Life's a Pitch

"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going because you might not get there."

 – Yogi Berra.

You're sitting in that business networking meeting, and everyone has 30 seconds to get up and pitch their business. You were not prepared to do an elevator speech, but you've been in the industry a long time, so it should be a slam dunk. As row after row of business people give their speeches, you think how much everyone will love yours even though you have not prepared one – but you do well presenting off the cuff. The person before you totally nails it is done before the timer goes off, but you've already sat through 20 presentations that you feel were not memorable.

You stand up confidently and open your mouth just as the timer starts; you have a half minute to tell the group what you do. You start strong with your name and business, but then it seems like there's so much to tell and only 30 seconds to tell it – what do you highlight? Your heart starts beating faster; your hands and armpits sweat like a marathoner. Your breath starts to get shorter. You try to communicate how your business is a beacon of best practices but stumble over the facts. You finally hit your high point when – PPPINNNGGG, the alarm goes off, and you sit down before you can even say your tagline or repeat your name. A woman nearby offers you a condescending look and says, "It's always difficult the first time you do it." You then realize you blew it in front of 50 potential clients.

Whether you're pitching for a new job, networking group, or getting that

new board member or movie financed, the elevator pitch is the key to summarizing your skill set and convincing that person that you know what you're talking about. It should be easy, yet saying what you do in a quick minute or less can be very daunting, so you need to be prepared.

I've done improvisation for over 25 years, which allows me to speak extemporaneously. Even more important is that most people know within 7 to 11 seconds of talking to you if they want to work with you so those first impressions are crucial.   

Years ago, I used to talk to businesses on behalf of United Way to encourage them to give. If I had used the same pitch for senior bankers and their support staff, I would have bored both audiences. The bankers wanted to know the return on their investment (ROI), so I would offer facts about how investing in afterschool programs cut down on high school drop-out rates. The support staff seemed more interested in the actual success stories of the clients we were serving. I was speaking on the same outcomes, just offering different viewpoints based on the audience I was addressing. 

So, how do you start  an elevator pitch? I always like to begin by simmering it down to who I am, what I do, and how I do it; think of it as your mission statement. Once you have that, write what you think is pertinent and edit it. Keeping it simple and specific allows your audience to quickly digest what you are saying because you are not trying to complicate things with more than one or two facts.

For instance, if you are trying to sell an employer on the need for benefits for their staff and

you have 30 seconds to try to get on their calendar – barfing up 10 facts will only confuse them and water down your message. Starting with "Did you know that 43% of employees report that they are considering changing jobs in the next year, but offering good benefits is one way to retain your staff?" will pique their interest. It will probably get you that appointment because it is simple specific, and addresses employee turnover, a problem both large and small businesses face daily.

According to an article in Forbes Magazine by author Nancy Collamer, the first step is identifying your target audience and crafting your words. Your pitch will be different if you're trying to sell yourself personally vs. selling your business or a program within the business. A few key points she offered included:

·    Just a few bullet points. Don't give your entire life story. Nobody has time for that. Just a few key facts that will spark your listener's interest.

·    Tailor your pitch to them – not you. For instance, if you are trying to get a decision maker to use your products, emphasize what will make their life easier by working with you and why it's a great fit. 

·   Avoid industry jargon and acronyms. You might assume that the person you are talking to should know that jargon, but people learn to reference things differently. Spell it out, and don't use slang.

·    Write it down and practice. Writing it down will help you retain the facts and practice in a mirror. Also, practicing role-playing with someone can help build your confidence and give you much-needed feedback. You should also time yourself so you stay within your given time limit.

Remember that 75 words are about 30 seconds, 150 words are approximately one minute, and three hundred words are about two minutes. You should have a speech for each increment, but you'll probably use the 30-second to one-minute pitch the most often.   

So the next time you go to your networking group, job interview, sales meeting, or product demonstration, have a great pitch you feel comfortable with and vary it weekly so you have four or five that you can pull out at a moment's notice. It will make you look polished and prepared, and instead of condescension, you'll get congratulations and maybe a few job offers.

Half Assery or Confusing Dissent with Disloyalty

“If you are the smartest person in the room – you haven’t hired well.”

-      Rory Brown – President, Bleacher Report

Any leader worth their salt has got to be open to other people’s ideas and more specifically open to dissenting opinions.   Your staff has got to be able to speak their mind and let you know where the weaknesses are in your plan – it’s just good business.  Better they figure out the problems in advance than launching a full campaign only to have customers and bad reviews on-line ruin what might have been a good product.  If it had been vetted properly by staff who felt comfortable telling you where the draw-backs were, much of the issues your company might be facing could have been avoided.  Worse, you will hear in hindsight that there was staff who knew from the get-go that it was a bad idea but because they had been shot down so many times before, they wanted to see the latest campaign go up in smoke in a misguided sense of vindication.

In a recent article by the Harvard Business Review,  Edgar Schein, a professor emeritus at MIT Sloan School of Management asked a group of students why they wanted a role in management.  They replied that “it means I can now tell others what to do.”  That’s the wrong answer if you truly want to be a leader. Schein warned that the “tacit assumption” among executives “is that life is fundamentally and always a competition,” hurts not helps organizations.   If that is the sort of climate you are cultivating at your business, than you are guilty leading your organization off into a deep crevice of half-assery.

Encouraging your staff to compete rather than collaborate will only raise the specter of suspicion and animosity.  It will close communication and people will hoard information because they are afraid of being undermined by another staff member.  They will end up telling you what you want to hear because the one who curries the most favor with the boss wins.

You’d think the days of the yes men are over but as we’ve seen too many times in the business and political world, people who surround themselves with those that cannot or will not speak up can lead to failure.  Sure many managers can blame it on their underlings but at the end of the day, it’s ultimately your ass that has to answer for a poor decision.  Placing the blame on those who work under you shows that you are either someone who can’t manage people well or won’t listen when they try to offer you good advice.  Neither quality bodes well for a person in who is supposed to lead a successful organization.

A couple of years ago, I worked for a man who wanted to remodel the office space where the main administrative area was.  He had seen some models of an open floor plan where the staff sat at tables and worked – not in cubicles or in private spaces but everyone out in the open work stations with phones in one central area.  These open-office configurations have been all the rage for the last few years. They also supposedly saved money by not putting up walls or allowing staff to have some privacy while they work.  For an insecure manager like my boss at the time, they could look over their employee’s shoulder at a moment’s notice to see if they are working or completing a bracket for the Final Four during March madness.  Part of my bosses’ great plan was to have the women out in the open because most of them were administration while the senior managers who were men had their own offices.  

I pointed out that having all the men and women literally segregated looked really, really bad – like workplace discrimination that could lead to a lawsuit kind of bad.  He offered to give me an office as well just to balance out the estrogen vs. testosterone equation so he could counter a potential lawsuit.   I just shook my head and said that I would still get push back from staff because many of them felt that they could not be productive in the type of office space that he was promoting.  The women felt like they would be discriminated against and for many the openness of the office would be too distracting.  Finally, he begrudgingly scrapped the plan.  Since then, the whole concept of open office space has come under attack from such publications as Forbes, Inc., Bloomberg and Fortune magazines.  The publications have reported that the concept can make employees miserable, communicate a lack of trust, cause a higher transmission of germs which result in an increase in sick days and in the end cost more in lost productivity than if companies had just spent the money building walls for the office.   My opposition was a risk but in the end saved the organization from low employee morale and a reduced bottom line.  Of course, my boss might not have seen it like that at the time but the staff appreciated that I went to bat for them.  I expressed their views as well as my own on the weaknesses of the plan - I offered dissent which kept a bad decision from being made - it did not make me disloyal if anything it proved my value.

As someone who facilitates team building – I’m always emphasizing collaboration and the open sharing of ideas.  It comes from my background in improvisational theatre.  In improv - one of the cardinal rules is the importance of making the other person look good and vice versa. 

It takes the ego out of the scene and the actors have to work together and not try to out-do one another - its simple collaboration and not competition.  Games like “Yes, and…” help establish a simple idea that everyone has to build on – and no one’s idea is denied or blocked.  For instance, someone could start with “I want our new ad campaign to have a horse in it.” The next person might say, “Yes and the horse’s best friend is a golden retriever puppy,” the next person would add “Yes, and when someone tries to adopt the puppy from the farm, the horses chase after the car,” and so on (FYI- this was a 2014 Superbowl commercial for Budweiser – it didn’t talk about beer but created a buzz on social media and a sequel for the next Superbowl – check it out)

“Yes and…” is a great tool to develop ideas because nothing is too outlandish to be considered and everyone’s ideas are valid.   Think back to the year 2000 when the Aflac Duck was first introduced.   That was some serious out of the box thinking that probably came from people building on some crazy ass idea and now it’s one of the most recognizable symbols in the corporate world. Now think what would have happened in those meetings if every crazy idea was put down and the only person whose opinion counted was the person in charge.  You probably would not have had the collaborative effect of those commercials which have been incredibly successful.

So it goes with managing people – if you are humble enough to allow other ideas– amazing things will happen for your organization.   As a leader you need to be open to dissent, guide and nurture it. Sure, there are going to be naysayers for the sake of vetoing things that are not their idea but the more open you keep the line of communication; the less likely your team is to be on the defensive and that naysayer will eventually learn to work with and not against the group.  When criticism does need to be used – your team will be open to it because you have created that sort of symbiotic relationship of trust.

The February 2017 issue of Fast Company asked 96 entrepreneurs from industries as diverse as Google, Cher (the entertainer), PepsiCo, NASA and Black Lives Matter to offer advice on to how to lead in a world that seems uncertain but still offers a wide range of opportunity.  Most if not all of them had variations on these sound business practices:

·        Encourage staff to speak up in meetings and challenge the status quo.

·        As the boss, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.

·        Be an energizer and give your power away.

·        Empower the employee to be boss.

·        Be a supporter-in-chief – encourage your staff’s outside interests.

·        Encourage competition with other companies but not within your own team. 

So if you are a person who is managing a group of people, you must ask them to look at your proposal, program, grant, product, campaign, etc. and offer frank and honest feedback that includes a thoughtful consideration of the pros/cons and where the weaknesses might lie.  Listen with an open mind and thank them for their input.   The world’s best CEO’s didn’t get there by being the smartest person in the room – they got there by hiring people that they could trust to tell them the truth and accept it even if it was not always what they wanted to hear.