86. 5 Step Method To Prepare A Perfect Pitch For Founders, Leaders & Storytellers (Part 1)

This is part one of our two-part series on perfecting your pitch for founders, storytellers,  entrepreneurs, or anyone looking to elevate their ability to sell themselves or their ideas. 

This episode, lead UpSkiler Michel Shah delves into the "who" and "why" of preparing your pitch. 

We guide you in asking the right questions like: What is allowed with your pitch? Can you use visuals? How is it timed and structured? Furthermore, she emphasizes the importance of defining the desired outcome of your pitch. Is it to sensitize the audience about a topic, practice and learn, ensure engagement, gain funding, or aim for a promotion?

The next episode, we take you on a deep dive into the "what," "where," "when," and "how" of planning a pitch that will command attention and drive results.

Join us on this journey toward perfecting your pitch. Tune in to discover the power of a well-crafted presentation and learn how to articulate your vision compellingly.

Stay tuned for the next episode!

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Transcript

Michel Shah: 0:01

Whether you pitch, present, market, sell, ideas, product. service, a business, or other value proposition, you will gain value from this episode. In this episode, we're taking a look at the three step process to get the perfect pitch. Three steps, including preparation, delivery, and refinement. I'm going to explore step one in this episode. Welcome to Upskill Talks, I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, lead Upskill at Upskill Community. Upskill Talks is a podcast for leaders, leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact. Lead themselves and others in every episode through real life stories and enlightening conversations, we will explore the challenges and opportunities real leaders face in today's everchanging workplace. We will present you with real strategies. For you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. Preparation. A crucial step in the process to a perfect pitch is proper preparation. To prepare is to get ready before you need it. And here's what to do before you pitch or present. When it comes to preparation, it means getting clear on five W's and an H. Let's begin with the first W. Who are you? How will the introduction happen? Will someone introduce you or will you introduce yourself? Whatever the context is, make sure you're planning and preparing for your introduction. If it's a large audience, do you need to create a bio and send it off to the organizers? If it is that you must include it in your pitch, how will you introduce yourself? How extensive does the introduction need to be? So think about your introduction. Then think about the other side of the coin. It's you and who is your audience? Who is this audience that you're going to present or pitch to? Every audience requires something different from you. And as a presenter, you have to be able to flex your content, your ideas, your presentation, your pitch to the audience in front of you. Alright, so first think about this audience because in tailoring the pitch to the audience, you need to understand their needs. So you may need to speak with organizers or learn about the conference that you're going to or learn about the funder, the whomever, whomever. the audience is. What are their preferences? What are their pain points? And then customize the pitch. Make a note of these pain points. Make a note of these because you will need to prepare a pitch that will resonate with them, that will address their specific concerns. If you're doing like a recommendation to a board, to a small group, to a particular person, Take some time to understand who this person is to learn about, for instance, if the person likes sports. One example I saw was someone pitching and using a football metaphor to someone who actually is a golf enthusiast. If they had done their homework, they would know to choose a golf metaphor. It's really that simple. Trying to understand your audience, so the stories, the metaphors, whatever you use, will connect and resonate with them and link to things that are meaningful to them. Rather than using the same amount of time to create and construct something that doesn't land in the way that you want it to. That's the value of the first W. Who? Who are you and who is the audience? Understand how you relate to the audience. What do you have in common with this audience? How will you help the audience understand that you're connected to them? How will you authenticate yourself to this audience? Is this an audience that needs some signal that you belong to that group? How will you make sure that both you and the audience are connected? Right up front. So think about the first who as two sides of a coin. It's not just about your audience, it's about your audience in relationship to you. These two things need to come together at the beginning of the presentation to end, engage your audience, to bring them in to say, we are going to have a conversation. So how are you going to do this? In addition to learning about yourself and learning about them, you need to. Spend time then to, to think about how will I take them on this adventure? How will I walk them through this little journey, this minute, this three minutes, this five minutes, this 15 minutes, how will you make sure that you're connecting with them at different checkpoints throughout your presentation? Think about a captivating hook. What will you begin with? How will you make sure that you grab their attention right up front? For example, are you able to start with a thought provoking question? Maybe some surprising statistic related to your industry, Related to their experiences, related to their pain points, related to their needs, related to their strengths. What can you begin with that will help them see right away that you know this audience, that you've thought about them, that this is not a generic pitch. Think about a series of questions that you could probably use to bring them from one place and bring them closer and closer to the point that you want them to come to. You could use ideas like Walk them through an imagination exercise, imagine and walk them through, engage their imagination. Could you use, if visuals are allowed, a powerful visual? Take a look at this. That's an opportunity. Could you use an audience poll? Simple. Whether you have a visual or not, something like, How many of you took public transportation here today? Let's say how many of you were here for the last session, things like that, but to get the audience to come to you, to connect with you and to put away the phone, the thinking of the last thing they were doing, the imagination of what's for dinner and to come and be present with you. How will you captivate your audience? That's the first who knowing yourself, knowing your audience, and then being able to bring them. Write to where you want them to receive, to prepare them for the content. So in preparing for your pitch, the first step is to think about who you are, who the audience is, and how will I prepare them for what I'm about to showcase, what I'm going to present, what I'm going to give to them. If the audience isn't prepared, like a fertile soil, You may not be able to have the seeds that you're about to plant to grow. Invest time in carefully thinking about and curating or creating this experience right up front, which is tilling that soil and making sure it's fertile and that it's the right amount of sun or shade for the audience, for the plant that you want to grow here, for the seed that you are about to sow. That's the... Who, the first W of the five W's and the H that you need to have down pat when you're doing a presentation, a pitch, or just any value proposition. Preparing for a pitch or a presentation requires you to ask why. Why are you doing this and why should they care about what you have to share? So the why is two sides of a coin. It's not just about them. It's also about you and it is that point of intersection where you need to focus your attention. Why are you doing this and why should they care about it? And that piece which you both have in common is the piece that will help your audience to connect with you. So, think about what's the problem you're trying to solve, what is your motivation, why are you engaged in this, why should they listen to you, why should they care that you are up sharing this information. I want you to think about the shape of a funnel and think about the top of it. As you go through your preparation, the top areas need more time than the bottom. So something like connecting and engaging your audience, invest time in your preparation on it. Some pieces you will get easier as you go down the funnel. But the top of the funnel requires you to invest more time in your preparation. When it comes to what is the problem, you want this to be up at the top of the funnel, reflecting a massive time input. This is important because if you do not convince them effectively of the problem, your solution lands flat. We don't need a solution if we don't have a problem. So if we do not understand your problem deeply, your solution will be less and less meaningful. And that means to lay a great foundation for the solution that you offer means laying down the problem in precise terms. So with this, I recommend a mix of qualatative and qualitative data to highlight the problem. Because we are dealing with mixed audiences. Some audiences like qualitative data. qualitative Data is data that looks at stories, metaphors, examples, anecdotes, use cases. That's the qualitative data. The quantitative data is the numbers, the statistics that people care about, and so it's important that you're mixing some of these. So choose a very compelling story to highlight the problem. People resonate with stories. People get emotionally connected with stories. Choose a compelling story that helps people to understand, helps your audience to understand the real With whatever it is that you're offering, help them to connect on that emotional level. You need to craft a narrative that it communicates the journey, the challenges, the successes that someone would go through. Then later on how your solution will take someone out of this situation. So, think about what stories, what metaphors, what data points, what use cases you have. As you're going through your preparation, take the time to map these out. You may have more than you need. It's good to have more than you need. I found that the ones that I thought were the most effective when I started sharing. My pitch, people thought the ones that I had way back down were even more effective than the ones I brought forward. So keep a log of what your metaphors, stories that you think best describe this. It doesn't need to be one at this point. Remember, we are preparing. We're not pitching yet. Today, we're talking about preparing for the pitch. And that means you can have a log. This is the one you're thinking of, this one, because you can try out. different ones as you practice your pitch. It's so important then that we think about the data points, what statistics are out there that we can pull as well. There are some people who really need to see the hard facts and stories feel fluffy to them. However. My approach and my recommendation is that you interweave stories and data so that you balance the approach so that even the people who care about the numbers, the numbers are validated and they see stories that link to those numbers. The people who love stories will see that the stories are not dangling. They're actually anchored in proper numbers. So those two are very important. For thinking through, so go and find whatever data points you need, whatever statistics you need, go and do the research, get others to help you pull the data together, you need data to authenticate the problem. If there is no real problem, if it's not affecting a lot of people, and you can't substantiate that it's affecting anyone, then we probably don't need to really care about it. If you can find an example of someone that this problem is impacting, we probably don't don't need to hear about it. And so it may be a problem that's impacting all of us. And that's where at the beginning, when we talked about imagine, you could walk us through an imagination where all of us are engaged in this problem and then provide additional insights. We're not alone. We are among 3 million people in the in just in your area that it that this is impacted or you're not alone globally over 40% of people have this issue we've got to be able to connect the personal the emotional with the facts here is an example that we used in a practice session It says many seniors are not able to call for help quickly when they're injured at home. Madame Louise, an 82 year old retired nurse, was home alone when she slipped down the stairs and fell. She hit her head and was too dizzy to get up to call for help. When she felt better and called, a lot of time had passed and it was too late for them to save her. Madame Louise represents 26% of the senior population who live alone with no one to call for help when they get injured. Last year alone, over 5, 000 seniors suffered a similar fate in your area. This number will continue to rise, leading to... Increases in premature deaths to seniors who lead healthy lives like Madame Louise and have no reason, no way of calling for help when they need it most. We need access to better emergency measures to protect our loved ones when they we can't be home. This example was sitting within a five minute pitch. So it's a longer if your pitch is shorter, you would need to shorten this. But this example demonstrates how they've combined qualitative data, the story of Madame Louise, which makes the problem clear and relatable. And they linked it with quantitative data, the numbers, the hard facts, that the extent to which this problem What actually happens makes it more concrete. So that's an example of how to combine qualitative and quantitative data when you're preparing your pitch. That covers why.

16:06

In this episode, we covered the who and why. Two things you need to consider when preparing for your pitch. Stay tuned as we dive deeper next episode into the what, where, when, and how. Thank you for listening to this episode of Upskill Talks. We bring you new episodes every Monday. Please take a moment to subscribe. Leave a five star rating and a written review at Apple Podcast or follow us on Spotify, Google podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Don't forget to share Upskill talks with other leaders like yourself, so they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to upskill community.com to review show notes, and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the globe. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, and again, thank you for joining me on this episode of Upscale Talks.