“Perfect pitch: US music critic takes book prize”.

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’.

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Thoughts on staging and content.

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.

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Encore the Haka..

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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“Flutey insists he can hack the haka”.

Over the last two weeks, the ‘haka’ has been the subject of more news coverage than the rugby.  It started in Cardiff a week ago. Usually, at their home ground, the Welsh team can rely on a combination of massed male voice choirs, Land of our Fathers and Katherine Jenkins to give them the psychological edge-except against the All Blacks.

They have the haka.  Performed immediately before the whistle, for maximum impact, The Maori war chant once came before battle where ‘exaggerated grimaces are used to throw fear into the hearts of the enemy’.  Today, ‘it animates the players combative spirit’.  As Sean Fitzpatrick, legendary All Black captain, said on television “the haka is about us”.

Last week the Welsh tried to undo the haka by standing still and tall.  Mid-week, English players were quoted, ” Your dreaded haka doesn’t frighten me” said Nick Collins, “Flutey insists he can hack the haka”.  Yesterday, the crowd at Twickenham tried to counter it with a raucous ‘swing low sweet chariot’.  It was fun but the All Blacks were always going to win.

The point of all this?  Pitching,  whether in battle, on the field or in the office is about performance.  How you start matters!  A powerful, surprise opening is critical.  It lifts you up.  It lifts your audience. It fires expectation.

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Apparently, the world’s most influential thinker agrees with Pitchcoach!

Over the last few days it has been difficult to escape news that Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, is in town to promote his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.  Amongst the sometimes eulogistic coverage, was a three pager in last Sunday’s Observer Review headlined, “Is this the world’s most influential thinker”?

Whether you believe this or not, he certainly provokes thought and this evening will be talking to an audience at the Lyceum Theatre, where for a day he replaces the less demanding Lion King.  It was in an interview in Time Out, discussing his talk, that the areas of agreement were apparent.

A recurring theme here has been the encouragement  to use storytelling more and powerpoint less.  Discussed in the last post ‘ Please tell us a story’  and  in the  Best Practice  Guide, Staging and Content.  This is what the great thinker had to say:

“I won’t be singing” Gladwell confirms, “I will tell a story unadorned. No visual aids.” A firm believer in the axiom  “Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely,”  Gladwell favours old school narrative tecniques where performance is concerned.

“PowerPoint has destroyed storytelling, so I pledge there will be no PowerPoint.  It’s going to be very nineteenth century………..We’ll try and tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.”

Great minds..

 

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