Easy to say but not always easy to do in a competetitive pitch. Or in an interview. The pressures, particularly for the less experienced, will include the usual suspects- worry about  your script, letting the team down, looking nervous, making eye contact, handling visuals, getting your message across, creating the right impression and so on….

With experience  the suspects dwindle and your normal self, performing at its best, comes into play.  And most people do have such a self. This is the one that comes alive in animated conversation where strongly held views are being expressed, and listened to.  About a ‘must see’ movie, the restaurant you must try or whether Beckham deserved selection.

In these conversations you will not gaze, with unflinching eye contact, trying to dominate your audience or trot out a shopping list of  loud uninterrupted reasons why. You will, naturally, gesture to make a point, you will, naturally, pause for thought, you will attack key phrases for emphasis and you will use occasional eye contact to check your message is connecting. Everyone has their own characterisic best self and this is what is needed in the pitch.

Usually, unless nerves really take over, this best self will start to assert itself as the pitch goes on but this may be too late. First impressions matter! All the emotional judgement swings into action in those few early seconds and will colour the rational conclusions of your audience throughout the pitch. Worse still, your ’ inhibited’ self is not the one that inspires you, which makes  inspiring the audience difficult.

Experience, training, rehearsal are all important, but one way to hit the ground running with your best self is to focus your preparation on how you start the pitch, start each segment, start each new argument. Think of your first words as the most important. Words that are natural to you and words, like signposts, that allow you to introduce the subject with confidence and attack. Get these right and all that follows will be easier. 

 As Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken”.

And if you can’t find that best self take Bob Marley’s advice: “When you smoke the weed it reveals you to yourself “.

The superb Skolia choir, out of Notting Hill, are driven to astonishing levels of  performance by a musical director for whom the best is never enough. ( She would make a great pitch coach.) Her latest exhortation to her singers faced with the intricacies of Benjamin Britten was a salutory reminder that, ” You are not singing a shopping list!”

The same sentiment applies to many presenters. You are not pitching a shopping list!

In an article this week Simon Jenkins was looking forward with misgiving to the Oscar acceptance speeches.  He anticipated that their lists would be long with a gaggle of folk we’ve not heard of being thanked, endlessly. He then made some observations on general levels of speechmaking, many of which are valid in the pitch.

“When eventually the speech ends, no audience ever shouts, “More!” No audience complains that a speech was too short.”… Research shows that most audiences can recall little beyond the first five minutes of any talk.The brain simply shuts up shop..”

“The adjective rhetorical has become a mild term of abuse. Few speakers distinguish between uttering “the living sentence of the working mind” and reading out a text. The cadence of their normal speaking voice is lost in a reading drone.” (Rhetoric: the art of using speech and writing to persuade and influence.)

“The rhythm of words well-deployed is not just music to the ear, it is power projected. To be able to address others with confidence is a fundamental skill. To be inarticulate is to be handicapped.”

The ultimate source of great talks, and ideas worth spreading, is TED.com.

A recent one is a must for anyone interested in pitching and was given in compelling fashion by Nancy Duarte.  Check it out!

http://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2012-02-07&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Any pitch calls for some level of performance. While this does not demand skills in  ’the art of acting’, familiarity with the ‘craft’ of acting can be valuable. An interesting book by Mary Hasbury, ”Acting for the Better-An AmDram A to Z”, which looks at both art and craft has some thought-provoking observations.

Here is what she has to say about Attack:

“Attack. An executant’s approach to a piece, with crispness, verve and precision.’ Dictionary definition.

 A frequent criticism of stage performers is that they are lacking in ‘attack’, and it is sometimes difficult for the performer to know just what is meant by this, and what they can do about it.

Generally speaking, it involves energy, whether mental, emotional, vocal or bodily, or any combination of the four. It is about energy and focus, and needs to be the complete opposite of feebleness, dullness and laziness.

Enthusiasm goes a long way  towards one’s goal but it must be tempered with control at all times. If the performance seems slow or boring, or wishy-washy, then it is certainly lacking in this somewhat mystifying quality of attack.”

 Tony Blair was back on our screens last week. Is it really only three years? He looks  and sounds different, a too tanned mid-Atlantic sales director with a new ‘I’m tough’ body language, sitting legs akimbo with an over-long tie for decorum. What hasn’t changed is Blair the actor.

As expected it was a masterful performance but one which polarised the reviewers. At one end of the scale was Euan Ferguson in the Observer. “He was charm personifed, sharply funny, deeply articulate, capable in bursts of honest humanity, with charisma coming out of his ears”.

At the other end the ever waspish Quentin Letts. “A gluey performance with all the old tricks, he hasn’t forgotten a thing. Don’t fall for  the grinning egomaniac  preacher man again”.

Whichever way you look it was a very slick pitch for the book, a snakeoil salesman at the top of his game.

The sun shone most of the time on the Notting Hill carnival today. Not that rain would have dampened the exuberance. Too many performers have anticipated the day, planning that started the day the last one ended, creating ever more exotic costumes, 100 strong steel band rehearsals,floats louder than ever, building to the fever pitch of carnival. 

 It was an experience anticipated by half a million people. They were not let down. It was joyful, surprising, engaging, vibrant, creative and loud.

 Compare with the average business pitch. Formal, predictable, safe.  And yet this audience too will have arrived with a sense of anticipation,  hoping for a performance that if not loud is surprising, engaging, vibrant and creative.

Next time you pitch, add a touch of carnival!

 With the Coalition honeymoon well and truly over, the election battleground is a fading memory and it is easy to forget that three formidable competitors, Cameron, Brown (remember him) and Clegg, fought the pitches of their lives, climaxing with the television debates. There was much to admire and lessons to be learnt!

 Mastery of content.

 You cannot perform well in any pitch if you have not prepared to the nth degree- studied, questioned, listened, researched- to be rock-solid over your content. Agree with them or not, you had to admire the levels of preparation by all three. All were impressively fluent in articulating their policies, responding strongly to anticipated but genuine questions.

 Powerful opening.

 First impressions really do count and Clegg knew this. With the element of surprise on his side, his ease in front of the camera and his clever opening statement, he set out his different positioning and paved the way for his successful performance, raising viewer expectation and undermining his rivals. Some opening!

 Rehearse, and then some

 Despite having to run the country (Gordon), their parties, develop policy, door-step marginals, kiss babies, handle countless interviews, take every photo opportunity, sleep occasionally they all found time to rehearse. And rehearse… (Brown even got Alistair Campbell to play Cameron). Non- rehearsal is the biggest sin.

 Beware vampires.

 A common error when caught in pitch fever is to think that an amazing video or visual demonstration will create the winning theatre forgetting that people buy people, not their props. The ‘vampire video’ distracts. Both Brown and Cameron over-played holding vampish wife hands!

 Power of the pause.

  As adrenaline flows, there is the temptation to show how clever you are, how much work you have done and to fill all the available space. This must be even more so when talking against the clock. Only Clegg resisted. He took his time, saying less and pausing more. He looked confident.

 Theatre of likeability

 In any pitch the deciding factor is so often down to making an emotional connection. “Do I like these people?” Clegg came across as more likeable. This did not influence polling but if he had not been ‘liked’, forming the Coalition would have been much harder.

 He and Cameron played the likeability card when it really mattered at their first appearance together. “The extraordinary press conference in Downing Street’s rose garden could have been directed by Richard Curtis, a light romantic comedy with male leads played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.”(Sunday Times)

These lessons were developed as an article for www.gorkanapr.com

The recent party conferences are the last before the election. As such, they are the closest we get to a ‘formal’ pitch for the (our) business and it is interesting to see how good practice contributed to their success!

1. Understanding the key decision criteria.

Decisions tend not to relate to lots of policy content, but to the answers to more emotive issues, well expressed by Polly Toynbee.  “..What kind of people are you and do I like your leader? Do you lift the spirit with hope for a better world?  What’ s the difference between you”?

2. Teamwork.

Labour came across as a loose knit group of individuals with differences less well concealed. The Conservatives, as anticipated, had a dodgy Boris moment but placing him at the start of proceedings lessened its impact. The serried ranks seated behind Cameron, whilst somewhat reminiscent of a Red Square parade, reinforced sense of team.

3. Individual performances.

For Labour only Mandelson stood out. (post dated Sept 30th). Boris was charismatic and entertaining, but it was the newly mature, restrained and ’sober, honest, unflambuoyant’ performances of Osborne and Cameron which made the telling impact. Brown was same old.

4. Core theme.

Labour didn’t have one, the Conservatives did. “Brown launched a battering  ram of policies, so many that his arguments were obscured.  In contrast Cameron’s case was clear…” (Independent) Most commentators reflected his core message, ” there is such a thing as society but it’s not the same as the state”.

5. Leadership.

This in the  newly friendly Sun, ” The Tory leader’s body language sent out a clear message: ‘I mean business’.  Smiles were rare and he used few hand gestures. He was relaxed throughout and made good eye contact. His body language  supported the serious tone, saying, ‘ I have grown as a leader’. It helped him come across more effectively than Mr Brown did”.

6. Use of visual  aids!

Both parties exploited the wives. Personally, I preferred Mrs Brown’s unabashed flaunting of topend design to the demure M&S numbers of Mrs Cameron (whose own bags retail for around £950). Quentin Letts on Cameron,  “I suppose this was a manipulation of the wife every bit as blatant as Gordon Brown wheeling out Sarah…”

A  final thought.  It is never much fun pitching as the incumbent. The decision is, probably, going against you. To combat this it is no good defending the past. You must promise a better future. You will have to pitch more powerfully than the opponents. You will need to introduce new blood into the team and its leadership!!