Easy opening.

This week we have seen Joanna Lumley in brilliant pitch mode. Seemingly effortless, she has outshone Gordon, of course, as he stumbles from one disaster to the next but also the articulate attack dogs , Cameron and Clegg.

Her performance combining charm, theatrical timing with passion, is near perfect and something most of us can only dream about, particularly if the dreaded presentation nerves are a factor.

In any competitive situation some nervousness, the adrenaline rush, is natural and ‘harnessed’ will help communicate the depth of commitment.  However, nerves can undermine confidence particularly at the all important start of the presentation. So if you rehearse nothing else, rehearse how you start!

Often the easiest way to break the ice, even before the agenda etc, is to tell a ‘story’. This can be from relevant personal experience, a topical news item of that day, something that allows you to  start conversationally and engagingly, rather than pre-sent-ation-ally. Putting you and your audience at ease.

In her excellent site ,www.speakingaboutpresenting.com , Olivia Mitchell has this to say about ‘The Story Opening’:

” Opening with a story helps you to be conversational and establish rapport with your audience.  Stories allow you to subtly establish your credibility without bragging, add humour…and gently raise controversial issues.  In fact, stories are such effective openings that there is no need to move to anything else.”

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When looks can kill

Rarely can a middle-aged frumpy, frizzy haired woman have provoked so much  discussion over appearance as Susan Boyle, already world famous after one time on Britain’s Got Talent.  Is weird-looking the new black?

Well, it maybe for the authentic Susan, although there is already concern over her  new hairdo, and she has prompted comment from no less an authentic than Alastair Cambell, ” If there is a lesson from her success for politicians it is authenticity.  It is the only communication that works”.  This from the man who schooled the actor Blair.

Brown tries hard, very hard, for authenticity.  Sadly for him this is the age of television, not radio, and looks are all. As Catherine Bennett said in The Observer: “Nowadays the public is so rarely confronted with public figures who are not fluent, good looking or, failing that, young that even for a politician, any substantial divergence from TV presenting standards is a career liablity.”

Fortunately, for the majority of us, business pitches are not conducted on television so film star looks are not essential.  Authenticity, however, is. 

 Can I spend time with these people?  This is the question that, consciously or unconsciously, will drive the decision to appoint,  and this is where rehearsal comes in.   Without it genuine people, unsure of themselves or their role, are inhibited or try to hard and lose their naturalness.  With rehearsal confidence flows and authenticity is a given.

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Funny thing, politics…

At a very unfunny time economically, we have had the opportunity to judge  and compare a number of leading politicians through the manner of their reponse, words and body language, to the Budget. The contrasts have been extreme.

Alastair Darling was always on a losing wicket. Virtually nothing he could say would satisfy anyone.  Given this a speech ‘that plumbed new depths of boredom….which wasn’t oratory, it was corporate corridor carpet by the yard’  was possibly the best approach. It took the energy from the response, ‘ the numbed Tories were not even bothering to groan’.

Darling was not helped by Gordon Brown.  He seemed to be totally unaware that, during the speech, the TV cameras captured his every expression from crumpled morose to ‘goofy visage and vast banana grin’.  Contrast this with his confident, smiling, well made-up self when, during G20, he was in the limelight!

Together they made an easy target for Cameron.  He did not destroy the budget speech but he had some great lines, ‘a government of the living dead’, and delivered them with an energy and certainty that dismissed his opponents.  Sadly, his support act , George Osborne, whilst sharing the clean- cut fresh looks, lacks the animation.

Compare and contrast all of these with Boris,( subject of an in- depth interview  by Geordie Greig in the Evening Standard), whose very real sense of humour is a defining characteristic.  ‘ A year after becoming Mayor, Boris can still be very funny…. he is a combination of chuckle-and-awe or charm-and-disarm, the populist  with intellectual smarts.’

Is he a serious politician?  Undoubtedly, but it is his humour that could make life uncomfortable for his opponent should he bid for leadership.  Who else, when asked if being Mayor is a dress rehearsal for No 10, would say:  “If  like Cincinnatus I were to be called from my plough, then obviously it would be wrong of me not to help out”.

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How to win by six easy points.

This article was written for www.gorkanapr.co.uk the site that connects PR professionals and journalists.

Pitching is competitive by nature.  Everyone knows this and unless they are natural losers, they engage in a pitch with boundless energy and competitive spirit.  However success may not follow if competitiveness is not harnessed and managed at every one of these six points.

1. Competing at the physical level.

Assess your rivals. What are their physical characteristics, strengths and weaknesses, their track record, what are the likely points of emphasis that they will make in any pitch? Then answer the questions:  How are you different?  How are you better? Ask these questions searchingly since this is where differentiation lies.

2. Competing through attitude.

The other way your rivals will be competing with you is more intangible.  It will be their attitude to the pitch and how that comes across to the prospect compared to yours.  Your plan of attack must ensure that more energy, more passion and more commitment radiates from you than your competitors.

3. Competing for internal resource.

Often the pitch team will go it alone.  This is a mistake.  Pitches are the life blood of a company and from the outset everyone, even those outside the main operational activity, should be enrolled.  Let them know what is going on.  Give them practical ways in which they can help.  Site visits, desk research, focus groups, anything that helps engender an enthusiasm that will be felt by the prospect.

4. Competing against your day job.

You need to make sure that you are not ‘competing’ with, and losing out to, your day job.  The ideal, which applied to the successful London 2012 bid team, is to have no day job!  100% of your energy goes into the pitch.  You may not be able to achieve this but ruthless time management can make sure the pitch team’s prority time is the pitch.

5.  Competing for the mind.

To win the rational vote you must , must, answer the brief!  Then look to build in areas of differentiation and original insight to your response. (Assume your competitors will have a similarly strong proposal.) Look for insight both in answering  the brief and in understanding the underlying client issues.  Keep on listening.

6. Competing for the heart.

The commonest mistake in pitching is to focus on content, appealing to the rational, at the expense of people performance, which can be powerfully enhanced with rehearsal. Competing and winning comes when energy is focussed on building rapport with the client, listening to them, engaging with them as people and pitching an emotional experience.  People buy people.

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Oratory. The exercise of eloquence.

A somewhat  elderly Chamber’s Etymological dictionary defines oratory as “the art of speaking well, or so as to please and persuade, especially publicly: the exercise of eloquence”.

These are fine words not generally associated with pitches where the persuasion is less public, a small team trying to persuade a few. Nevertheless, it seemed likely that Alan Yentob’s programme on BBC2 , ‘Yes We Can.  The Lost Art of Oratory’, would contain some relevant insight.

The programme was enjoyable, referencing many  of the expected stars from JFK, Churchill, Martin Luther King, to Shakespear’s Mark Anthony ( ‘I come to bury Caesar’) and Henry V, through to a personal favourite, General Patton, (” no  dumb bastard ever won war by dying  for his country, you make the other dumb bastard die for his country”.)

In a typically biting review, AA Gill criticised Yentob for lacking a clear view point.  Was oratory a good thing or a selection of glib tricks?  Is it content or delivery that counts?  Talented wordsmith Gill says ‘ it is the written word that continues to move and sustain long after the spoken one has disappeared into thin air’.

True, but oratory aims to persuade in the present. To do this what matters, according to Demosthenes, circa 350BC, greatest of all orators, is “Delivery. Delivery. Delivery”.

 Two somewhat different experts supported this.  Bill Clinton, who likened his own speeches to jazz pieces, said “.. it’s nothing to do with what you say,  it’s body language, tone of voice, the way you look in the eye,.. they will not remember 10% of what you say, they may remember 4 or 5 points…”

He went on to say…”measure not the beauty of the words, not how they make people think, but how they make people feel”. Geldorf was typically forthright “…the speech was an anodyne piece of crap, nonsense, but transmitted through the mouth of Obama it was brilliant..”  An exercise of eloquence.

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