Making the perfect pitch

More and more prospective customers, both in the public and private sector, now include a pitch or formal interview as part of their procurement process. This means that if you want to win these opportunities, your teams need to be confident and effective in these situations.

So, how do you get your people to deliver their pitches in a compelling manner, with clarity, insight and energy?

The skills needed to pitch well, in whatever situation, is something that I have helped many companies with, from seeking extra funding for a department to pitching for multi-billion pound frameworks.

I believe that finding insightful and memorable content and ensuring it is delivered with the appropriate levels of enthusiasm, commitment and integrity, is what engages hearts and minds and ultimately wins new business.

This course can take the form of a generic one-day workshop, or can be split into various different days and half days on current pitch situations, as and when you require the extra coaching. I can also include actors to put teams through their paces, and extra trainers for large pitch teams.

What attendees will get out of this course:

• Thinking through the content before the pitch: what sort of procurement process is in place? Who are you proposing for the pitch team? Are they the right people? How are you going to put across what you need to cover? Who’s going to say what? Who’s the audience? What do they want to hear (as opposed to what you think you ought to tell them?) Have the team: demonstrated they have fully understood the client’s requirements; explained precisely how they will meet those requirements; show-cased all their relevant experience; articulated the real benefits to the client
• Exploring visuals/leave-behinds/place-mats/Rich-Pictures etc: in business, it’s all too easy to hide behind bland PowerPoint slides when we pitch, rather than “stepping out” and actually engaging with the audience. I will go through “An Idiot’s Guide to PowerPoint” to explain best practice. I can also discuss alternatives like Prezi and Rich Pictures with graphic designers, and guide the pitch team to the best solution for their situation. I can also provide support on using ‘placemats’ to help introductions and what sort of documents could/should be left behind for the client.
• Rehearsing with individuals: are they coming across with the appropriate levels of enthusiasm and credibility in a pressurised environment? Are some of the team more nervous than others? Using video cameras for filming at this stage is an effective way to understand more quickly what lies behind making the right impact, and identifying these specific insights will enable them to take their own personal impact to the next level.
• Rehearsing with the entire group: do they come across as a team? Are the links/handovers between the sections strong? Does the lead partner do the opening introductions and handle the Q&A session, or should that be someone else? Do they all understand and admire the qualities that each of them brings to the pitch? Dry-runs at this stage are vital, and once again video cameras are very effective in giving real-time feedback.