Hello fellow SII students!
As the topic of Week 4 is “Pitching, Positioning, and
Presenting,” I thought I’d delve into the subject of pitching. We had some
really informative readings this week about what makes a good pitch – “How to
Make your Case in 30 Seconds or Less,” “How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea,” etc. However,
for some of us it might be helpful to get ‘back to basics’ on this topic.
We can probably all learn a lot from Asia, an 11-year-old girl
selling lollipops. I recently heard an episode of This American Life featuring Asia, and was impressed by her
understanding that “It's Not the
Product, It's the Person.” Listen here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/533/its-not-the-product-its-the-person.
Asia advises her kiddie
cohorts to:
1) “Give energy!”
2) “Speak very loud,
be articulate, use hand gestures, and make eye contact!”
At this point you
may be thinking, “well sure – she’s an adorable 11-year-old – that kind of
sells itself.” That may be true, but Asia’s
techniques transcend the cute factor. You’ll hear her continually ask people to
invest in her future, because she understands that people are excited to invest
in other people. Asia is pitching the investment as an “opportunity,” not a
charity. This sentiment is echoed in the reading “How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea,”
when Kimberly Elsbach describes “How to Kill Your Own Pitch” stereotype four –
the Charity Case.
The “It's Not the
Product, It's the Person” podcast goes on to Act 1: “I Got 99 Problems and a
Pitch Is One,” an account of a very awkward pitch by This American Life
producer Alex Blumberg; Act II: “The Business of Show,” another painfully
awkward account of someone trying to launch his career; and Act III: “The Other
Real World,” about a woman who has simultaneously applied to be on “The
Bachelor” and on an expedition to Mars.
My question is, what
other parallels can we find between the lessons learned by these ‘amateur’
pitchers and the ‘expert’ advice in this week’s readings?
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