My professional career started 50 years ago, around the time Training magazine first appeared. In the UK, at that time, we had personnel departments who seemed to do little more than issue employment contracts or notices of termination, after someone else had taken the decisions. A far cry from the role of the Human Resource professional today, where there is genuine concern for the individual and the fostering of a positive relationship with the employer.
The professional firms I consult with all adopt current best practice, as well as look for initiatives supporting continuous improvement. They recognize that these are best achieved through their people. Long gone are the old hierarchical command structures where communication was one-way. All strive for open communication, open plan breakout areas, team meetings, workouts, modules, hot desks. All are aiming to be ahead of the game in use of screens and digital innovation. And yet, for the most part, individual, one-to-one communication skills are much as they always were!
Of course, there are training programs geared to specific areas of communication need—sales, telephone, negotiation—as well as presentations with tailored programs for potential leaders. This focus can mean that large numbers of people, those not in front-line communication roles, are overlooked. These include the so-called backroom people in operations, finance, IT, support, and administration.
One practical way of filling this gap is through “pitch training,” making it a regular part of communication training, but not just for the front-liners involved in competitive pitches.
In the day-to-day life of any company, pitching can be the lifeblood. Some see it only as an inevitable cost, a necessary investment toward growing the business. These people fail to appreciate that pitching brings other “productive” benefits. Pitches take people outside of their normal comfort zones and generate a positive energy and fighting spirit not called on to the same extent in most daily routines. Even when not successful (and nobody can win all the time), firms that relish pitching tend to be those with a healthy winning culture and attitude.
But pitching can offer more. It offers a unique training and rapid learning opportunity. Working against deadlines, with competitive external pressure, people—often from different disciplines—must solve tough problems and bring fresh thinking to bear to generate original solutions. They then have to communicate these with conviction and confidence. In my experience, teams doing this through pitching regularly learn and develop faster. However, since only a few can be involved in “live” pitches, how can many more benefit from this invaluable training opportunity?
One possible approach came from a recent experience working with a global professional services firm. In order to secure a major supplier contract, where working relationships would operate at many levels, they needed to fully involve in the final pitch a number of backroom people who had zero experience of presenting. The evaluation would be based on their performances on the day, a daunting prospect for the individuals concerned.
With only two days’ notice, some special pitch training workshops were arranged. These could only cover some essential skills and had to be carried out in a way that meant they could be quickly absorbed and then acted on. They aimed to boost performance and confidence.
It was necessary to be selective in the key elements to focus on. The session, therefore, focused on three basic questions.
1. How do you prepare your content (the “what” you say) and arrange it so it communicates well? It must be easy for the audience to take in and remember; it must be easy for the presenter to present. To achieve this, the participants practiced 5-minute mini-presentations, after explanation, focusing only on their 30-second introduction (the vital first impression), a clear central proposition; no more than three supporting arguments, the “rule of three.”
2. How do you help first-time “performers” improve their delivery (the “way” you say it)? The workshop used the mini-presentations to consider open, energetic body language; looking up and not reading, using simple notes as reassurance only; understanding the power of the pause, one of the best possible bits of advice for the inexperienced (as well as the very experienced). Pause for emphasis, pause for thought, pause to slow down, pause to appear confident, pause to allow your audience to catch up.
(Debussy said, “Music is the space between the notes,” so in presentations “pitches happen in the pauses.” Incidentally, the pause is not new. This is how it was explained more than 2,000 years ago to students of rhetoric in ancient Rome: “Pauses strengthen the voice. They also render the thoughts more clear-cut by separating them, and leave the hearer time to think.” —Ad Herrenium.)
3. How can you inject confidence? The answer in three words: rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse.
When you are pitching or presenting, you are on stage, trying to come across at your very best. Actors would not dream of going on stage without rehearsal, and nor should anyone pitching, no matter how experienced. For the inexperienced, it is even more essential. To rehearse, you need someone to rehearse to, someone who, like a director, is not judging the content/script. They judge the way you come across. Were you likeable, enthusiastic, and eager? Did you pause? Were you confident?
Rehearsing to colleagues in the workshop several times, and being rehearsed to, had a truly dramatic effect on raising the levels of performance and, crucially, confidence.
This relatively simple but practical workshop paid off in that the inexperienced participants all performed well above all expectations on the big day. This was gratifying, but so, too, was the feedback on the training experience. All enjoyed the fact that the pitch workshop differed from most training because of the highly competitive context. The element of competitive frisson throughout added zest to the learning and made it special. They all subscribed to the idea that regular “competitive pitch workshops,” one team up against another, would be a good way of replicating the live pitch experience.
In the constant search for productivity, an active pitching culture is worth exploring.
Excerpt from “IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAY: How to Sell Your Message When It Matters Most” by Michael Parker (Perigee; December 2015).
Michael Parker is a former vice chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi UK. He has taken part in, led, or coached more than 1,000 pitches. Parker is also the author of “IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAY: How to Sell Your Message When It Matters Most.”
