Pitch Basics

Which is all about leading with your destination and where you're going next with your career. 

Goal of the Pitch: 

 The goal of the pitch is simply to get yourself to a second conversation. The chances of you closing a deal or landing a huge new business opportunity in that first conversation is slim to none. What is really possible is you getting a second conversation with me. That's the goal of your pitch. It's to get me engaged. It's to turn a monologue, where you're just spewing out information about yourself, into a dialogue, where you and I are gonna engage. Where there's gonna be back and forth, give and take. Where I'm gonna ask you questions. Where I'm gonna wanna learn more. Where you're gonna just give me enough to get me interested and intrigued, and then I'm gonna be asking to engage with you further. That's the goal of your pitch. Keep your sights set on that so that you have the next conversation, and you will be totally successful.

The Strategy:

- I knew I was never gonna get my next job talking about what I had just been doing. No one cared. I had to talk about what I wanted to do next and why I was the absolute right person to do it. That's how I was able to convince people to take a chance on me. Here's what you're gonna do. Every single conversation, you're gonna lead with your punchline.
1.You're gonna start with your destination, you are gonna look forward, where are you going next? What are you excited about?
2.Then you go to your backstory, and then you bring it all together and
3.you connect the dots. 

 And you have all of those in your pocket, and then you pull each one out as necessary. It's a dialog, it's a back and forth, there's no memorization.

Lead with your destination

- The most important piece of your pitch is your destination. Unfortunately, it's also the hardest. The biggest challenge is that we often don't know where we're going next, what we want to do, why we're having this conversation. The destination is so critical. You have to ask yourself with every conversation, why am I here? What am I trying to accomplish? Why do I really want to work as a product developer for Dropbox? If you don't have a good answer to that question, there's no way you're gonna make a good impression. If you don't have a good reason why I would want to come work for you as a client, you're not gonna get my business. The destination is the hardest thing.

 questions you have to ask yourself are, what am I excited about right now? What do I want to do next with my career? What am I trying to achieve in this meeting or this conversation today? You have to answer that question for me first and foremost, because if you don't, I'm not gonna be interested in the conversation and I'm not gonna stick around for the second conversation.

Example
Let me tell you about Alexi. He meets a woman from Fidelity and he starts a conversation with her and tells her about himself. Hi, so nice to meet you. I'm Alexi. I started my career in marketing, spent a few years doing that. Had a really neat opportunity to join a startup in the Midwest and while I was doing that I wound up managing my own money and now I'm thinking that actually that's what I'd like to do. Nothing happened. And then I met Alexi and I said listen, here's the deal. If you start by telling me that you've spent three years in marketing and then you became an entrepreneur and then you decided you liked managing your money, I'm not that interested. But if you start the conversation like this, hi, it's really nice to meet you. I've been managing my own money for the past two years. I've had amazing returns and I want to go into investment management. I might say, oh, good for you, we should talk. What did you do before? Well actually, I was working in marketing and then I went to a startup, but my real passion is finance and analytics and I think I would be a great candidate for this rotational program you have in asset management. Is Alexi getting an interview now? He sure is, and he did. 

 So the thing I always say that the reason you don't sort of get hired for a job is not because you're not qualified, it's because I don't believe your story. -  Take a moment to ask yourself the question, what's the goal of this conversation? What's the outcome I'm trying to achieve? Before I get on any client call, for real, I stop and ask myself, what's the goal? What's today's punchline? What's my destination for this specific conversation? And if it's not entirely, 100% obvious to you what your destination is, then you should press pause. 

Explain your backstory

 Although, I don't care about your resume and I don't wanna hear your resume in reverse chronological order. So here's what you do instead. When you're talking about your background, you're gonna create a backstory. What's the difference between a backstory and a background? It's that you're the author. You get to pick and choose what you wanna tell me. .
 You get to pick and choose what to include. You can either talk about relevant experience, or you can talk about transferrable skills. If you have relevant experience, then bring it to the table, best case scenario. 

Example

If you've worked in consumer retail for three years, if you've launched a new product, if you've done digital marketing, tell me about it, that's amazing. If you don't have relevant experience, there's another thing you can sell yourself on, and that's transferrable skills.
Are you a big picture thinker?
Are you great in the weeds?
 Are you really calm, cool, and collected under pressure?
Are you great at juggling multiple ball in the air?
Are you really agile?
Are you a quick learner?
 What is it that you bring to the table? 

Example

You can always, and frankly should, talk about your transferable skills. I have a client, she's a management consultant and she has spent her time in consumer retail. And she's not so interested in working with consumer retail companies anymore, so really wants to focus on digital technologies and cloud computing. And so we were having this conversation and she was talking about, well, how do I make that shift? And I said, well, you talk about it. When someone asks you what you do, you don't tell them about the last three client engagements you've worked on, you talk about the fact that you are really excited about and passionate in digital technology and cloud computing, and that you see the wave of the future going in that direction. And you wanna be part of that change, working with companies who are taking their businesses online to the cloud. You sell yourself right there. Then, when they ask you about your experience, you can say, well, actually I've spent a lot of time in the luxury retail space, but the truth is we're seeing it across industries, across roles, and this is why I'm the right person to help you take your business to next level. It's a compelling story. It's not what's recent that matters, it's what relevant.

Connect the dots

The way you connect the dots is you talk about how everything fits together, what you've done in the past, what you're driving to do in the future, and how it all comes together. The surprising truth is the reason you don't land your pitch in a way that's effective, right, the reason you don't raise that money or get that next call with a potential client, or land the job, is not because you don't have the skills. You are talented, you are qualified, you have great experiences. The truth is so does everyone else, so you've gotta set yourself apart. The reason you don't get hired, the reason you don't close that deal is not because you don't have the skills. It's because I don't believe your story. You have not convinced me about your destination. You have not connected the dots for me. You haven't made me give you the benefit of the doubt, where you're doing something new, or different, or challenging, and I say okay I'm on board, I get it, I'm with you. Instead, I have a lingering doubt, and I think mm, not sure, not you're the right person that I want to jump into this new business venture with. I wanted to be an investment banker, but until I convinced myself, no one else was buying what I was selling. So I went down for my second day of final round interviews, and I got the job.