Life's a Pitch
Monday, November 30, 2009
I originally bought this book knowing of my leaving Adobe so thought it would be useful to get my brain into the right head-space for my next role. My partner also constantly accuses me of being too 'nice' at work and not trumpeting my successes nearly as much as I should.
So it was with those points in mind that I picked this book up at the airport on my way over to the United States in December, but as usual, didn't get through nearly half the reading material I took with me.
Fast forward to late February 2009, with several job options available to me, I finally opened this book (and ignore that it took until November for me to blog about it).
The book is organised into halves with each of the authors providing a different approach. Roger Mavity writes the first half and Stephen Bayley the second. Roger's style is more end-result oriented that is concise, organised and business-like, where as Stephen's style is a journey that is more philosophical and colourful. I gravitated more to the first half initially, but after a few chapters the second half grew on me.
This really is a 'must read'. For everyone. At first glance, you'd believe it was only for sales people but about 80 pages in you realise that "the whole of Life's a Pitch".
The first half of the book opens with a brilliant explanation of why 'pitching' matters:
"Life is not a pattern of gradually evolving improvement. It's a series of long, fallow patches punctuated by moments of crucial change. How you handle the long fallow stretches doesn't matter much. How you handle the moments of change is vitalYou can either choose to believe that or not... I do - as I made the point in my blog Optimism & Staying focused where I called out Po Bronson's point of similar effect as well as the underlying them to Outliers.
These big moments are not decided by chance - they're decided by how you handle them. How you pitch your case is what makes the difference."
We're then guided through chapters such as:
- It's theatre, not information - recognising the emotional aspects as opposed to the logical aspects of a decision;
- Think 'playwright' not 'actor' - understanding that a great performance starts with a great script. Annoyingly, this book made me realise that many of the presentation courses I've done over the years could have either been re-engineered to teach me the lesson faster rather than have me learn it by blind luck. That lesson, on page 21 of this book - "if the content isn't strong no amount of polished delivery will save it". Very few presentation skills courses focus on the content, rather, they talk about structure, content and preparation as tools, but generally focus on how you present. Over the years, I've learned how well I present reflects exactly how knowledgeable and passionate I am about the topic. Doh!;
- A good pitch starts in your diary - stepping us through the activities involved in preparing the pitch and ensuring you make the time to do them (in fact, this chapter bears strong resemblance to the Tim Ferris' remarks about aggressive time management in The 4-Hour Workweek as well as those in my blog Are You Spending Your Time the Right Way?);
- Get your mind and your body to the right space - putting the case forward that to inspire unusual thinking, one needs to remove themselves to a new space to think in. I agree as both my desk and home make poor places for me to come up with my best ideas;
- Shaping your pitch & Understanding structure;
- Tell your story from problem to solution - putting forth the case for the story to be about problem and solution rather than data. Here we're given great tid-bits to keep in mind including the point that when we're sick, there is nothing more reassuring than the ability of the doctor to explain our problem in detail. The linkage here is that the audience believes "He may not have solved our problem yet, but he really knows what our problem is" which in turn leads to the feeling "If he understands the problem well, I trust him on the answer". The other über critical point introduced in this chapter is that the solution doesn't have to be perfect - i.e. there is no silver bullet;
- Make simplicity an obsession - experience shows an audience would rather back the man than the solution, ergo, it is the pitcher who is on trial not the presentation. There are some great points in this section about 'winners' that reflect a lot of what Jack Welch talks about in Winning, including the point that "Winners instinctively know that to make something big happen, you've got to concentrate on the few things that really matter. That is why they keep it simple";
- Have you got the perfect answer?;
- The cornerstone slide - making the point regarding the need to identify the one slide the encapsulates your central idea;
- The two-edged sword called the 'executive summary' - a chapter that really helps address the challenge of demonstrating comprehensiveness as well as clarity i.e. one central idea vs the wide range of related issues. It also makes the point that the summary needs to come at the end of the pitch so as not to lose your audience before they are fully on board with your story;
- Confidence is the key - taking us through the issue that where money is involved (and it usually is in a pitch) the pitch gets more emotional - primarily because people who have money tend to want to keep it and the more they have, the more passionately they want to keep it. There is some gems of advice about not 'needing the deal too much' that I'll go into in another blog;
- The tyranny of PowerPoint - a topic I've blogged about in Nine steps to PowerPoint magic (and Seth's Best of 2008) and where Roger covers well, pointing out that you need to be the master and make PowerPoint the servant (a small aside: I understand Roger's point on the use of logo's and corporate style sheets, but would suggest the reason people put their logo's on every page is that PowerPoint are often printed/emailed as 'leave behind' documents and therefore the logo is a way to ensure others are less likely to rip-off your intellectual property);
- The art of rehearsal - which I took out some good pointers on rehearsing content & concepts with your peers but then rehearsing delivery by yourself;
- The pitch itself - this chapter has some great tips on body language, pace, dealing with questions, the use of speaker notes, the use of humour and how to close the meeting;
- The different types of pitch - here, we are opened up to the subtly different nature of pitches with a great illustration of multiple job interviews for a single role - some are about getting a 'yes' and others are about avoiding a 'no'. This chapter proves even more valuable in that it deals with 'internal presentations' such as pitching for annual budgets where 'pre-selling' is vital in order to avoid dealing with a 'no' that you have to live with afterwards. The value of this chapter builds further with the advice on dealing with people who live in Spreadsheet Land (i.e. bankers, accountants, etc);
- The art of collaboration; and
- The loneliness of power - a really fascinating chapter on the pressures CEOs face and how to pitch to them as equals, as well as why they look to outside consultants for advice... which sadly then takes a strange detour in chapter 20 titled 'Numbers, nervousness and nonsense; or, the role of management consultants in civilised society'. It seemed a little bit of a beat-up.
Finally, Roger finishes up with the psychology of pitching - understanding the transfer of power. Again, to quote "It's about the removal of negatives and the creation of positives". It relates a little to the book All Marketers are Liars in terms of understanding the dynamics of what you are attempting to do. It's this chapter and the following six that segway so nicely from the 'how' into Stephen's... I guess you'd call it the 'why bother?'.
Read it and you will be better for it. Chop chop!
Labels: Books, Personal effectiveness, Sales and Marketing, Sociology
posted by Lee Gale @ 1:54 AM,
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