The lesson here is critical: The purpose of a pitch isnāt necessarily to move others immediately to adopt your idea. The purpose is to offer something so compelling that it begins a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you.
Related Quotes
Figuring out your purpose requires actual reflection on both your own desires and the audience you want to serve. After all, doing business boils down to serving others in a mutually beneficial way. Customers give you money, gratitude, and a shared passion, and you address their problems by applying your unique skills and knowledge to what you sell them.
By making people work just a little harder, question pitches prompt people to come up with their own reasons for agreeing (or not). And when people summon their own reasons for believing something, they endorse the belief more strongly and become more likely to act on it.
As you prepare your pitch, whichever variety you choose, clarify your purpose and strategy by making sure you can answer these three questions:
After someone hears your pitch . . .
- What do you want them to know?
- What do you want them to feel?
- What do you want them to do?
We donāt always realize it, but what we do and how we do it are themselves pitches. Weāre conveying a message about ourselves, our work, or our organizationāand other people are interpreting it.
Take some time to find out what they think youāre saying. Recruit ten peopleāa combination of coworkers and friends and family. Then ask them which three words come to mind in response to one of these questions: What is my company about? What is my product or service about? What am I about? Make it clear that youāre not asking them for physical qualities (ātall, dark, and handsomeā) but something deeper.
Once you gather these words, look for patterns. Many people are surprised by the disconnect between what they think theyāre conveying and what others are actually hearing. Knowing is the prelude to improving.
Until we have a story, others view us as unfocused. It is harder to get their help. Equally important is having a good story to tell others, putting it into the public sphere even before it is fully formed. By making public declarations about what we seek and what common thread binds our old and new selves, we clarify our intentions and improve our ability to enlist othersā support. This is partially a problem of self-marketing. We need someone to take a chance on us since, by definition, we are moving into a new and unproven realm.