Tag Archives: pitchcoach

Presence on the world stage.

In the Pitchcoach Awards for 2008, posted here in January, Gordon Brown received the accolade of Most Improved Performer. He has moved on!

Whatever G20 eventually achieves right now it is a success. It is a triumph for Brown.  His standing on the world stage is enhanced, he demonstrated leadership in chairing the meeting and was, according to the Dutch prime minister “inspiring”. How has he managed to do this?

Basically, in two ways.  Firstly, he prepared like hell.  The world trips, the intense negotiations in advance, all meant that the ‘content’ of G20, the ‘what they would say’ had been sorted before the event.  Second, on the day he  focussed his energy on the ‘way’ he performed.

His was the commanding presence, not easy to achieve given the company he was in.  As Simon Carr says in The Independent, “Also the PM looks good: earlier he had a face like an old dish cloth but yesterday he was smooth and tanned…..he carried the day. He’s had a wonderful time-and its hard to dislike anyone enjoying themselves that much.”

Interestingly, the book Winning Auditions. 101 Strategies for Actors, discussed in two earlier posts, talks about  how to Cultivate Presence.

 It says ” Fame is a result of presence… This appealing quality amounts to not much more than a serene temperament born out of ample self-assurance…  Approach your role with a sense of ownership…  Back up your belief of ownership with a supreme sense of conviction…”

Gordon Brown’s  presence carried the day and he achieved almost as many plaudits as the  amazing Michelle.  Her presence lent humanity to the G20 show.

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Alan Whicker, the listener

Alan is back on our screens.  Some thirty years since he first launched his own inimitable brand persona – bank manager style, the moustache,  the spectacles – his latest series, Journey of a Lifetime, has just started on BBC2.  It is a revealing and entertaining retrospective that reminds us that nobody has ‘done it better’.

He had, and still has in his eighties, a great turn of phrase, a wry delivery and, of course, fascinating subjects.  But what set him apart was his uncanny ability to ask intrusive and often devastating questions.  For example, asking the lagubrious Paul Getty to explain how  “Your great success in business is matched by your abysmal failure as a husband”  (Getty having been divorced five times)

Having worked with him on some commercials in the nineties, I came to realise  that his skill as a questioner was rooted in his ability to listen in the first place.  He was the ‘best listener’ I have  ever come across.  He made others, less well known than he was,  feel that they were the interesting ones.   This is why people opened up to him.

In the pitch situation, our eagerness to talk, and show how clever we are, can stop us listening to the prospects -who may want to show how clever they are!

An earlier post on Oct 23 touched on this referring to Paul Arden’s book,  Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite.  One of his chapter headings read ” If you want to be interesting, be interested”. 

Are you listening?

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Appearing your best at the audition.

An earlier post, ‘Preparing for an audition’, looked at a few of Mark Brandon’s 101 Strategies for Actors, Winning Auditions.  Here are some more, all relevant to to the way we  the performers/actors approach our pitches/auditions.

“Check Your Posture at the Door.  What kind of unspoken signals do you broadcast when you walk into the audition room?  Your bearing–the way you hold your head and shoulders–can make a world of difference…. Remember : the more you walk in like a winner, the more you’ll walk out winning.”

“Get Rid of the Magazine.  Nothing smacks more of inexperience in a reading than an actor who keeps his or her head down, eyes glued to the script as if it were an engrossing magazine article”.

“Stay Upbeat to Stay in the Running.  Being positive during the interview is imperative.  In order to be at your absolute best, you’ve got to be in a vibrant upbeat frame of mind.”

“Instill in Yourself a Clearly Defined Mood before Your Entrance.  Whether you’re aware of  it or not, in most cases you’ll start being evaluated the moment you walk through the door.  Thus, the whole casting process begins well before you’ve even had a chance ti show what you’ve prepared.”

“Use Your Nerves or Your Nerves Will Use You.  Remember, making a mistake doesn’t equal not getting the job.  The people watching you know the stakes are high, and believe it or not, they aren’t turned off by a flubbed line or a stumble.  They pay far more attention to your behavior than the words”.

“Keep the Million-Dollar Question in Mind.  “What are they really looking for?”

Pitchcoach says thank you Mark Brandon!

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“How clients really think”.

This is the title of an article in Campaign this week by the very wise Martin Jones.  As director of  AAR, the organisation that helps clients chose agencies, he has been on the receiving end of more pitches than most.  Whilst his comments are related to advertising,  experience of coaching outside that industry suggests they apply across all business areas.

 Here are some of his thoughts:

It’s easy to believe that everything rests on the clarity of the agency’s insights about the client’s business or the brilliance of the creative concepts.  In reality, the real questions the potential clients are looking to answer are  “can I spend time with these people? ” and  “how much do they like each other?” and  “how much do they want my business?”

He guarantees that the prospect decision is invariably post-rationalised on the basis of the positive responses to those questions……….If they’ve had a good meeting and like the people, they will think you care about their  product….If you are a big agency and the client likes the team of people, then big is good.

He stresses the importance of emotional engagement….. If they don’t engage with you, or you don’t engage with each other….the client’s post-rationalisation of the business will largely be based on what they think of them as a group of people.

How do we achieve this emotional engagement in practice?  

 My own suggestions, as someone who has delivered almost as many pitches as Martin has received, are on this site in the Best Practice guides, in particular  ‘ChemistryLessons’ ( the title is self explanatory) and ‘Rehearsal. The Discriminators.’ (Rehearsal makes nice people nicer).

What Martin and I are both saying is that people buy people!

 

 

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Titles can impress!

This post is prompted by what happened to a friend recently.  She wrote a highly entertaining and thought-provoking book only to have it published under a dull and thoughtless title,  the publisher’s thoughtless  decision.  It will not have helped sales.

Anyone who caught Stewart Lee’s  Comedy Vehicle, on BBC2  on Monday, was lucky, it was brilliant, and would have seen him  pour scorn on celebrity authors, and their  titles, in his take on “Books”.

Discussing Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook, Lee’s feeling is that you can either read it and dismiss it as rubbish, or dismiss it as rubbish first, to save yourself the trouble.

He is even more derisive about DJ  Moyles. ‘The sequel to The Gospel According to Chris Moyles is The Difficult Second Book, a title “with a degree of irony and self-awareness largely absent from the text”.  Moyles, he told us, writes that he would like it to be seen as a great toilet book.  “Ah, the vaulting ambition of the writer”.

Compare these junk food titles with with one of utter brilliance.  Gil Holcombe, a divorced mother of three, living on a tiny income, who had not written before, has had her first book published:

How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three Saucepans (One with an Ill-Fitting Lid) and no Fancy Gadgets – Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher.

The book has become a publishing phenomenon, selling 30,000 copies  since October!

The majority of business pitches, and the  documents,  make do with the unsurprising: ‘ The  Such and Such Project.  A presentation by the So and So Company.’  Not inspiring and not differentiating.  A creative title will stand out and be remembered.

 

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