I’ve lost track of the number of pitches I have sat through in the last few weeks. It’s that time of year. Finals. And when you teach marketing and real-world classes every final is a pitch.
I’ve heard new business ideas pitched. I’ve heard new product lines for existing businesses pitched. I’ve heard campaign pitches for brands. I’ve heard solutions to the problems Porsche and Converse gave to my Real-World Strategic Partnership students to solve. I’ve heard convincing pitches. I’ve heard some that left me convinced and some that left me wondering in a good way. I’ve heard engaging pitches and some that I know in the real-world the client would have gotten up and left the room after ten minutes.
The one commonality I found through them all and the comment I found myself repeating when giving feedback is the tendency there is to focus on the whats and not the whys.
The whats are important
We like the whats – all those details we spent hours painstakingly going over and over and over again to make sure our idea has validity. All those details from the insights, the clarification of what this thing is you’re pitching and how it works to what it’s going to cost.
The whats are necessary. They have convinced us that whatever it is we are pitching is worthy of being heard, that we have thought this thing through. They bring us comfort because the whats are solid and concrete so we cling to them as though we’re hanging from the edge a cliff to save ourselves from falling into the unknown.
But the whats are not what convinces your audience. The whys do.
Persuasion happens in the whys
When you’re in the weeds of preparing a pitch it’s easy to forget that a pitch is about persuasion, that a pitch is about getting someone else to see what you believe to be a really great idea.
Persuasion does not happen in a list of bullet points unless you’re explaining why those points are important and why what you’re pitching has value to your audience. An impressive insight properly cited that does not explain the reason it’s there becomes meaningless without explaining why it matters. Without the whys, the whats mean nothing and without the whys your pitch is more likely to fail.
The whys are where the story lies
Why your idea matters infers interpretation. It requires you to think and create your story. It is not black and white, but grey. It requires stepping back and being self-critical. When done right the why taps into the audience’s emotions. And in the end every successful pitch is about the emotion of a story.
No one wants to be told anything – they want to be shown
Every writer worth their words has ‘show me, don’t tell me’ drilled into their brain. It is the core of good story and has been since the beginning of time. Which is exactly what a good business pitch is. A good story. Unfortunately too many people forget that when they’re pitching. They get too caught up in the details.
Pitching the whats in story form is not an easy feat – but necessary
If you think people are going to figure out the whys behind your whats all by themselves, they’re not. In fact your pitch is doomed to fail.
The audience does not want to figure it out themselves. They want it simplified. They want you to show them why. They want to be told the story of the whats that explain why it’s important that they listen.
So when preparing your next pitch it’s smart business to start by asking yourself: Why does this matter? What is the story I am telling? When you can do that your chances of delivering a solid pitch skyrocket.
Ps. I wrote a whole book on how to pitch using story. One of my students recently told me it was the “secret sauce.” Maybe it will be for you too.
This article was originally published on Does This Make Sense? on Substack. Subscribe for free.
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