Pitching to Industry (and anyone else for that matter)

Now that you have your marketing collateral, it’s time to pitch. ?Every time you send an email, pick up the phone, talk in the halls of a conference or trade show, etc. you are pitching. You want to do it well. You have to if you want to be successful.

You have four objectives when pitching:

1)??? Be Intriguing: You need to get the audience to listen to what you have to say. ?The President of the United States walks in the room, people look at him. He goes to speak, people listen. Maryl Streep and Tom Hanks walk in the room, people look at them. They go to speak, people listen. You walk in the room …. You get the idea. How you look and what comes out of your mouth have to be intriguing or you have lost the audience and folks surreptitiously start looking at their cell phones.?

2)??? Be Engaging: Now they are listening and watching. If it’s the President or a famous actor or actress, people will watch and listen for a while just because those folks are famous. But you are not, so what you do and say counts. You need to engage the audience, so they listen to what you have say until you end. Otherwise, they are back on the cell phone and tuned out.

3)??? Be Persuasive: You want them to buy, invest, partner, whatever. The only reason you are pitching is because you want something from them. You need? to tell them what it is in a way that they think, “Hum, I want to give them what they want.”

4)??? Be Entertaining: You want people to be watching and listening to you. You can have the best and most logical presentation in the world. You an hit all the right hot buttons. But if you are BORING, people tune out.

The key to meeting the objectives is to know who the audience is. Who are they (demographics)? Why are they there to listen (motivation). What floats their boat (criteria)? Why are they looking to buy (why now)?

Let’s start with demographics. You would not start a venture capital pitch the way you might start a standup comedy routine in a night club. So why would you pitch a VC the same way you would pitch a customer? Similarly, why would you pitch 60- and 70-year-old VCs the same way you would start a pitch to 30- and 40 year-old VCs? Before developing your pitch, take some time to figure out who you are pitching to. What language do they use? What is their attention span? What kind of presentations do they expect on the one hand and what would they prefer if they had a choice on the other hand? You want to avoid the former and be the latter.

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Motivation is what brings someone to show up. If we think about products, we say products provide a core benefit or benefits that meets a core need or set of needs, using tangible and augmented features that end-users and customers find desirable. That core need or needs are the motivation. For a VC, it is they need an investment. For a partner it is because they need revenue or prestige or a track record with the customer or funding agency, etc. For a customer, it is because they need to do something and need a product or service to do that. But while that is easy to say, what is more difficult and requires a bit of market research is to determine what the need actually means for them. For example, the customer is a retailer of furnaces. ?People who come into the store want to buy electric heat pumps and furnaces. If you simply say the motivation is to buy furnaces, you could miss the mark. If you start out saying we make innovative heat furnaces and heat pump, that’s likely intriguing. But when you say “we are introducing a new and innovative gas product family as a cleaner alternative to oil, you blew it as they want electric. Bombed out on being engaging.

Criteria is where the rubber meets the road. I am an instructor of CPR. I need a song tat everyone knows that has 100 to 120 beats per minute so my students can be taught to compress on the beat. That way, if thy have to do it for real, they just sing to themselves, and they will hit the right rhythm. Motivation is I need a new song. Criteria is the beats. ?“Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees works because it is 103 beats per minute. ?But if I want say 110 beats per minute in case someone sings a bit slow or fast, I am looking for a different song (see candidates at v CPR playlist (110 bpm) - playlist by seigfriedb | Spotify. (I like Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, but you have to admit “Staying Alive” is a catchy title for a CPR song.) ?Criteria goes to what is persuasive and I you don’t know the criteria the listener uses, it’s a matter of luck if you are persuasive.

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Finally: why now? What made them decide to show up and listen to your pitch today at whatever time you are giving it after all, they could be doing something else, like having a glass of wine and listening to Mozart. ?Something is going on which adds an element of imperative to the motivation. Ideally you want to know what that is. Suppose you read the newspaper yesterday and there was a feature on how sales of oil and gas furnaces where plummeting because the war in Ukraine was driving oil and gas prices up enough that electric was now a cheaper alternative. Now you know two things. First lead with that. “Market drivers are changing customer preferences so furnace and heat pump buyers want electric.” Intriguing if you follow-up right. Second sentence “Our innovative electric line provides the best heating and cooling available with the lowest electric energy consumption.” Validate that and its starting to be pretty persuasive.

The hardest thing to do market research on is what your audience will find entertaining. Of course, we mean entertaining in a good way, not like you are doing burlesque in the French Quarter of New Orleans (cf. Red Hot Burlesque Shows in New Orleans (frenchquarter.com)). A couple of tips here. Think about where you target audience goes to learn things. YouTube? Ted Talks? ?Seminars? Watch what they likely watch. See what you find appropriately entertaining.

Great pitchers and presenters are extraverts. They love the show. If you are shy, get another person on your team to do the pitch and you be the backup expert who answers questions.

Great pitchers and presenters are dynamic. The walk around, they move, they use the full range of their voice. If you are quite and soft spoken, get another person on your team to do the pitch and you be the backup expert who answers questions.

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Great pitchers and presenters do not read PowerPoints or overwhelm you with them. The use a few targeted one, and they use them as punctuation. You may want an exclamation point which says this is important. You may want a question mark so the audience ponders a point you are making. You always want a period at the end, which is the summary and closing; the take-away. Please understand the slides are not literally exclamation points, question marks, and periods. That is simply their function.

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Second to final piece of advice. Hanna Arendt is arguably probably the greatest philosopher of the 20th Century. One of my favourite lines from her goes: “No philosophy, no analysis, no aphorism, be it ever so profound, can compare in intensity and richness of meaning with a properly narrated story.”

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A pitch is a story. The hero or heroine is the person or people you are pitching. The plot is how they came to the realization what you are offering could well be the answer to their dreams. ?That is the “intensity and richness of meaning” you want to offer in the pitch. Who are they (demographics); why are they there to listen (motivation); what floats their boat (criteria); and why are they looking to buy (why now) is how you figure out the proper narration.

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Final piece of advice. Have fun. If you are not, it will show and it will make you boring. ?