Make it Personal
Remember this guy?
How about now?
"I'm not only the Hair Club president, I'm also a client..."
Sy Sperling wasn't the coolest guy around, but he made his pitch deeply personal--something which few people are brave enough to do these days.
I just finished a pitch for the opportunity to help publicize a malaria drug in Africa. The team leader on the pitch wanted to stress to the client that he and the company knew Africa and the marketplace intimately. "I mean, I've been there, I've already done this," he said.
"Do you have any pictures from your trips...?" I asked.
And so, instead of stock imagery of African children we used actual snapshots from his travels, like this one.
"It's Sunday and I was on a reporting assignment for Voice of America covering polio eradication efforts," he told me. "I was walking across the street and saw this father smiling and carrying his child to church. I was struck by his joy and happiness, so I stopped him..."
Not really the kind of story you could tell in a pitch using iStock Photo...
We've all said to people, "Nobody wants to see your vacation pictures..." But what if those pictures are actually relevant to the story you're telling?
A few months ago I designed a presentation for an executive at Ebay that focused on the site's fixed price items and how it's no longer just for auctions. The speaker began not with success stories of average users, but instead put up the images of everything she had personally bought over the past six months for her and her family.
Her presentation was a big deal in front of a huge industry audience. Many might have thought that this was no time to make it "cute" or "clever." Someone else might have just wanted to hit the audience over the head with persuasive numbers and revenue opportunities. But this speaker knew that though Ebay and its partner sellers are businesses, it all ultimately comes down to individuals. And so she started by humanizing her talk using the best possible case study: herself.
How can you personalize your next pitch?
