A Simple Formula for Making a Great Pitch

 

A Simple Formula for Making a Great Pitch

Even if you don’t have “marketing” or “sales” in your job title, to be an effective communicator, you need to know how to pitch your ideas, concepts, and perspectives. Here’s a four-step template to help you craft a concise, relevant, and persuasive pitch—without using any strong-arm tactics or gimmicks. “What if you could…” Paint a picture of what your product, service, or idea makes possible. “So that…” Connect your vision to a goal that’s meaningful and relevant to the listener. “For example…” Elaborate on your vision, making things concrete and illustrating use cases. “And that’s not all…” Demonstrate the potential of the idea by describing how it could grow and develop in the future. Imagine you have a new product that helps users clip and organize meaningful moments from their favorite podcasts and videos. Once clipped, the product saves, sorts, and aggregates them in one place. You want to develop a pitch for your audience. Your pitch might be: What if you could capture, collect, and categorize short-form audio and video content? So that you can quickly access and combine content together to make your own meaningful playlists to help you learn, exercise, and be more productive. For example, athletes are curating playlists that contain snippets of podcasts and video advice to help them with particular stretching exercises. Then, they can easily access the content they want, whether they’re in the gym, at home, or getting ready for a track workout. And that’s not all. There is a social element to this product. You can share your personal playlists with friends and even build communities of people with similar interests. Now, let’s look at a non-sales example. Let’s say you’re part of a committee at work to suggest more eco-friendly initiatives for your entire office. You have an idea for hiring a local firm to create an organic garden in an unused portion of your roof area, and you want to pitch this concept for adoption by the committee. Here’s what your pitch might look like: What if we could have fresh produce available on-demand, onsite? So that we can offer locally grown, organic fruits and vegetables to our employees and role model innovative sustainability ideas. For example, we could have fresh strawberries, tomatoes, and cucumbers right from our own garden on our roof for snacking or for employees to take home. And that’s not all. The group that manages the garden hires at-risk youth and also encourages employees to take an active part in caring for the garden and serving as mentors for their workers. As a result, we’d be helping the larger community and establishing important relationships that benefit us all.