Responding to popular demand for a ‘best performer’ award,  January 5th post will reveal the winners of the 2008 Pitchcoach Performers.

Candidates will be judged in 6 categories- politics, business, broadcast, journalism, sport and entertainment.

Many recent award schemes, and reality shows, have been undermined by controversy -jury tampering, vote rigging, pouting pundits, phony phone-ins and media manipulation. To avoid any hint of bias the only vote that will count is that of pitchcoach.

Who wll win ‘Outstanding Global Performer,(probably no surprise here) Most Improved, Newcomer,  Best Supporting Act?

Entries will be drawn from the 50 or so pitch performers (see Topical section) who have appeared here since the first post in April.

IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO SUBMIT YOUR OWN CANDIDATES!!!  To submit names, with a supporting sentence, or not, log in or email me michael@parkerinc.co.uk .

Happy Christmas.

Last week I was a guest at an imaginative evening of corporate hospitality.  The hosts were ‘pitchcoach partners’ Sectorlight.  Two brilliant poets, David Jay and Luke Wright, got the evening off to an electric start. Either one of them would have given any pitch an unimaginable boost as would  young soprano, Louise Kemeny, whose unaccompanied voice held us us spellbound.

These three were the overture for the main attraction.  Being a social occasion, this was Matthew Dukes, wine correspondent of the Daily Mail.  His role was to conduct a wine tasting. The tasting was of the generous, rather than the swill and spit, kind. 

 Years ago, I was a guinea pig in a serious new product test carried out by a serious marketing company.  In laboratory conditions we tested, tasted, samples of sparkling white wine and champagne. All visual clues, label and bottle shape, removed. The samples sereved in identical measures, identical glasses, at identical temperature.

The winner?  A pale dry cider!

Scarred by this experience, I was not about to accept Matthew’s expertise.  However, I had underestimated him.  Not his wine expertise which is considerable but his pitching  skill.  For each wine he conjured up a word picture -the scenery, the stories around the chateaux and the owners, the ‘notes’- so each wine took on a character, a personality. And all this with a passion and infectious enrgy  which breached even my cynicism

The wines each tasted great.  And it wasn’t the wine talking. It was Matthew!

Incidentally, I later found out that Matthew has been described as “The Voice of Wine” by the Telegraph and has won Wine and Spirit Communicator of the Year.

Not surprisingly this headline in the Guardian last week caught my eye. The article  that followed was about Alex Ross whose book, The Rest is Noise, had just won this year’s Guardian first book award, not at first glance relevant to pitchcoach!

 With composers ranging from John Cage to Schoenberg, the subject of the  book was 20th century music, contemporary and modern classical, an art form regarded by many as too technical,  too difficult and ‘inacessible’. Not in the words of this author!

Comments from judges included: “Everytime I felt overwhelmed by the technicalities, along came a sublime metaphor or simile that would light up the prose”.  Or this from the Economist, “No other critic can so effectively explain why you like a piece, or beguile you to reconsider it, or prompt you to hurry online and buy a recording”.

Nicholas Kenyon, who initiated Proms in the Park said “At a time when people are still talking about 20th century music as if it were a problem, here is a lucid and entertaining book……it’s the ideal mix of enthusiasm and information”.

The relevance?  Many business proposals call for detailed, technical, difficult, lengthy sumissions in document form to fulfil the brief.

In the pitch you need to ‘beguile’.

These thoughts were developed from the Best Practice guide and are now on www.gorkanapr.com

It’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it.

Pitching calls for performance. You’re putting on a show that is scripted to highlight key points, lifting and reinforcing your proposition. People are the heroes not the charts!

The document you submit should contain the detailed answer to the brief and satisfy the rational evaluation. Pitching is about the emotional response.

Be aware of the relative effect of purely verbal (content) versus non-verbal communication. Only 8% is verbal, 92% is tone and body language.

Tell’em…

“Tell’em what you’re going to tell’em. Tell’em. Tell’em what you’ve told’em!”

Listening to a presentation is hard work so you owe it to your audience to make it easy.

This means being highly selective in what you say, not just condensing the document. What must they remember? What are the differentiating elements of your proposal?

To decide, read and re-read the brief. Then review against your insight into the decision takers. Who influences them? How will they judge? What are their issues?

Structuring your content.

Think of the pitch as a play or opera. Start with a surprise opening or overture (“you never get a second chance to make a first impression”) before setting up your theme.

‘Signpost’ the way you will develop this theme under three main sections, or ‘acts’. Then develop each act with three/four supporting strands (scenes) clearly signposted.

Summarise each act before moving to the next, arriving at a your conclusion or proposed action. Finish on emotional, from the heart, no charts, call for the business.

Dramatis personae.

The people on stage are the heroes. Good rehearsal time is your best investment and is never wasted. In first rehearsal check content for clarity. Are signposts working? Are visuals aids not crutches? Are you a team not a sequence?

In the second rehearsal, work on tone and body language. Who sits where? Look for movement, energy and interaction within the team and with the prospect.

In the final rehearsal, aim for more naturalness and ease. Foster a genuine sense of team. You are no longer’ talking at’ but listening and engaging one on one . With confidence!!

Pitch an experience.

At its best staging a pitch is theatre. It calls for an idea that creates an experience, not a predictable presentation sequence. It calls for story-telling not death by PowerPoint.

It calls for a decision early in the process to do something special, leaving time to be imaginative, time to prepare and time to rehearse.

It calls for an emotional connection.

The Best Practice Guide titled Content and Staging covers this subject in more detail together with what I find to be a useful diagram for ‘visualising’ the shape and content of the pitch.

The Haka, subject of my last post, continued to make news several days after the rugby itself, a relief for English fans. A colleague, Richard Myers, who happily combines the talents of creative director and rugby coach, had this to say;

“I was at Twickenham and I thought the raucous, full-spirited Swing Low was effective and partly dulled the edge the Haka can create.

On one level the Haka is a piece of hokum theatre.  It would have more of a genuine role if all 22 All Blacks were maoris, but they started using it when the heritage of most of the players was farming in Scotland and Wales rather than repelling said Euros from the two islands.  Today’s players are a mixture of Euros and Pacific Islanders (who have their own version of the Haka) with a few maoris making up the numbers.  Incidentally, the tradition is that the Haka is indeed led by someone with maori blood in their veins.

Today, I think the Haka works less as a ‘challenge’ to the ‘enemy’ and more of a call to teamship for the All Blacks, a timely reiteration of what being an All Black means, that the shirt is priceless and that winning is all.

Applying this to business pitching (ahead of the pitch) and you would have a powerful ritual, instilling a oneness of purpose and the parking of egos, and creating an invisible but compelling feeling for the pitchee that here is a group of people who want your business and deserve it.”

Thank you Richard.

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