Pitch presentations
👉🏼 A pitch presentation is a short speech, a presentation of an idea or a project.
A pitch in our case is something like a sales event, only we are not selling anything in the classical sense, but we communicate to someone the importance of our mission and approaches to achieving it, or looking for partners for joint work.
A pitch can be at a networking event in the hallway, or a conversation over lunch, or a straight formal event where you're at a podium, with a presentation and all this stuff.
The latter is more or less self-explanatory, but in the very beginning of my career I had difficulties with informal, not pre-structured conversations: it's not always clear exactly how much time you have, when you'll be interrupted, etc.
Ideally, of course, is to make an appointment with the right person, discuss timing and agenda in advance, prepare a summary after the conversation, but in reality you often meet the person most important to you in a queue... I was going to write ‘to the toilet’ - but that would be a lousy place to pitch: the person now obviously has some unmet need, and is in anticipation of a rather intimate moment. But queuing up to the table at lunch is something more or less appropriate.
For such cases it is important to have some preparations in the form of a very succinct story about your initiative, and a formulated thesis of what you want from the person. I propose this concept:
- We are solving this problem.
- We are solving it with these programmes.
- In program one we use these tools, and the number of beneficiaries we have is like this.
- In program two...
- As a result, we achieve this.
- And from you we would like this.
- Let's elaborate now
❌ Never start with tools or concrete examples: the person you are talking to doesn't know who you are yet, why your project exists - and this information won't stick in their head.
The beginning should have your most important goals, tools, and numbers. There shouldn't be too many of them, so as not to overwhelm the person you are talking to. And all the speach should fit within a couple of minutes.
After that, if you realise that you still have time left and you see that the person is ready to listen, you can talk in more detail, in more depth, and with lyrical digressions - the main thing is not to forget that you are not alone in communication, and to clarify from the interlocutor whether they have any questions, whether they are interested in what you are telling them, and whether they need it at all. Or they are now thinking only about whether to take chicken or fish. Sometimes a conversation about the choice of dish can leave a much stronger and more positive impression of you and your project than a rushed story.
