Every pitch has a simple purpose

I was working with clients from a major UK insurance company last week. They are intelligent technical experts working as high end internal consultants looking to deliver real, tangible results through, process, technology and operational improvement.

We were looking at the kinds of pitches that they do when asking for funds to deliver these amazing projects.  They are often pitching to the Plc board for large piles of cash to fund complex and long-term initiatives (initiative needed in great measure!). I was trying to help them move away from presenting the complexity and towards explaining the results and after much discussion, Peter came up with the following-

I guess what we’re really saying everytime is, ‘you give us £6 million and we’ll give you back £12 million…’

And that was the moment when we all got it.  Isn’t that what every ‘pitch’ is about. Bringing it back to this ‘give/get’ principle can really help to cut through the ‘how’ and focus on the ‘what’.  We can give the audience all of the detail, if they want it, but the pitch should only be about showing the possibility and demonstrating the likelihood of success.  Everything else is just ‘clutter’.

Thanks Pete.