Pitching… in the absence of the pitcher!

We spend a great deal of our lives delivering pitches. From cajoling parents to give us more money, begging teachers for more marks, haggling with the auto guy, requesting the cop to let us go, pleading with the maid to come on time and finally praying to god… everything is a Pitch.

Most of us are good at different kinds of pitches.

However with the advent of the great corporate Brahamastra ‘PowerPoint’, the pitch presentation has become an art in its own right. And most people suck at it.

Ironically, the reason why most of us can’t deliver effective pitches is because somehow the pitch has become more about the slides than about communicating what is required to convince someone to come aboard.

A pitch can be made

On the phone (Hello Sir I am calling from XYZ bank…)

On Email (My name is Odumbe Ombaka from Nigeria and I want to offer you a chance to make 1 Million $…)

On TV (This is the best abs machine in the market because you never need to exercise….)

Through Flash ads (Want to find hot friends in & around Delhi?….)

In a meeting (Sir this product will kill the competition….)

Non-Verbally (Wink Wink Smile Laugh….)

etc etc etc

This post is NOT on how to make effective presentations since I have already covered that somewhat (here). This post is about what you need to know before making effective pitches to various people using a PowerPoint or equivalent program.

But just to keep it simple and in the interest of those who (mercifully) take out time to read this blog, I will only be writing about Pitches from a Startup’s perspective.

Oh! And I write the below pointers assuming that you WON’T be present when the person views your pitch. Which means that he/she will be looking at the presentation and there will be no opportunity to razzle and dazzle with your mellifluous voice.

There are 4 different types of pitches for Startups

1. For Investors – They are interested in Your Idea/Product, The General Market Contours, The Profile of your Customers, The Pain you are trying to Solve, What you have achieved till now, How they can get in touch with you, Existing backers, partners and investors and most importantly Who are you and your team mates?

2. For Partners – They are interested in Your Idea/Product, The Profile of customers, What you have achieved till now, How they can get in touch with you, Profile of your team, What are the potential ways in which they can partner, Any Press coverage, Why is this so exciting and WIIFM (What’s in it for me).

3. For Customers – They are interested in the Product/Service, What makes your Product/Service so kick-ass, What you have achieved till now, The management profile, profile of some other clients, any press coverage, How to get in touch with you and the benefits of what you are selling.

4. For Employees– They are interested in knowing about how amazing your startup is, Why your Product/Service so kick-ass, What have you achieved till now, Management Profile, Your Backers/investors/partners, Profile of a few employees, Why this market so amazing to work in, What positions and skills you are looking for and finally How to get in touch with you.

10 Rules to follow while making a Startup Pitch

1. Keep it simple – Pushing in too many ideas, with too many flowcharts and too many details is going to kill your pitch. If you know what is the central Idea to your startup (I hope you do), use that as the common thread which binds all slides. Please note that the central idea may differ based on the category of viewers as given above. A tagline which encapsulates ‘what you do’, is very useful. Use only a few elements per slides. Don’t use too many animations, pictures or arrows. He/She will turn off really quick if you insist on being difficult to follow.

2. An Idea per slide – Ever tried reading 3 different subject books at the same time or even watching 3 movies. No? Well I hope not because it will be a waste of time. One idea/topic per slide makes it really easy to follow, register and digest in the mind of the viewer.

3. Colors and Graphics – Colors, Shape and Sizes affect the brain subconsciously. It’s a scientific fact. So even though Yellow font with a black background might sound like a GREAT idea, it usually isn’t. Please pick out easy colors, shapes, graphics and fonts for your presentation because the ‘Environment’ of your presentation really makes a lot of difference on how the content aka meat of your pitch is received. If the pitch is about a Startup making toys, then a black and white presentation devoid of any color is a bad idea, similarly a financial services startup may not want to use the rainbow as the presentation background. It will really help if the colors, fonts and graphics used in the pitch are part of your startup’s ‘creatives standards’. Finally, make sure that function comes before form. That is, the environment should support the content by making the presentation easy to read, pleasant to view and simple to remember.

4. Foot in Door – The pitch should not be written or made to communicate everything there is to know about you. You never mail a free mini-dictionary to someone in the hope that they might buy the extended 3 part volume series dictionary. You talk to them about the benefits owning a dictionary and how it will enrich their lives. The main purpose of a pitch is to introduce yourself, make yourself look interesting and to get a meeting! The final sale/decision/agreement etc will happen in that meeting. Your pitch must ensure that the person sitting across the table really wants to meet you.

5. Master Presentation for Material – Make a master presentation for your startup which may be treated as source material for all further variants. I have seen too many people messing up on details and content by putting up different things on different presentation and pitch variants. To a detail oriented person it can be irritating and confusing especially when they call you for a follow up presentation after they have seen your pitch. A master presentation also makes it easy to keep updating other variant presentations whenever required.

6. Easy to search – Most investors, customers and people get hundreds of emails a day. Since your pitch will probably be going through email, make sure you put easy to remember and recognizable subject lines, email ids and file names. If your Pitch presentation is named ‘Pitch’ or ‘Presentation’ or just XYZ12rd4 or some such ambiguous term, then the probability is that your file will be lost in some hard-drive or email inbox for eternity. Make the email subject easy to search. Put your Startup’s name and the term ‘pitch presentation’ in it. Also name your file using “Startup Name Pitch Date” format. For example “CoffeeCup Pitch – 22 Mar 2012”. Personally I would like to also know how many slides I have to go through and how many minutes it will take. This helps most of us get mentally prepared for the time and attention commitment.

7. Easy to share – If you can also mail a link of the pitch on slideshare, youtube etc then not only will you make it easy for someone to access it across platforms, you will also make it easy for them to share the pitch with other interested parties and stakeholders.

8. Don’t insult his/her intelligence – Don’t dwell too hard on the basic info. Everyone knows that the internet market in India is growing, that eCommerce is growing, that food consumption is growing and that global warming is also growing. A few revealing and relevant statistics will be nice. If you know the profile of your potential investors, customers, partners etc then you must include info which is relevant to them and doesn’t dwell on the known. This helps save time, effort and eases communication.

9. Tease – The art of the pitch is to open the mind of the person in front to receive the sales information you want to provide to finally make the sale. Since the aim of the pitch presentation is to get you a meeting where the other party really wants to know what you have to offer hence it makes sense to not reveal everything there is to say. Keep the bang for the final meeting. But most importantly tease the person to make him/her really want to meet you.

10. Make it for Mobiles – Probably the biggest shift one has to understand while making a pitch presentation. If you go over the last 9 points you will realize that almost every point has been written with the Smart Phone medium in mind. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that most of us will soon be consuming media in a major way through our smartphones. Certain demographics (like VCs, Investors, high flying executives, ahead of the curve customers etc) already do so. Anyone who owns a blackberry or a better smartphone would know that most emails, messages and social media updates are viewed through the smartphone. So the probability that your email and presentation will be viewed on a phone is really high. And if you have ever gone through a presentation on a blackberry you would know how frustrating the experience can be with slides made for a projector i.e. lots of data, small fonts, lots of words, messy graphics etc). My advice – Make a presentation and see if others can understand it on a basic blackberry phone.

The Miracle Worker

I have met a few of Miracle Workers in my life. No, not the long white flowing beard sporting messiahs who conjure cheap watches out of thin air. I mean those super smart, eccentric, usually under-rated employees of organizations who are responsible for a majority of the ingenious (read jugaad) stuff and execution, where none seems possible.

In an organization’s army of thinkers, planners, bosses, no-do-gooders, diplomats, bystanders, wimps, bean-counters, strategists, internal consultants, foot soldiers and wanderers (I am sure you will be able to identify your colleagues as one of the above) it’s the ‘Miracle Workers’ who usually get the job done without worrying about too many written orders, strategies, presentations, reports and SOPs.

A lot of today’s tinkering, which gets passed off as ‘innovation’ in organizations is just Miracle Workers doing their thing.

Those of us who have worked, are working or been part of a team which was/is supposed to achieve something difficult, would have met this type of person. Those Miracle Workers who are reading this should just sit back… and chill (try please).

Almost every good to great organization has one and most startups desperately need one.

For startups, hiring a Miracle Worker or having one as part of the founding team is usually the difference between a great startup and a non-existent one. These Miracle Workers are the soul behind a startup’s ability to bootstrap and to pull of execution which seems like a …er…miracle in hindsight.

They are probably most responsible for the Mojo of an organization and usually get the least credit for it.

This post is about identifying that miracle worker for your organization.

So what ‘makes’ a Miracle Worker?

1. Education. Sorry but you just won’t find them from academically oriented backgrounds. Don’t be surprised if they decided to drop out just because they were ‘bored’. They won’t give much credence to theory, simply because they were busy playing football and smoking up when the rest had their heads in the books. However, you will find that they have had average to above average marks.

2. Background. A background which involves a lot of travelling, changes in environment, sudden domestic issues which would break the status quo of a ‘normal life’, usually leads to a break down. But these guys just seem to cope up. ‘Miracle Workers’ become as such simply because they had to deal with fast changing environments and now it has become natural for them to deal with the unknown.

3. Eccentric. They usually are an eccentric lot who won’t necessarily try to explain away their flaws. They are the lucky enough to be comfortable with their oddities. Like the guy who decides to go to the movies regularly in the afternoon just to take a nap. Or the guy who will come to office and brush his teeth only after 10 a.m., because he believes he must have fresh breath for the first customer who walks in.

4. Boundless Energy. That guy dancing alone in the end after a wild drunken office party, because he still has some mileage in him. He is the first one to agree for a 5 am morning meeting, to work on a project even when leaving at 1 am in the night. Why? Because it’s important. (Warning! He will probably sleep off on the office couch).

5. Talker. This is the finest weapon in their arsenal. Their complete self-belief in what they are saying will get them through to potential customers and colleagues. Unlike great salesman, their talk isn’t accompanied by great style or panache, it’s just hokey homely stuff that comes from deep within.

6. Out-Of-The-Box (Black belt) – No professor or class can ever hope to synthesize the kind of non-linear thinking they achieve. They have an amazing ability to quickly take stock of all their resources and use them, to get the job done. I call them black belt, because I trained under such a guy. When he stepped on the floor of the restaurant (where I worked), it was like Bruce Lee decided to stroll through a school karate class.  Just mute awe. He could spot issues, offer solutions and execute them 20 minutes into his shift.

7. Ambition. Yes they are ambitious, but not in the way most of us are. He isn’t really gunning to become the CEO of the company. Senior manager is just fine, as long as people in the organization know who the ‘Man’ is when they need to get something done.

8. Loophole Aware. They may not know how to calculate their tax but they will know which loopholes exist in the Tax system. They may not know HR policies by heart, but they do know which HR manager to cajole to get their payroll issues sorted. They may not know how to send an attachment with an email but they do know the power of CC and BCC when it comes to getting work done.

9. Meetings. Hate them.

10. Flow.  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Renowned Psychologist – Father of “Flow Theory” former Chair of University of Chicago’s Department of Psychology, Bestselling Author and Nobel prize winner talks about the ultimate state of happiness and satisfaction as the state of ‘Flow’. He states that those people who do something, just because they love doing it and not because of any extrinsic reason (like hot girls screaming your name, adulation by bosses, big fat bonus etc) but because of intrinsic factors (makes me happy, satisfied, find meaning in life, make me complete etc) are just working at their maximum potential. And are loving it.

So if you ever find a guy/girl like this. Hang on to them. Hire them. Kiss them…do whatever you need to. Just don’t let them go.