Make a Successful Pitch with PitchPlanner
Whether you are pitching to close an important customer, to get funded by investors, to promote your solution at a trade-show or conference, to attract a key strategic partner, to build awareness with general public, follow these steps using the free PitchPlanner canvas and Post-It notes to improve your chances of success! It works for pitches, presentations, media articles, ad scripts, audio and video scripts, landing pages, social posts, etc.
Steps
- Download and print the free PitchPlanner Canvas [1] or use the online collaborative version of the tool on Canvanizer [2]. Take a pencil, a bunch of Sticky Notes and begin to populate the regions on the canvas thinking first about your target audience, their needs, objectives and fears, then about the limitation of the time or space you have available for the pitch and only then focusing on what it is that you want to achieve.
- Complete the region called "THEM". First, map your audience (this is the left column of the PitchPlanner Canvas). Use several sticky notes per subsection and use clear and minimal language, ideally up to 6 words per sticky note.
- Them = your audience. Who are they? What is their world like? Where are they coming from? What characterizes them? Build a simple persona / personas. Use simple descriptive language.
- Their Needs. What does your target audience (person) need in the long run? What are they in search of? What is their purpose? What are their broader goals, key long-term issues / problems they face?
- Their Objectives. What is important for these people to achieve in the short to medium term? How is it related to their long term aspirations? What do they want / expect to hear from you (if anything)? What are the key terms or elements of presented value proposition that may trigger their positive response from them?
- Their Reservations. What do they hate or fear to hear? What are they worried about in relation to their needs and objectives? What phrases or propositions are likely to switch them off or trigger their negative / opposite response?
- Complete the region on the Context in which the pitch will be delivered to your target audience. Think about the limitations – time/space available. What is the presentation technology available? What does the space look like? What can go wrong? Draw a picture if necessary. This will help you contextualize the script and choose the right language (e.g. in noisy environments full of audience distraction you cannot use complex sentences, instead you will need to drive attention using demonstrations or telling a story using short powerful sentences).
- Complete the region about You. Only now, you focus on who you are, what do you want them to remember, what is it that you want to achieve and define your call to action. This is the right region of the Canvas.
- Define You = the person(s) pitching. Who are you, where do you come from? What makes you relevant to deliver this pitch to this audience? Why you/ your team and nobody else?
- Formulate Your key message. Define the perception you want to leave with the audience – what do you want them to remember from your pitch after it is over (immediately and in the long run)? What do you want them to be able to say about you/your company/product/solution/dream when asked later by someone who has not been there?
- State Your Objectives. What do you want the target audience to think, feel and do after the pitch?
- Define Your Call to Action. This is the definition of your offer and ask. Without offer / ask it is not a pitch, it is just a speech. State clearly what you want the audience to do and what do they get if they do it. This must be clearly coming out of your pitch. In a minimal version of your pitch (one sentence) – this is the only thing you will say!
- Now draft the Script of your pitch. Reflecting LIMITATIONS, take information from sections THEM and YOU above and draft first version of your script on a sheet of paper that you paste in section SCRIPT.
- Conduct a Test Pitch. Find a friendly representative of your target audience. If you do not have one, ask an intelligent friend to pretend they are THEM and listen to you. Simulate the actual delivery as much as you can. Ask them to provide you with feedback about content, clarity, delivery and perceptual objectives (Did they understand? Feel attracted to the offer? Think you are relevant? Would they respond to the call to action? What in their mind works against you?
- Now Loop everything 2 more times. Revisit previous steps. What did you learn from the practice pitch? Do more research on your target audience, experiment with order / flow of your pitch. Add/test emotional hook, shocking fact, plus any relevant pitching hacks! Get rid of non-functioning elements. In 3 iterations of this loop your pitch should be pretty close to your best capability! Good luck!
