ANECDOTE
Years ago, when I was the Executive Director/Emcee of the Maui Writers Conference, Joe Medeiros, a producer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, brought his crew to film people pitching their products.
He planned to pick the best and show them to a live audience in a segment called “Pitch to America.”
As Joe’s team got set up, I walked over to make sure they had what they needed. As it turned out, they had everything EXCEPT people willing to pitch!
Seems our attendees were feeling a bit shy, so I jumped in front of the cameras to kick-start the process and pitched Tongue Fu!
Little could I have predicted Joe would call a month later to let me know The Tonight Show producers had selected my pitch to lead their on-air segment.
Wondering what made my pitch POP!? Well, it was Purposeful, Original, Pithy & it:
Was 30 seconds long with no unnecessary words
Had pauses at the end of each sentence so people had time to absorb it.
Had a beat, which made it easy to repeat.
Introduced an “I haven’t heard that before” title that created curiosity.
Featured an alliterative, visual metaphor (martial arts for the mouth)
As a result of that 30-second appearance, Tongue Fu!’s Amazon ranking shot up, thousands visited our website, bought the book, scheduled interviews, and requested information about my keynotes and workshops.
All because I crafted a Purposeful, Original, Pithy pitch that helped me break out, instead of blend in. After all, blending in is for Cuisinarts, not for consultants.
That’s the power of POP! It’s not word play, it’s word profits.
ACTION
Will you be pitching an important product, program, or project in the near future?
How will you use these steps to craft a winning pitch that gets a YES?
Until next time… Here’s to being better.
P.S. Get more tips and read the full version of this story on LinkedIn here.