Verified Document

How To Pitch Ideas Successfully Essay

¶ … Entrepreneur Gasca, Peter

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239666

How to pitch ideas successfully

Pitching ideas is not always considered to fall under the rubric of sales, because it often entails communicating strategies within one's own company. However, pitching is a sales activity. It involves marketing a product or service to a potentially disinterested audience. In this article, the author discusses the difference between effective pitches and ineffective ones. Features of effective pitches include clarity, brevity, and focusing on the needs of the potential buyer or investor. Just as with selling direct to consumer or business, pitching requires passion, teamwork, execution, and good ideas.

According to Gasca, pitching also requires a good storyteller. The "problem, solution, plan" method of pitching has become boring and outmoded to most listeners, and is therefore bound to fail. Instead, the pitch should be encased in a powerful anecdote that lingers with the listeners. However, the author also points out that the story needs to be short.

Along with stories, good pitches have passion. The passion a person feels for his or her new idea is infectious. If a member of an organization is trying to pitch a new idea for restructuring the company, for instance, he or she needs to refrain from relying only on numbers and data....

The pitch needs to introduce the team, discuss the team's background and experience, and talk about why the team is the best one for the job. Then, the pitch needs to discuss how the project will be executed. This can be accomplished by having the entire team present, or by integrating the team knowledge with storytelling.
Finally, the pitch has to be based on a good idea. The pitch cannot be empty of content and only emotional. It does need to offer something of value to the audience. Before pitching, the individual or team needs to think through their pitch and their idea. Practicing the pitch on friends or colleagues can be helpful.

Opinion: What I liked most about this article was the emphasis on storytelling in effective pitching. A story uses symbols to convey key ideas, such as basic needs, wants, fears, and hopes. Through the story, the salesperson reaches across cultural and age barriers to discover exactly what the other person needs and how their product or service can fulfill that need. Storytelling opens the emotional gateways to communication. However, it is also important to remember that numbers are important. Gasca downplays the importance of numbers because the author probably presumes that most pitches will…

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Military -- Naval Support at
Words: 3000 Length: 12 Document Type: Research Paper

[footnoteRef:32] This lack of forces for other Pacific struggles generally weakened the Japanese war effort, as the Japanese were forced to fight those battles with insufficient men, weapons, ammunition and other related materiel. [27: Eric Hammel. Guadalcanal: Decision at Sea: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 13-15, 1942. Pacifica, CA: Pacifica Military History, 1999, p. 346.] [28: Colin G. Jameson. "Battle of Guadalcanal: 11-15 November, 1942." www.history.navy.mil Web site. 1944.

Project Gemini Second Human Spaceflight Program of NASA
Words: 2979 Length: 10 Document Type: Research Paper

Gemini Throughout history, the idea of modern space travel has captured the human imagination. This began when early astronomers first started looking up at the sky and wondered about the universe. By the 1950s, these ideas became more realistic with development of rockets. This set the stage for a space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the heart of these objectives, was to see which nation

Probation Social Security Number the
Words: 1609 Length: 5 Document Type: Research Paper

In other circumstances, the offender should be directed towards more traditional means of punishment. Conclusion Split sentencing has been part of the criminal justice system since the beginning of incarceration programs, and shock probation programs, a form of split sentencing, have been in use for more than 50 years. There is significant debate about the efficacy of these programs, because some so-called shock probation programs are linked to high rates of

Music Education or Cross Platform
Words: 17690 Length: 61 Document Type: Term Paper

Aristoxenos, two centuries after Pythagoras released his model, sought to discredit the standing theories held by Pythagorean devotees. In his works, he established that numbers are not relevant to music, and that music is based on perception of what one hears, not any mathematical equation. Descartes as well as Vincenzo Galilei (Galileo's father) both also discredited the music-to-math theories that formed the revolutionary basis for Pythagoras' music work, but not

Theories Tactics Methods and Techniques
Words: 24173 Length: 76 Document Type: Term Paper

EDSE 600: History and Philosophy of Education / / 3.0 credits The class entitled, History and Philosophy of Education, focused on the origin of education and the "philosophical influences of modern educational theory and practice. Study of: philosophical developments in the Renaissance, Reformation, and revolutionary periods; social, cultural and ideological forces which have shaped educational policies in the United States; current debates on meeting the wide range of educational and social-emotional

Promotion Plan Situation Analysis Promotional
Words: 4006 Length: 13 Document Type: Research Proposal

There are a few key points of differentiation that make the bracelet program unique. It is the first program that allows live tracking. Existing programs can do little more than identify a child once they have been found. The current systems in place for finding lost or kidnapped children still rely on eyewitnesses for success. The bracelets work even in the absence of such eyewitnesses. Another area where the bracelet

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now