Shared another, “Listen and ask questions about my goals.”Įven for seasoned pitch teams, it can be difficult to be in a room with someone or a group who can decide the quality of your immediate future, and not advocate hard for it. “I wish they listened more and spoke less,” wrote one executive respondent. And the more senior the audience, the more they want to have a conversation, to be heard and to hear what you think of their challenge. Lesson 4: Listen closely and respond carefully.įew decision-makers want to be “pitched.” They want you to listen to them, ask questions, and understand their point of view on their problem before hearing your solution. Said another respondent, “I want to hear about me not about them.” The lesson here is that if you’re pitching, be passionate about who you are pitching too as much as you are about your own product.
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Is it really in their blood … or just skin deep?” wrote one executive-level respondent.īut passion should go beyond your own product. The other key aspect is their mastery of the detail. “I want to feel their energy for the pitch. Lesson 3: Be passionate about the problem, not just your product.īeyond experience and facts, passion for the pitch was a top trait that our respondents highlighted as important. Of course, one senior person who is expert in all the relevant areas, listens well to the audience, and can build (or already has) their trust, will defeat a team that does not listen and is unable to apply their collective expertise to the contours of the audience’s objective. Use your team to amplify your expertise in a pitch, not dilute it. Reconsider the wisdom of bringing people to a pitch who say nothing or have no clear expertise. Respondents of all levels told us that a pitch team with good chemistry together is much more trustworthy than one senior person who does all the talking. Lesson 2: Avoid pitches where only one person speaks. But for less senior audiences, it’s more important to show mastery of facts. Listen well, and map your knowledge and experience to what you hear. The more senior the audience you are pitching to, the sooner you must register your relevant experience and how it solves their challenge in unscripted conversation. Lesson 1: Be a master of the facts, but know that for an executive audience, your relevant experience matters most. In total over the last year, respondents have the cumulative experience of hearing up to 10,000 pitches. Of the respondents who provided their seniority, 12 percent were entry-level, 37 percent were mid-level and 51 percent executives. Of the respondents who provided their gender, 75 percent identified as male and 25 percent identified as female. We also asked them to self-identify their gender as well as whether they are entry-level, mid-level or executive decision-makers. We asked them what they value most - and least - in a pitch. In January of this year, we published an online survey seeking insights from managers who hear a lot of pitches.
This was relatively unsurprising until we dug into the reasons why: The more senior your audience, we learned, the less you should rely on your deck and the more you should expect your pitch to be a conversation, showing your team’s authentic passion for the challenge or problem and their resilience for solving it creatively, together.
A recent survey of HBR readers found - at least in this community - how important it is to understand not just what you are pitching, but who you are pitching to. Right? Wrong.Ī good pitch is a balancing act that can be adjusted to the currents in the room. You want to win the pitch, and so you develop a detailed slide deck, tout your credentials, capabilities and successes (case studies), and select your strongest presenter – possibly the leader of your team or company - to do all the talking. Pitching for new business is a make-or-break moment for many teams.
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