Pitchin' Nightmares

R Wardrop
Managing Partner magazine, August 2007

All that business development activity has paid off and it’s Beauty Parade time again. Proposals have been submitted, project teams selected, fees calculated. The Board is waiting. You’ve got the slides and a snazzy handout big enough to require the Heimlich manoeuvre on a large African pachyderm.

Super.

But this set-up is often the crisp white linen and silver cutlery as a prelude to cremated rack of lamb, bitter jus and soggy rosemary and garlic roast potatoes: a recipe for disaster.

And you know what Mr Gordon Ramsay would say about that. Full colour brochures, full-on pitch documents and animated slides hide a multitude of pitching sins, but they won’t make you palatable to half a dozen very busy and very bored people at 2pm on a Friday.

Due to the demands of modern business and media there is an increasing expectation when you stand in front of any audience: the pitch is one of the most exacting arenas. Too often- like the poor eateries in Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares- that expectation is not met, leading to disappointment and, occasionally, dysentery all round. That means you won’t get the job.

The foundation of the pitch lies in a proper analysis, and the devil is in the detail. That analysis is vital, because you’ll never make a slick pitch out of a sow’s ear (though big Gordon can make an excellent starter, with black pudding and rocket).

So, just as Mr Ramsay knows how to deconstruct an over-ambitious menu, you need to know exactly how to construct what they expect. They expect you to speak to the purpose and be relevant, but they also expect you. That’s just you: polished but unvarnished; professional yet authentic; passionate, charismatic, unforgettable. And you give them that by revealing some of your true personality.

If you don’t have a personality then go out and get one, because pitching is about making the emotional connection, rather than just giving them the facts. In the immortal words of McFly, “Dancing on the kitchen tiles, it’s all about you” and that means the default position is you standing in front of them. Yes, standing, for at least some of the time (It shows respect and you are much less likely to be interrupted). You really don’t need anything else, except a flipchart and some pens.

And you really don’t need to plough through slides or to go through the Big Book because most of the people you pitch to, even at Board level, can read.

The big cheeses with the busy diaries will also expect to understand everything you say, and that means you knowing exactly who you are talking to, what they expect from you, and speaking to them in a language they will understand: being too clever is not clever.

But let’s go back a few steps for a minute: finding the time to stick your feet up on the desk and look into the middle distance is essential if you are to come up with the ideas that will make you appropriately memorable when you’re in the room. It’s certainly not just about the fees, or the facts you present on the day.

Have a clear structure in your head and on your notes, not one that is dictated by the laptop in the corner or the 87 page full-colour book at every place. Too often we get boring, read, PowerPoint-led (or Pitch-Book led: same thing!) presentations and a punch-drunk pitch-panel. Be courageous enough not to simply “tell them, tell them and tell them again”, which is the oratorical equivalent of a jar of supermarket sauce. Dare to take them on a journey that has you at the top of the agenda between 3pm and 5pm.

Bored Boards of Directors, like the rest of us, have neither the time nor the inclination to sift through the junk and the jargon, waiting for you to deliver an occasional pearl. They’ll tune you out, check out the winking red light on the Blackberry or be thinking about the last lot, who were quite engaging.

So if you want your just desserts at the pitch start employing good habits, rather than lazy ones: principally that means being clever enough to find ways to make you and your team appropriately memorable. You all know the technical stuff backwards. Unlike the aspiring restaurateurs in Mr Ramsay’s nightmares, you won’t have the option of a few bottles of wine and liqueurs on the house to sweeten the pill.