Pitching

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Take a fresh look at YOU

Probably the fastest and most dramatic makover you can give your pitch is to upgrade your look. Fresh white, high-quality cotton shirts and a pair of Churches for guys. Take note of bold colours for your ties and ask the guys in store for advice on your look. They usually really know their business. Your entrance impact to the pitch goes up several notches for appearance alone. Women know this but while sales are on grab some Versace girls.

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My New Classes

Winning ambitious breakthrough accounts

• 140 transformative minutes for those who have to win significant new business

• The greatest prizes in business are nearly always the ones somebody has already got. To grow you have to find and disrupt failing, stale or limited relationships. Eventually success will mean pitching for a major project with a target you are capable of doing and resourced for but where evidencing this is very difficult. Without doing so you will loose.

This class will completely alter your approach and mindset by changing how you engage throughout the pitch process and equip you to win life-changing new business with the best pitch of your commercial life. continued....

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Coming Soon PITCH SCHOOL

Let's face it we are in a unique business cycle and the pressure to win is on as never before. My reponse to the zeitgeist is to launch Pitch School ™ to support you to make every pitch count so you win more often and grow your brand everytime. It's:

Very affordable £50 a class;

Transformative as I teach every class to draw out the best of you;

Fast with a Twitter inspired 140 minutes packed with advice, feedback and activities.

I will be posting details of the first four classes here later this week.

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Five Decisive Pitch Moments

All pitches turn on a series of linked, extended or very short moments in time. Here's my snapshot analysis of them:

Should we?

Do you know me, really know me?

The clincher is?

Can you peform on the day?

And the winner is..?

More on the link below.

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Ten pitching principles underpinning my new Manifesto for Pitching and philosophy are:

Manifesto, from the Latin manifestum meaning clear or conspicuous. Conspicuous, attracting notice or attention, standing out so as to be clearly visible

I have spent most of my professional life helping amazing creatives, generous spirited non-profits and fine professional people from one-man bands to large multi-national corporations transform how you communicate your ideas, influence each other and win new business through very formal and informal pitch processes. Along the way it has been my privilege to work with every range of capability and fragility. Everyone of you have developed me and many have deeply influenced my personal philosophy on pitching and growth. It's time  I think  to share my pitching manifesto with a much wider audience.

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Why are you pitching?

It all starts here. Successful pitch thinking begins with knowing why you play before getting down to how to play. You are playing a deadly serious zero sum game where one winner takes all with most participants loosing the company’s money and time invested in the pitch process. Knowing why you are in for all this pain and hard graft means you can justify the expense and can rationally say why you have made this commitment.

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Pitch Final Friday at Pannone

This Friday afternoon sees the final stage of the work I have been doing with Samantha Booth of Pro-Manchester and Paul Bason of Creative Manchester to support emerging and aspirational digital businesses to raise their pitching game and grow their businesses. Melanie McGuirk a partner at Pannone joins me and Sam on the judge's panel.

The finalists are:

1 Nick McCloud www.descartes.co.uk

2 Dave Smee www.tandot.co.uk

3 James and Ben from www.truereflectionsdesign.co.uk

4 Andrew Lord www.flipbookstudio.co.uk

5 Guy Dickson www.participo.com

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Four killer post-pitch questions to improve future pitch performance

Q 1 What did you do or others do well in terms of preparing yourself for the pitch and what could you or others have done better?

Did well:                   Could do better:

Q 2 What % chance do you now rate your win chance to be and has your chance increased or dropped as a result of the pitch?

Q 3 What went well at the pitch and what could have gone better, why and how do you know that?

Q 4 What, if anything would you do differently next time and why?

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Thrift pitching with bags of impact

Touch the zeitgeist with a carbon neutral pitch. Leave the iPad at the office. Ditch the fancy overproduced leave behind too. Grab some pre-printed or hand crafted A1 flip-chart  paper  with diagrammatic illustrations of your key points or simple bullets. Leave them behind to speak for you. For added authenticity walk to their offices or use public transport to get there. Go green, stay meaningful. And get on the street and walk towards the money.

And thanks to big A at Igloo in Melbourbe for reminding me of how powerful drawing on a flip-chart can be.

Try it and see.

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Checklist One in a series of five How to creatively and quickly generate original pitch material

Pitching is the end result of a complex process. Checklists remind us of dumb stuff we might otherwise forget to do or not to do. Habitual behaviors that are scrutinized and monitored also help us all to perform better and consistently. Compulsory pausing points like checks before take off means pilots get us there safely. Getting your pitch basics right means critical moments aren't missed and you build a pitch process and winning culture too. Pause to win. Check mate?