A characteristic of tennis, shared by cricket, is the tiny proportion of a game that is taken up by the actual amount of time when the ball is in play. For tennis its around  6 to 8 minutes  per hour on a slow clay court and rather less on the grass at Wimbledon.

This means that as spectators the majority of our time is taken up observing the player’s body language  between points.  The players too have more time to be aware of their opponents body language and be influenced by it.  In my own sport of athletics, the start of the 100 metre sprint is a classic showtime for the confident  swagger of a Usain Bolt or a Dwain Chambers.

Switching on Wimbledon  television as an experiment, with the sound turned down and scores masked,  it is easy to tell who was winning. It is the one with the  energy, the attitude, the freedom of movement,  the  positive expression and an irresistible air of confidence.

In pitch rehearsals I have not yet found a way of ignoring the words completely but have found that using my eyes only can be the best way of judging a  potentially winning performance!

At the start of any pitch there is the opportunity, too often ignored, for team members to introduce themselves with panache!

Taking around 20/30 seconds each, a total of 2 minutes or so, around 5% of total presentation time, this 2 minutes can set the tone and lift response to everything that follows.

And yet in (first not second!) rehearsal  I find that team introductions are too often mumbled, almost apologetically, with zilch emphasis and zero personality. If we behave this way in a job interview we don’t get the job.

Much more telling than their rational assessment of your undeniable credentials, your excellent proposal and  strong track record is the prospect’s emotional response.  ‘Can I get along with these people?’   ’Do they like each other?’

Rehearse your hellos! Personal, high energy, infectious enthusiasm,  and interested in them…

When the Commons officials released their version of MP’s expenses, it is doubtful that they realised quite how powerful a visual aid they had created. It’s appearance across acres of newsprint resuscitated what had almost become yesterday’s story.  Almost.

The impact of the heavy black rectangles has been dramatic. They have given new life and drama to the story. They have added emphasis and stimulated fresh interest.

In fact, they have performed the way visual aids in any presentation should, adding to the communication takeout.  Too often so-called visual aids are crutches that only aid the speaker, little more than aide-memoire notes. They do not aid the audience.

Creating powerful visual aids takes thought and imagination. A striking emotional picture, a brutally explicit graph, product samples, a memorable quote or a redactive black rectangle!

If there is one word that that characterises the winning pitch it is confidence.  Does the team have it? Do they inspire it?

In  my post on January 18th, ” His (Gordon Brown’s) appointment of Mandelson, who exudes an eery sense of confidence, could prove to be a masterstroke”.  And how!

We have witnessed pitching, the art of persuasion, at its very best.  Some of the editorial plaudits include: “Without Mandelson’s powers of persuasion, Gordon Brown would be out of a job” (IoS). “Gordon has clung to Peter’s presentational flair, tactical nous, coolness in a crisis..”(Observer).

And from Quentin Lett, master of body language observation,” You do not have to like Peter Mandelson–not many do–to admit he has played a presentational blinder these past few weeks …sleek, serene, brain ticking as fast as the workings of a Swiss watch.  He radiates natural authority.  He is calm.  He knows his brief.”

Love him or hate him, but learn from him. Know your brief, and ‘ooze’ confidence.  And this you can achieve through rehearsal, lots of it.

As unelected PM, Gordon Brown, and his  government sink ever deeper into the mire, all the polls are pointing in the same direction. I thought it would be interesting to assess their performance as if they were were pitching for our business/vote.

How would they do against the three questions identified by Martin Jones of the AAR as the ones at the heart of any pitch decision. The answers to these are much more important than issues, proposals or programmes.

1 . CAN I SPEND TIME WITH THESE PEOPLE?

NO THANK YOU! 

2. HOW MUCH DO THEY LIKE EACH OTHER?

NOT AT ALL.

3. HOW MUCH DO THEY WANT THE BUSINESS?

THEY DON’T, IT’S ALL ABOUT THEIR SURVIVAL.

A losing pitch!

At a time when we have just seen the astonishing Obama deliver yet another mesmeric speech, this one in Cairo, it is depressing to compare it with what we are seeing from politicians in the UK.  It is a comparison that flatters few of  them.

Obama, in an unbelievably sensitive environment, gets the words right, as we have come to expect, but, even more important, the delivery. His calm, measured tone, his authority and confidence as he says things never contemplated or dared by previous Presidents.

And, since most of his audience will be getting his words via interpreters, it his body language  and tone that creates the impact, that in effect is the message. What a message.

Compare this with the fevered response of most of our politicians in an unbelievably sensitive environment of their own making. Few, ‘guilty or not’  have handled their expense   explanations with dignity.  Searching so hard for the right words, they have protested too much.

Defending the indefensible, as far as your audience is concerned, or in a pitch responding to the unanswerable question,  calls for few words -assume they will be mangled by an interpreter-and an Obama- like manner.  And rehearsal..

‘

Or as it transpired on the day, not. Nevermind, it was a classic Sun headline last week, worthy of the great tradition set by Kelvin McKenzie in the paper’s heyday. It represented something of a fightback by the tabloids, struggling in the wake of the Telegraph whose headlines have dominated for the last three weeks.

For newspapers and magazines, the great eyecatching headline is the point of sale pitch. Some more from the Sun. ‘PORNOCCHIO’. ( Heather Mills)  ‘UP YOUS DELORS’.  ‘PIGS ‘ERE’ (swine fever).  ‘YOU CAN’T QUIT QUICKER THAN A THICK QUICK QUITTER’  ( commended by the Poet Laureate!).

The headline acts to differentiate in a competitive situation. Yet in most pitches and presentation documents, there is little attempt to differentiate through a memorable title, something that will make it stand-out and easier to remember.

Why? Perhaps because so much effort goes into the content, with changes right upto the last minute, that no time is left to create the ’selling’ title. A mistake.

An article in the Daily Mail  today introduced the concept of Warrior Women as a new  group to take over from the overexposed WAGs. Inspired by the feats of Joanna Lumley, ( recognised here in an earlier post) , the writer, a woman, nominates  her warriors.

She choses them for being independent, strong, unapologetic with grace and passion. They include Helen Mirren, Michelle Obama, Marianne Faithful, Camila Batmangheildgh, Annie Lennox and Shami Chakrabarti.

All of these would be great in any pitch but may not be available!  However, the concept of women warrior is relevant when it comes to casting a pitch team.

Other things being equal, in terms of role and qualification, teams that are only men or only women, tend to perform less effectively than mixed teams. This observation is based on coaching scores of rehearsals.

Why is this?   It is almost certainly due to the better balance that comes from the differences in the approach to communication. Men, generally, talk to convey information,’report-talk’, wheras women, generally, talk to build relationships,’rapport-talk’. (www.eloquentwoman.blogspot.com).

And, after a pitch, I have found that the women in the team will usually have a better sense of  ’how it went’. In other words, how was it relationship-wise?

This headline was in the Evening Standard today, “Lumley set to win Gurkha campaign”.  The way she did this, with charm and passion, was  the subject of recent post, Easy Opening , on May 7th.

And she won without using PowerPoint!

Of course it has its uses.  For some theatre style presentations, for much repeated product demonstration, but too often because it is easy to create and cheap.

For most  pitches, however, when a small team of four, or so, is presenting to a similiar number, beware!  It inhibits story telling and  dilutes personal impact as the screen takes over. 

As Malcolm Gladwell, of Blink and Tipping Point fame, said recently….” he was a firm believer in the axiom Power corrupts.  PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.  PowerPoint has destroyed storytelling”.

Take a look at this amusing demonstration of how Lincoln might have used PowerPoint  for his Gettysburg address:

        http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

Two recent posts, Just Be Yourself and Easy Opening, both looked at  some practical ways of handling nerves in a pitch, allowing your nice side to shine through.  Some interesting observations on http://theresazagnoli.blogspot.com reinforce the importance of being nice, being likeable.

“Gallup’s ‘Personality Factor Poll’ concludes: it turns out that in politics, the single best determination of electability is likeability. Not knowledge, not experience, not the candidate’s position on a specific issue– likeability.”

This is one of the reasons the Obamas, both of them, rate so highly and why Boris Johnson is a more formidable politician than many had anticipated.

It’s much the same in business. People, decision makers, chose to work with people they like.

Interestingly, when formal rating or evaluation is applied to assess a pitch, factors such as likeability are rarely included, or at any rate not in an overt sense.  However, it is self-evident that ‘likeability’ will increase scoring across all the measured elements.

Nice guys do come first.  And, not for the first time here, rehearsal makes nice people nicer!