Effective Communication

What makes your Pitch more Effective?

A. Introduction
Presentations in general and Pitches in particular are so familiar to all Professional Communication practitioners, but somehow they still meet troubles with effectively showing ideas to clients. Moreover, as Eley (2011) sates, while proposals get a greatly huge amount of effort from agencies, pitches are usually received less attention. As a result, agencies cannot transfer all ideas from the proposal before during presenting time with clients. Therefore, Eley (2011) emphasizes that agencies need to consider a pitch as essential as a proposal, which also requires planning and brainstorming specifically and carefully.

B. What makes a Pitch more Effective?

To achieve a successful presentation, any presenters need to answer all three questions, which are:

1. Is it Understandable? 2. Is it Memorable? 3. Is it Emotional?

(Gallo 2013)

General Tips:
1. How to pitch Understandably?

After identifying a specific Goal and Audience as the first step (Noer 2013), now it is time to prepare the content. A pitch or any other kinds of presentations always needs to be simple and straight to the core point. An understandable pitch is one without complexity in using sentence structures and vocabularies specialized used in a field or spoken by a particular group of people (Gallo 2013). Furthermore, to avoid making clients confused and feel wasting of time with irrelevant things, presentations should be concentrated on its main point from the very first step (Martin 2012). In addition, Showing, instead of Telling, is what clients want to experience via any presentation. Martin (2012) advised presenters to show ideas through examples or evidences to persuade listeners to put attention and trust into the content.

If you are good at vocabularies and words, so the lesson about a Twitter Friendly Headline, which simply consists of 140 characters for maximum, from Steve Jobs might be applied helpfully to the coming presentations. He applied this tip many times as he first introduced Apples new products. For examples, 1,000 songs in your pocket with iPod in 2011 and The worlds thinnest notebook for MacBook air in 2008 (Gallo 2013). If a presenter can describe his/her pr oduct or service within the number of 140, Gallo (2013) strongly believes that listeners are able to acknowledge what it is and how it benefits them.

In addition, slides or other visual aids can be also used during a presentation (Noer 2013). However, to apply them effectively, presenters ought to prepare them simply with some core points, images, videos, sounds or handout (Gallo 2012). Martin (2012) reminds presenters that these slides do not play a main presenter role, so speakers just use them as supportive tools for audiences to catch up what are being said.

And, instead of staring at the projector screen, it is necessary for presenters to have eye contact with clients to transmit his/her passion toward the idea.

2. How to pitch Memorably?

Numbers are considered as an effective tool to help a presentation more memorable. And from Steve Jobs presentations, presenters can get a lesson about Rule of Three to make it easier for audiences to remember the content. In the video of iPhone Introduction in 2007 by Steve Jobs, he gradually spoke out and repeated the three revolutionary products, which are an iPod, an iPhone and an Internet communication device until audiences got his intention of showing just one new product, which can include all those three functions. Gallo (2013) states that Three was proven to be the most easily remembered number by neuroscientists. Therefore, speakers are advised to apply this tip whenever it is possible.

If this rule cannot be applied, so try to make numbers in the presentation meaningful by showing relations between those numbers and facts. As a result when people are impressed by facts, they will remember them. For instance, in an Apple presentation by Phil Schiller in 2009, many meaningful data were delivered such as 220 million sold iPods counting for 73% of the market.

3. How to pitch Emotionally?

Your facts and evidences impress your clients; however, it is emotional factors decide your call -toaction part in the pitch. Gallo (2013) suggests presenters to take advantages of Storytelling as it is the most emotional technique. Storytelling can benefit a presentation due to the three following reasons: Listeners, particularly clients, usually think their experiences, attitude and ideas are right. These bias will be against by a story that can reflect clients via realistic protagonists, and then, make them become investors to your ideas. A presentations information that is organized with a storys structure is usually remembered more easily as this sequence is so familiar almost to everyone. Feelings of awe, anger, and anxiety are seen to highly wake up listeners emotion. (Jwo 2012)

Tips for Elevator Pitch:

C. Conclusion: To sum up, all practitioners in professional communication field must to remember that a Pitch is as Important as a Proposal as it is a decidable step to move clients to action of investment. The discussed tips above are hoped to help presenters to avoid regretful presentations, as speakers could not show out all his/her passion and ideas.

D. Reference List:
Eley, B 2011, The Pitch is as Important as the Proposal, Sitepoint - Business, viewed 9 Dec 2013, <http://www.sitepoint.com/the-pitch-is-as-important-as-the-proposal/>. Gallo, C 2012, Thomas Jefferson, Steve Jobs, and the Rule of 3, Forbes, 2 July, viewed 9 Dec 2013, <http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/07/02/thomas-jefferson-stevejobs-and-the-rule-of-3/>. Gallo, C 2012, 11 Presentation Lessons You Can Still Learn From Steve Jobs, Forbes, 4 Oct, viewed 9 Dec 2013, <http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/10/04/11presentation-lessons-you-can-still-learn-from-steve-jobs/>.

Gallo, C 2013, The Three Basic Secrets of All Successful Presentations, Forbes, 22 Feb, viewed 9 Dec 2013, <http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2013/02/22/the-three-basicsecrets-of-all-successful-presentations/>. Jwo, D 2012, 3 Reasons Why Storytelling Works, CEB Blogs, viewed 9 Dec 2013, <http://www.executiveboard.com/blogs/3-reasons-why-storytelling-works/>. Martin, T 2012, Seven Tips for Pitching -- From the Client's Side of the Table, Ad Age-Agency News, 26 June, viewed 9 Dec 2013, <http://adage.com/article/small-agency-diary/helps-pitchingclient-s-point-view/235576/>. West Virginia University n.d., Developing your Elevator Speech, Career Services Center, viewed 9 Dec 2013, <http://careerservices.wvu.edu/students/buildit/interviewing/developing-your-elevator-speech>.