Building Your Pitch: A Process

Building Your Pitch: A Process

Building a process allows you to ensure consistency in a particular area. In a recent interview, Adi Klevit discussed a process for building the perfect pitch with Topher Morrison of Topher Communications. 

Read on to find out the process - then listen to the full interview to get all of the details and additional examples that Topher shared. 

Building Your Pitch: A Process

Customizing your communication to the audience is critical to a successful pitch. For example, using your elevator pitch at a party where a longer conversation is going to happen will leave you flat-footed after the first ten seconds. During their discussion, Topher shared a process for building both an elevator pitch and a party pitch. Here are the steps he discussed:

A. Clearly communicate these four things to perfect your elevator pitch:

1. Who you are (My name is “Adi” - pronounced like the first three letters in Adidas.) 

2. Your company name (I’m the CEO of Business Success Consulting Group.)

3. What you do (We are business consultants.)

4. What is your claim to fame (We create processes and procedures for fast-growing companies that lack consistency so they can grow and scale.) 

Here are common issues that Topher sees with an elevator pitch:

1. People are used to introducing themselves, so they don’t slow down when stating their names. In the example above, Adi shared that she often tells people how to say her name by saying, “My name is ‘Adi,’ which is pronounced like the first three letters in ‘Adidas.’” This introduction helps people to pronounce her name correctly and makes her name memorable right off the bat.

2. People get cutesy with their introduction. Topher told a story about meeting someone who said they were a “cranial prosthetic engineer.” After much digging, he discovered that the person made and sold wigs. Just be straightforward with what you do so that the person doesn’t need further explanation.

3. People are unclear or use passive verbs. This one is simple to solve. State your claim to fame clearly and craft your message to avoid using passive verbs. 

4. People do not practice their pitch. If the pitch has yet to be practiced, it will work some times and not others. It’s tough to review the exact words of a pitch afterward if you were flying by the seat of your pants, so it can be difficult to understand what it was about a pitch that worked or didn’t. Try practicing your pitch beforehand.

Here is Topher’s elevator pitch: “Hi, my name is Topher. My company is called Personify. We're a training consultancy firm. We specialize in developing award-winning pitches for business leaders that need to communicate with clarity and credibility.”

B. Have a ready response for the follow-up questions you’ll be asked at a networking event or party.

This is your “party pitch,” and it begins with the elevator pitch you’ve established above. The elevator pitch responds to the initial question, “What do you do for work?” However, you cannot just walk around a networking event providing every attendee with your elevator pitch. You need to have a conversation. 

Topher discusses how to design a response to common follow-up questions. 

After the “What do you do question,” people want to know: 

1. “Are you good at what you do?”

This is often communicated best by providing numbers. Topher’s example was, after his elevator pitch, he says something like, “Well, I don't know if I'm any good at it, but I've been speaking professionally for 35 years, and I've helped generate over 10 million in award-winning pitches in terms of funding.“

These hard and fast numbers impart credibility. 

The next question is: 

2. Would the product/service you are offering be any good for the person you are talking to? 

Topher recommends removing any salesy language. You are having a conversation in this scenario. So, he might say something like, “You know, one of the biggest challenges that I see many business owners make is they never take the time to rehearse their pitch. And as a result, they end up winging it. And when they wing it, they sometimes hit a home run. They sometimes strike out.

“And even if they do hit a home run, they don't know what they did to hit that home run, so they can't create that success consistently. And that becomes a big frustration for a lot of people.”

This type of generalized language brings the other person into the conversation. It encourages them to think of examples of times they have encountered a bad pitch. They may remember times they had a poor outcome. Or, maybe they don’t need your service, but they know of a friend who could use your help. 

By generalizing the language, you draw the other person in and make it a discussion, not a straight sales pitch. 

3. What does your service do for people?

Next, you want to provide the solution that you offer. But again, you are having a conversation, so it’s not likely that the person you are talking to wants to get into the nitty-gritty of every aspect of your business. Instead, communicate what you do as a methodology.

Topher’s example is: “Through my three-step methodology, I create award-winning pitches for people that are easy to memorize, fun to deliver, and natural when they come across.”

This isn’t a specific solution for the person in front of him, but it does communicate that there is a method that he can teach, and it won’t be too onerous for the person he’s working with.

4. What got you into this industry?

This is a common question that gets asked at parties and networking conventions. It’s often one of those throw-away questions - but it can be used as an invitation to share your “why.” 

Topher shared an example of a client who teaches JuJitsu. His “why” is that he was bad at sports his whole life and experienced insecurities, but then he found JuJitsu in his twenties, and this practice gave him the confidence he’d been missing for his entire life. Now that he’s discovered this practice, he wants to provide it to kids to give them the confidence he was missing in his childhood.

The “why” is a story that communicates your passion. But, if you haven’t found it beforehand, you may end up with a long rambling story that overtakes the conversation.

C. Practice your pitch

Once you have put your elevator pitch and party pitch together, practice it beforehand! You can talk into a mirror, pull aside a friend or colleague, or ask a family member to run through a party/elevator pitch scenario with you. The idea is to get the content and meaning of your pitch down without it becoming completely robotic and rote. You want to deliver the main points of your pitch naturally in social settings.

This is one basic process that you can use to improve your networking experience. If you are interested in building and documenting more business processes, get in touch with the experts at Business Success Consulting Group. You can click here to schedule a free consultation.

Building Your Pitch: A Process

Author: Adi Klevit

Founder: Business Success Consulting Group

Adi is passionate about helping businesses bring order to their operations. With over 30 years of experience as a process consultant, executive and entrepreneur, she’s an expert at making the complex simple. Adi has been featured on numerous podcasts and delivered many webinars, and live workshops, sharing her insights on systematizing a business. She also hosts The Systems Simplified Podcast, publishes a weekly blog, and has written numerous original articles published on Inc.com.

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