Scott Berkun on How to Improve Your Pitch

At MindCamp, Scott Berkun did an excellent “lightning talk” on improving your ability to sell ideas to others.

From his blog:

Coming up with good ideas is hard enough, but convincing others to do something with them is even harder.

This is an area where I need to improve. In Scott’s talk, he rattled off these 5 points:

No play by play – Don’t waste time on the the back story or context for your idea. Get to the chase.
No tech – don’t bore your audience or try to sell them on the “how”, hit them with the “why” and “what”.
What problem are you solving? Who does it help? How is it better?
Why should your listener care? How are you going to make their life better?
What do you want from your listener. If you don’t extend a call to action – how can they take you up on it?

Lastly, Scott advised practicing in front of a video camera. Smart. Painful, but smart.

Published