Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business

CHAPTER FOUR

• Making Connections

– Planning the Perfect Pitch

Seeing Relationships

The job of the presenter involves far more than the ability to stand up in front of an audience and deliver the perfect presentation. First, as described in previous chapters, presenters have to understand the psychology of the audience. Second, they have to possess the philosophical abilities to take vast amounts of information, sort the relevant and important from the irrelevant and unnecessary, and distill the remaining material into a single, motivating idea. They then have to write a presentation with the skill of a playwright, creating a plot with enough drama, twists and turns, to hold the audience's attention as the central idea comes to life. Finally, in the presentation itself, they have to bring the skills of a performer. It's a lot to ask of one person. Researching, writing, producing, directing, performing. . . . Kevin Costner, eat your heart out.

I have already talked about audience psychology. In this chapter I focus on the second and third stages: those that involve the collection and interpretation of information, and the crafting of the story. Bringing those to life in the context of the presentation itself will be discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.

In The Mind of the Strategist, Kenichi Ohmae writes:

The best possible solutions come only from a combination of rational analysis based ...