answer in your pitch, so they should receive the most attention.

Your pitch needs an opening.

The first element is your opening. To start your pitch, you should begin by telling your audience about your reason for being. This is the story of how and why you became interested, invested or involved in the idea, product, service or company you’re pitching to them.

Your opening needs a callback.

When did you start to believe you had a winning idea, product, service, or company on your hands? And when did you become convinced that your belief was correct?

The answer to the first question provides the opening to your pitch, where you tell your audience about your reason for being. The answer to the second question provides your pitch with the next element that’s going to push it over the top: the callback. This is a moment in your pitch where you return to your opening and tell an anecdote that helps to illustrate and confirm your reason for being.

Preempt your audience’s skepticism by acknowledging the elephant in the room.

To create your own “all is lost” moment, you simply tell your audience about a problem that jeopardized – or continues to jeopardize – the viability of the thing you’re pitching. Then, you tell your audience the way you overcame or plan on overcoming the problem. For example, if you were pitching an app, you might talk about a major technical issue you encountered during your development phase, and then you’d talk about how you resolved it.

The rationale here is that your audience wasn’t born yesterday. They know that every major human endeavor faces challenges and setbacks, and they know that the road to success is a bumpy one. If you tell them that everything has been and will be hunky-dory with the thing you’re pitching, they’ll be skeptical. They’ll start looking for problems. That means they’re going to be approaching your pitch from a critical standpoint, rather than a receptive one. It also means they’re no longer going to be fully listening to you; they’ll be drifting off into their own thoughts, wondering what you’re not telling them.

At the same time, you’re also going to lose credibility with your audience, since it’ll seem like you’re trying to hide something from them. By the time you’re done with your presentation, they might even feel resentful toward you. Meanwhile, they’ll have thought of some problems on their own, and now you’ll be in real trouble. They’re going to ask you questions in a combative spirit, and they’ll be suspicious and critical of your answers.

So why not preempt all of this by admitting a problem upfront? The advantages are numerous. You set your audience’s skeptical tendencies at ease. You nip their criticality in the bud. You make yourself seem credible. You secure their attention. You focus them on a problem you already have a solution for. And you thus transform the problem from a potential liability into an advantage. After all, the alternative is to wait until they ask about it – and by then, you’ll have already turned them against you.?

To maximize the impact of this element of your pitch, ask yourself the following questions: What problem are you most hoping your audience won’t see? What question are you most fearing they will ask?

Finish your pitch by making sure it has a correctly placed hook and an edge.

Now that you have your opening, your callback and your “all is lost” moment, there are just two last elements of your pitch to make sure you have in place. The first is your hook and the second is your edge.?

Your hook is simply the element of your pitch that will make your audience think, “Wow, that’s cool!” Your edge then provides your audience with a vivid illustration of your hook.

By the time you’re done walking your audience through the core concept of what you’re pitching them, they should already be on the verge of thinking, “Wow, that’s cool.” With your hook and your edge, you’re just going to hammer down the nail you’ve already set.

To persuade a skeptical, savvy and impatient modern audience, your pitch needs to be under three minutes. To create a persuasive pitch that fits into that time frame, it needs to consist of about 25 sentences that answer the following questions: What is it? How does it work? Are you sure? And can you do it? To maximize the impact of your pitch, you then need to make sure it has an opening, a callback, an “all is lost” moment, a hook and an edge.

Additionally

To secure your target’s attention, you must create desire and tension.

Desire arises when you offer your target a reward, and tension arises when you show them they might lose something, like an opportunity, as a result of this social encounter.

In any social encounter where you aim to be persuasive, it is vital that you seize control of the situation and ensure the target sees your pitch through the frame of mind you have chosen. At the same time, you must cater your pitch so that on a neurological level, the target’s brain works for you, not against you.

To control a meeting, you must first establish frame control.

You will often encounter the power frame, time frame and analyst frame, hence you must know how to counter them.

Use prizing to make the target seek your acceptance.

Stack frames to trigger hot cognitions.

Don’t be needy – make the target chase you.

To pitch effectively, you must attain situational alpha status.

Keep your pitch short and simple.