Perfect Pitch: This Is Madness

If you’ve watched Mad Men on AMC, you know that some of the show’s most dramatic moments take place during presentations and pitch meetings with ad agency clients. That’s when Don Draper, the lead character, waxes poetic about products including laxatives, baked beans, and cigarettes.

But is that realism, or fantasy? What really makes an effective pitch session?

Here’s one essential principle. A great business presentation is captivating when it makes us forget about the speaker and become absorbed in the talk. To make that happen, you’ve got to edit out anything that deflects your listeners’ focus. Practice your delivery over and over until you remove the distractions including nervous tics and uncomfortable pauses. Pay particular attention to your body language. Is it non-existent or excessive? Good presenters seem natural but energized. That’s what you want to strive for.

Don’t try to be funny unless you really are funny. Humor is too often misused and over-used. (Don Draper never makes jokes!) Presenters often feel tempted to deliver the stand up comedy version of their product or service. Your listeners aren’t there to laugh. What they care about is your ability to help them deal with challenges and opportunities in their business. Show that you’re familiar with their problems, and that you’re there to solve them.  

Only give a presentation after you understand the client’s unique motivation to buy your product or service. Before you can credibly provide solutions to the client’s problems, you need to understand specifically what those problems are. That seems obvious, but prescribing the remedy before making the diagnosis is a very common mistake.

So ask lots of questions and pay close attention to the answers. But don’t turn the encounter into a therapy session. Translate issues into dollars and cents. Find out what a problem is costing the client. Also determine the bottom line benefits that will materialize when that problem is solved.

The more relevant your presentation is to a client’s bottom line, the greater their interest will be. Forget the rest. Your prospect won’t be listening. If you give a standard, one size fits all presentation – hoping that something you say will ring a bell -- chances are that bell is not going to ring.

Finally, make sure you’re presenting to people with the authority to buy. Putting together an effective presentation is a lot of work. You don’t want to have to do it again for the real decision makers, so get those decision makers into the room the first time around.