Here’s the Pitch
So, last night I went to this presentation at Massart called “Here’s the Pitch: Tips and Tools for Creative Communication” with Dan Vlahos, who works at Arnold and an architecture firm. He had some great ideas about how to give successful presentations to “pitch” your ideas. Here were some I thought were interesting:
1) Skip the introduction. Usually stating your name and about you is not important. People you are pitching to generally know who you are and why you’re there. Instead, he said you should give a broader view of why you’re there.
2) Know who holds the key. There’s usually only one person at the table to convince. You really need to convince this person first and foremost that you’re idea is great.
3) What’s the ask? —-> After interviews, you should ask “could you tell me what the next steps are? Should I send you more work? Should I call you?” because often times you can leave without really knowing what the next step is.
4) Tell a story. Wrap what you’re presenting in a story. People remember stories.
5) Learn from the Masters. He looked at lawyers when he was on jury duty and watched them and tried to pin down what made their arguments compelling. He then began to look at how other people present. He recommended three people who are influential people when they talk, so much to the fact that you kind of are spell bound by what they are saying and agree with them: 1) Al Gore. When Al Gore makes his global warming speech, people believe him. They take interest and see the passion in how he speaks and are persuaded by him. 2) Oprah Winfrey. When oprah says “read this book”, people read it. She gives presentations as though she’s giving soft advice, which was another one of his recommendations. He said that a lot of times people sound preachy telling people WHAT to do, so he said to give presentations as if giving advice. 3) The last one he mentioned were the people from the Gates Project in New york city’s central park. They tried for like 20 years to get this project off the ground, and every time they switched mayors they went back and asked. Finally when Bloomberg took office they got approval. But they had to hone in their argument and keep trying and convince the mayor, the board, city hall, etc. He also mentioned a book called slideology that goes in depth about presenting.
6) The most creative ideas are often disruptive, perhaps even counterintuitive at the time. They are usually the toughest to present (ex: the Eiffel Tower….people didn’t want this to be built when they first came out with the plans)
7) Your audience will read or listen. They will not do both. You can’t hand out handouts before and expect them to listen. They will do one or the other. If you’re reading something while someone’s presenting you’re not listening to them. Give handouts later and / or a “leave behind” so they come to you after the lecture and you can give them your card etc
8) Restate the problem. For instance, you say “ok. You wanted an organic chocolate that feels earthy and organic but not like everything else on the shelf.” and they’ll be like wowww…..yes! This lets them know that you listened, processed it, and are able to restate it for them and that you’ve thought about it.
9) Build anticipation. Before showing your product, keep them hidden, and say things like “we’re really excited about this, it came out really well, we are really happy about it.” This mindset is important to how something is perceived. If they are unsure at the beginning, they’ll be unsure about it when they see it. A lot of it is getting the mind excited about it before seeing it. This actually makes it exciting (I don’t know if I wrote this very clear).
10) Look organized. One of the things he learned when he was on jury duty was that the lawyer that was more impressive had everything all ready and organized. He knew what he was going to say, the points he was going to emphasize. The other lawyer had a yellow pad of hand written notes that he continually flipped through back and fourth. This was obviously less convincing and impressive.
11) Repetition. If there’s a keyword for the project that they’re aiming for (or if you’re applying for a job and they asked for a specific set of skills/qualities), make sure to use that word in your presentation a few times to really hammer it in that YOU’RE the one that fits they want, or that THIS is the product that really fits what they want.
12) Don’t solve the puzzle. Sometimes it’s good to go into the meeting and lay all the pieces on the table and kind of help them put it together. In the end, they’ll feel that the end idea/result is as much their idea as it was yours, not you forcing your ideas on them.
13) Steve Jobs, of Apple, has this line toward the end of his speeches where he says “But there’s more….” right when everyone thinks he’s packing up and done with the speech. Usually this last thing is the best thing, and he hasn’t even started talking about it yet!
14) 10-20-30 rule. (slides-minutes-font size). Try to stick to this
15)Visual Brief. Many successful people, when asked to do a logo design for instance, won’t come back with a completely done logo design, but rather a presentation of a cumulation of their thinking. For instance, they’ll make “mood boards” and show sketches, images, words, brainstorming, etc. To kind of show the process. This is called a visual brief.
So overall it was actually a very good lecture, he had some interesting points, not just the usual “stand tall, look confident, dress well” which is so standard. I really liked the presentation.
