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5 Pitches You Must Have Up Your Sleeve

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Scheherazade had 1001 stories, but you only need five key stories in order to pitch your business effectively in most situations.

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If you have these stories at-the-ready, you’ll be more prepared than 90% of your competitors.

1. Grocery Line

This pitch is your standard response to a stranger’s question, “what do you do?” The nuance here is that it should be understandable by anyone. No jargon, no need to use a silly title like “Chief Cat Wrangler.” This pitch must be super-brief, and ideally will end with you asking a question about the other person.

“I’m a media coach. What do you do?”

2. Business Reception

This is the scenario where you’re standing up, cradling a mini quiche in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. It’s a business function, and you’re chatting up the person who was behind you in the buffet line. Since it’s a business environment, you can be a bit more detailed. You may have the chance to extend the conversation for a few minutes, so you don’t have to cram everything into one sentence. Find an opportunity to ask the other person a question immediately. And when they speak, listen intently.

“I’m a small business media coach. I take the fear out of dealing with reporters. What brings you to this event?”

3. Sit Down Business Meeting

In this situation, you’re spending a significant amount of time sitting with other professionals (for example, at a workshop). They’re going around the table and everyone is supposed to say “what they do” to the rest of the group. Your goal here is to say something memorable and engaging.

“I help small business owners make a polished impression during media interviews. My specialty is analyzing body language…so everyone uncross your arms right now.”

4. Prospect Call

You did it. You got the prospect on the phone to hear about your services. Of course, you started by asking them to describe their key requirements, and then they said, “can you give us a high level overview of your business?”

“My firm, Dazzling Media Coaching, has been helping small businesses like XYZ Realty polish their media skills for more than 10 years. My background is as a television journalist, which gives me a unique perspective on media training. I use body language, mock interview techniques, and speech pattern analysis to help my clients knock it out of the park. Do you have an upcoming media appearance you’d like help with?”

5. Client Shareable

This one is tricky. Basically it’s a very pithy, memorable phrase you can implant in your clients’ minds so that when someone uses the trigger words, they will refer you.

We all like to categorize each other into “buckets” in our brains, so that we can easily recall appropriate contacts when we need them. This pitch is more like a tagline. What category do you want to be remembered for?

“The go-to media coach for small business.”

I strongly recommend taking some time to craft responses for these 5 common situations. Tell your story with passion, wit, and creativity, and like Scheherazade, your business will live to see another day!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

How to Get the Best People to Support Your Cause, Project, or Idea

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Help Me!!


BigStock: What’s the Best Way
to Say “Help Me, Please”?

Ever wonder why some folks seem to have a slew of people ready to help them achieve their goals? Is their cause, idea, or project really better? Do they really know better people? Or is it the way they ask?

On September 22-23, I’m speaking at Pitch Refinery. Check out the agenda for the interactive event that proves

“Every business has a story…

how you tell it makes all the

difference.”

If you get a chance to be there, you’ll find the power of story to move people to action faster, easier, and more meaningfully.

How to Convince the Best People to Support Your Cause, Project, or Idea

In my role at the Pitch Refinery event, I’ll be outlining How to Leading Passionate Employees and Clients — How to get everyone who helps your business involved in sharing your best true story so that your business thrives. In that context, I’ll be talking about five steps to enlisting help on any cause project or idea.

In the spirit if a sneak preview, I’m sharing them here.

  1. Build your network before you need it. We might be on a team or leading one. We might be new to the industry. Maybe we’ve been working alone on a stealth project. Whatever our situation, success means we’ll need the help of others getting to know our story and sharing it. We’re better together than we are alone. As early as you can, share what you’re doing. Vvalue the people who take interest and invite the best them to get close so that they become part of the story too.
  2. Talk about them, not you. Every writer, teacher and storyteller knows that the opening of of a story is more than just information, it’s the moment that establishes a connection with the audience — the people we want to reach. Get to know what moves the people who love you. Get to know what wastes their tiem. Then when you reach out to ask for help you can start with them, not you. That will turn your offer from

    “We are a ___ that is trying to [stop world hunger] by ___. Akimi is a child parses out her rice each night so that it will last longer. You can help make those meals last longer.
    into
    “We’ve all had that horrible, deep pit in the stomach feeling of working on an empty stomach. It changes how we see the world. It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to live with that empty feeling for months, but some do. Imagine how that sets their world view.

  3. Come out from behind the curtain. A true collaboration, an invitation to participate in building something great, cannot occur if we stay in our office, hold our territory, or hide behind our website expecting others to show up while we tell them what to do for us. Come out when you reach out. Show your “face.” Say hello before you ask and get to know who you’re asking. Build a relationship so that people understand that you want their participation not just their money or their time. And so that they see that participation goes both ways.
  4. Turn the pitch into an invitation. The reason most requests offers, and asks, are requested is because the size of the “ask” is far greater than the foundation of trust we’ve built. Trust is built through proof that I’m safe to have faith in you. To establish trust most quickly, show the people you want to help you that you see, hear, and understand them by building an invitation that is easy to accept because it fits seamlessly into their lives, saves them time, and offers and outcome that has meaning to them.
  5. Celebrate your heroes. Allow for mutation. Leave room for ideas that are bigger, better, easier, and more meaningful than your own. Listen to those who start to participate. Invite the best to be hands-on and minds-on with what you’re doing. It’s not if you build it they will come. It’s if they build it they will bring their friends.

People whose offers always get great participation have figured something out. They focus on how to make supporting their cause, project, or idea easier, faster, and more meaningful for the best people to participate. Do the same by concentrating on the people, not the brilliance of the idea or cause. It’s not a pitch or promotion. It’s leadership — building something we can’t build alone.

What are you doing to invite people to support your cause, project or idea?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Pitches Are for Baseball: The Essential Difference Between a Pitch and an Offer

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Who Likes to Be Pitched, Anyway?

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Every it’s unceasing, email pitches from people who don’t know me. If you’re a blogger who has any following, I think you’re aware of what I’m talking about. If you’re just starting, you’ll be there soon. Some of them are ludicrous and amazing. I’m thinking of the one that was filled with baby bottles, squeeze toys and pacifiers — three things never mentioned on this blog in its five year history.

A pitch like that doesn’t gain any points, doesn’t open the door for more possibilities. In fact it just makes the person pitching appear to be

  • lazy
  • inexperienced
  • paid by the piece not the results
  • works quantity over quality
  • is not in a position to get such things in his or her own inbox regularly.

I bet you might have a few other ideas about people sending “pitches” to you.

Pitches Are for Baseball

The problem with a “pitch” is that it sets up the scenario of a pitch.

In baseball, a pitch is the act of throwing a baseball toward home plate to start a play. — Wikipedia

roger-clemens

Think about that. A pitch starts the play, which means that other people have to be in the game. If Roger Clemens, one of the best pitchers in American baseball, winds up and throws a baseball in a field of cows can we call that a valid pitch?

My guess is that Roger Clemens never threw a major league pitch without knowing who he was pitching to and what sort of pitch it would be. His job was to get to the win.

My guess is that Roger Clemens approaches business in an entirely different way.

Offers Build Business

In baseball, the pitcher’s role is singular and focused. He throws something in such a way that another person needs to respnd – to catch it or hit it back. The pitcher’s job is to move that ball in such a way that it helps his team win the game. Helping the guy at bat hit out of the park would be counter to his role, his goal, and his objective as the pitcher of a great baseball team. That sort of thinking seems to have invaded the way people pitch ideas and it’s counter-productive to building business.

Business has one compelling difference.

Great businesses WANT the people they’re pitching — clients, partners, employees –to hit it out of the park every time.

So rather than thinking in terms of a pitch, why not think in terms of an offer? Here’s how changing a pitch to an offer makes it more powerful, more compelling, and more likely to succeed.

  • An offer makes us think about the people we’re about to approach. The pitcher faces a “batter” from another team. The pitcher can’t pick the next batter. A business person can choose will receive the next offer.
  • An offer helps us realize that we don’t have to present the same deal to every person we meet. A great pitcher changes up his pitch to match the batter and the conditions of the game. Great business people take that one step further. They decide who gets their best offer by also thinking about what a future relationship might mean.
  • An offer keeps us aware that the people approach can accept or reject what we have to say. The pitcher’s job is to get the batter to swing even at the most undesirable pitch. A great business person finds a way to make an offer that aligns the goals so that both teams come out ahead.

A business wants a relationship that leads to a deal. The best deals grow everyone’s business. The worst pitches ignore that simple principle.

I’m sure you can think of other ways that thinking offer gets us to a better approach to a deal than thinking pitch ever could.

Make me an offer. Persuade me how it works for me while it’s helping you. You’ll get my attention far faster than you might expect.

BTW, I wrote the person who pitched the pacifiers a quick note to say that my son graduate college in 2007.

What do you think is the essential difference between a pitch and an offer?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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