The Perfect Pitch Formula: Get Results Every Time

You know how great your business is. You know that people would have to be crazy to turn you down. But somehow you’re not getting through when you make your pitch—luckily, that’s easy enough to fix. Follow these pointers to make sure your next pitch doesn’t fall flat.

Essential Components of a Perfect Pitch

Whether you’re pitching to a blogger, a journalist, a personality, or anyone else, you need to include certain touchstones so your audience can understand the opportunity you’re offering. These include . . .

• What you do: Define your products or services so that they relate to your audience’s needs or wants. For example, if you’re selling orthotic implants to the elderly, describe your product as one that reduces or eliminates back pain.
• Whom you serve: You need to know your target market, whether to give investors a clear picture of your business model or to focus your own selling. Be specific. “Teenagers” is much more nebulous than “14- to 18-year-old girls who drink coffee.”
• Your plan for getting results: Both investors and potential clients need to know how and why you’ll succeed.
• How you fit in and stand out: Comparing yourself to other businesses provides a quick way to communicate what you do, but be sure you identify what makes you unique. You want to let your audience know why they should choose you over someone else.
• Why you’ll succeed: Facts are good here. Current market conditions, past success rates or examples, or a hard-number outline of your sales plan would all work.
• Your ultimate goals: If you have plans to go international, move totally online, or otherwise evolve, be sure to communicate this to investors or clients. Acknowledging the long term demonstrates clarity of vision and reinforces your credibility.

Preparing Your Pitch

You need to be able to deliver your pitch quickly—in the neighborhood of 30 seconds to two minutes, depending on your audience. To make sure those precious seconds aren’t wasted, put time and energy into preparation.

Sit down and figure out what you’re offering and to whom you’d like to offer it. Then write—and memorize—a pitch for each potential audience. Rehearse until you sound natural and confident.

Practice on people you trust and ask for feedback. Then use that feedback to make your pitch better.

Pitching

You might meet a potential client or investor anywhere. That’s the whole point of having an “elevator speech” prepared, so you can deliver it if you should run into the client of your dreams in an elevator.

When you’re actually pitching, aim for confidence without pushiness, and try to create a bond with your audience. Often, that means smiling, making eye contact, and asking questions. When your conversation is over, give your audience a way to contact you.

One final note: make sure you’re ready to react to whatever response you receive. It won’t really help build your business if your jaw hits the elevator floor when you hear your first “yes.”

Did you find this post helpful? Would you like for us to write future blog posts on a similar topic, pertaining to online PR?