American mountain climber, Alison Levine, led the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, climbed the seven summits, and skied to the North and South Poles. Alison is a history-making adventurer surviving avalanches, hurricane force winds, and sub-zero temperatures. She also spent time in the business world and brings her exploration adventures and business sense to her current work as a leadership consultant.
With her background, experience, and stories, I assumed Alison’s break into the speaking world was a slam dunk. I was shocked when I interviewed her on my podcast and learned the exact opposite.
In her search for a more flexible career to continue her adventures and expeditions, Alison realized speaking was a good direction to pursue with all of her experience and stories. In her pursuit of this new direction, she pitched the various speakers bureaus. Door after door shut as she learned there were already “a lot of Everest speakers,” so while she was not completely Invisible, she was definitely not Interesting to the bureaus.
Alison also started her speaking quest right around the time Aaron Ralston survived a horrific canyoneering accident by cutting off his forearm to free himself from the crevice he was stuck in (his story is told in the movie 127 Hours). “So you’re speaking about climbing and Everest. Have you cut off any body part?” became a qualifying question Alison received.
She ultimately met with Keppler Speakers in Arlington, Virginia. They were one of the few that let her meet their agents for the pitch. She gave a ten-minute excerpt from her full speech and they responded positively, thinking they could do business together. Alison was thrilled and, after jumping for joy in the elevator leaving the meeting, didn’t hear from them for six months.
Then the call came, “Alison, we have this opportunity for you. A speaking engagement that we think you’d be perfect for.” She said, “Oh, great! Give me the scoop.” The reply was, “Well, before we give you the scoop, what are the chances you could get yourself to Vegas before 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning?”
It was 2007 and Carolyn Kepcher, a regular on NBC’s hit TV show The Apprentice, was scheduled to speak to 6,000 people. At the time, Kepcher was the Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization and advisor in the TV show’s boardroom, helping Donald Trump fire people. She was a highly sought-after speaker and scheduled to be the opening keynote on the final day of an event in Las Vegas.
Kepcher canceled at the last minute.
“The event planner had Cal Ripken, Jr. speak and Jim Lovell and other pretty famous people, but you can’t get a famous person at the last minute as a replacement, so I’m sure they went through their whole speaker list, and I was last, and they were like, ‘remember that Alison Levine chick that came in? Maybe she could get to Vegas,’” Alison recalled. It’s late afternoon the day before, who’s going to be available to get on a plane within a few hours?
This was Alison’s shot; she had to get from somewhere between Invisible and Interesting all the way to Irresistible with only a few hours to prepare. She was on a 10:30 p.m. flight to Las Vegas.
In preparation, Alison contacted the meeting planner, Jeff, before flying out to find out what message she needed to focus on in her speech. The response was, “I don’t give a #&$% what message you focus on. I just want to make sure that my audience isn’t pissed off that Carolyn Kepcher is a no-show.” Not much to go on.
Alison arrived in her hotel room at 12:30 a.m. with her talk beginning at 8:00 a.m. She stayed up the entire night putting together a presentation for the group knowing they were expecting Carolyn Kepcher. They had no idea that was not who was taking the stage.
Alison created her presentation around being a clutch player, going back to “count on me.” She Photoshopped Donald Trump and Carolyn Kepcher into her Everest slides. She “just poked fun at Carolyn for not showing up and the whole point of my message was if you want to build your customer base, if you want to build customer loyalty, if you want more engagement from your employees, be that person that they know they can count on.” Alison got laughs by jokingly confirming that with her slides, “Right, Carolyn?”
“So, I don’t care…Carolyn was sick, and that’s why she couldn’t come, but I was like, ‘I don’t care if you’re lying on the bathroom floor vomiting your guts out. You show up for people when you say you’re going to show up.’ And basically, did a talk about being a clutch player, coming through no matter what, and that’s how you’re going to build trust and loyalty with your customer base.” Alison even had the “You’re fired” video in her presentation.
I stayed up the whole night putting this together. I didn’t go to sleep for one minute. I got a standing ovation and was the highest rated speaker at the conference. After I left the stage, the meeting planner came up to me and said, ‘Oh my god, first of all, who are you? Who are you? No offense, but I have never heard of you before.’ To which I told him there’s no reason he would have. I’m not famous. I’m not Cal Ripken. I’m not Jim Lovell from Apollo 13. I’m nobody. He was still bewildered and asked ‘Wait a minute. You just knocked it out of the park here. When did you put together that presentation? I know you didn’t even get in until midnight.’ I replied, ‘Jeff, I stayed up the whole night putting it together. I haven’t gone to sleep yet.’
He was shocked; he couldn’t believe I would do that. Of course, I would do it. I had no choice but to do it. You were counting on me. Your audience was counting on me. The most valuable resource they [the audience] have is time, and they were giving me an hour of their time, and I wanted to make sure that they would never regret it. He replied, ‘I don’t know too many people that would do what you just did, staying up the whole night to come through.’ When I told him I didn’t know too many people who wouldn’t do it, he replied, ‘No offense, but no speaker’s bureau has ever, ever mentioned your name to me before. I book more speakers than probably any meeting planner in the country. I am going to pick up the phone tomorrow and call every speakers bureau that I’ve ever worked with and tell them what you just did here today.’ And he did.
Boom. Alison took herself all the way up the ladder in less than 18 hours through researching her audience, understanding the message they needed to hear, planning, having self-confidence, and delivering an important message in a powerful presentation and great storytelling.
Jeff called every major bureau in the country as promised and Alison’s phone started ringing off the hook by the following week. She does over 100 talks a year. “A good lesson for all of us to remember is that you have to treat every opportunity like it is your chance at a life-changing opportunity.” For me, when I’m on stage, I am engaging with the audience to connect and get them to be willing to learn a new way of selling through storytelling that will get them out of the rut of being seen as a commodity.
My eyes filled with tears when Alison told me this story. She doesn’t know that I wasn’t sure if I was going to get represented by a speaking bureau. It made me wonder if I could do what she did. Would I be ready to speak to 6,000 people at the last minute? Did I have the preparation done to nail it? It’s the same lesson I learned from Michael Phelps, what are you willing to do that the competition isn’t? I was happy to find the answer for me is “yes,” but she fueled my determination not to give up. There are now five speaking bureaus who represent me, but I had to climb the ladder from Invisible to Irresistible with each one of them.
Alison knew she was invisible in her situation and had to overcome significant obstacles to be seen at all. It’s essential to pay attention and know where you are with people throughout the process before you start asking for their business. You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, right? Are you at the Interesting rung at least? Or, how can you move from Interesting to at least Intriguing?
I had to get creative when I was in the shoot-out for the Anthem keynote speaking engagement. I had to find my “in.” What opportunity do you see or advantage do you have that your competition does not? What are you willing to do that they won’t?
In the introduction, I mentioned my successful pitch to win back Guess when I returned to Condé Nast. My idea was to celebrate Guess’s 30th anniversary at a joint part with W magazine, also celebrating an anniversary that year. What made Guess say “yes?” Guess stopped advertising in W after Condé Nast let me go. The reason cited was that W fired their editor-in-chief and hired a new one. Guess did not like the direction the magazine was going and the final straw was a naked Kim Kardashian gracing the cover. While Guess said the Kardashian cover was why they left, the real reason was Guess’s co-founder didn’t have a relationship with the new Editor-in-Chief, Stefano Tonchi. Unfortunately, W took Guess at face value without digging deeper to understand the true roots of the problem.
I had maintained a great relationship with Guess from working with them at Condé Nast. I then brought them into digital advertising by selling them their first campaign with The Daily Beast. They trusted me and, through this relationship, I learned the real reason they left W. When I returned to Condé Nast, they wanted Guess back and this background information helped me win them back.
The first step, as you know from Chapter 6, was repairing and rebuilding the relationship. After my first meeting with Guess upon returning to Condé Nast, I knew I needed to focus on how to repair the rift between Guess’s CEO and W’s new editor. I had personally maintained my relationship with Guess when I left Condé Nast and went to The Daily Beast. That existing rapport is what got me in the door to begin repairing their relationship with W.
In the early stages, I did not focus on how great W was now, I talked about what our amazing creative team could do for Guess by treating them like our best client. This included asking the editors to give them coverage as well as getting them advance copies of the issue before it hit the newsstands. Any time they had great press on their stock going up, I sent a personal note of congratulations. Thus, I made it about the client, not my magazine. This made Guess feel taken care of and that W genuinely wanted to work with them, not just make money off of their advertising buys. Now that we had rebuilt that trust and rapport, Guess was open to a big idea.
To be Irresistible, I knew whatever we pitched still had to be about them. We still had a big hill to climb to get back into their good graces, so I needed to come up with something different. You might have guessed it; I used lateral thinking to make us Irresistible. As I mentioned in my Introduction, I noticed that Guess’s 30th anniversary and W’s 40th anniversary were both the same year and suggested the joint celebration If we displayed the images of Guess models who had been on the cover of W, like Drew Barrymore, next to each other at an anniversary event, there would be great synergy.
This idea was Irresistible because:
You might remember, Guess loved the idea so much, they ran a paid exclusive thirty-page supplement in the 40th anniversary issue of W. The event, dubbed “Iconic & Unforgettable: Guess and W,” was a huge success. Press, top management from both W and Guess, and the entertainment community all came together for the celebration.
Both Guess and W saw an exponential return on an Irresistible idea.
I see three types of potential returns for a client:
For me personally, this was also a huge win as I was named Condé Nast’s Salesperson of the year in 2012. It was also the first win for W magazine over other Condé Nast brands.
It is important to remember that this process is a roadmap. You now have some new ways to get from whatever rung you are currently on all the way to the top.
Returning to Alison for a moment, she had all the elements of a good story for her speech in Las Vegas as well as to pitch future speaking engagements:
Now you, too, have the elements of a compelling story. As I end this book, I want to recap the five principles of getting to “yes” as that is, of course, the ultimate goal. Storytelling is the vehicle to get you there, but your story must include these key elements:
What is the vision that you’re out there presenting?
What is the vision of your company? This is not only from the story of origin or how the company began. Your vision is what makes your company’s mission different and what’s in it for the client.
Who is the team? Of all the places you could choose to work, you decided to work here. Why? How does your team work together and with clients?
What’s your company culture?
What makes it different from the competition? There’s a passion that separates you, a commitment to “do” that creates your unique company culture. Your presentation or pitch should include what that means to your client.
What is going on with the company or the product? For example, what’s in development or coming soon? Keep prospects updated on that.
What’s the traction we have with them on that Invisible-to-Irresistible ladder?
I fly all the time and when the flight attendants say, “We’re now landing,” no one stands up and says, “What? Are we landing? We thought we were going to fly around forever.” How many conversations in sales feel like that? This conversation is just taking forever. No one’s ever landing the plane this way. Become a co-pilot with your buyer. You’re not in the back and they’re not in the cockpit, you’re both co-pilots, and when it’s time to get to the “yes,” it’s as logical and planned as landing a plane.
I talked earlier about Cole Smith, his company Tresit, and the work we did together. Cole created an app called “All is Well” to better facilitate communication between schools, first responders and families in an emergency. Now I want to share the Irresistible pitch he and I created together to inspire you. One note is that this was a pitch to investors, so some elements will not be relevant to a new business pitch necessarily, but all the elements for the pitch are as follows:
Keep it simple and clean. Feature the name of your product or service, and if you have a tagline or “big idea” for your company, use that, too. Cole’s first slide featured the tagline, “Prevent—Notify—Respond,” essentially the promise of his product in three words.
Investors want to know quickly the value you are offering your customers and the value your business represents to them. This is a great place to show traction, previous sales, revenue, or purchase commitments, for example. Tresit’s summary slide states that their technology is patent pending, the target market is $2 billion in size, the app is already in thirty schools, and it has been endorsed by law enforcement. There’s also a great testimonial quote.
Your problem slide should define three distinct customer problems with an image for each. The problems that Tresit is looking to solve are a fifteen-minute response time to emergencies, delayed communication with first responders, and unknown locations of incidents, which delays responses even more.
This slide should offer a clear solution for each problem, listed in the same order. Tresit’s solutions are a five-second notification via the app, instant communication with responders and other concerned parties, and maps within the app directing responders to exactly where to go.
This is where the description or demo of your product happens in your presentation. It should feature what Kawasaki calls the “underlying magic” of your product, what you do better than anyone else. Cole used two slides to show how “All Is Well” worked on a smartphone and then included a diagram of all the different people who could be notified of an emergency in less than five seconds.
This slide shows who your customers are, the size of your target market, and how your company will make money (or has already made money). To show the size of the market, Cole used a map and statistics about the number of mass shootings, natural disasters, and medical emergencies that occur annually in schools, airports, hospitals, and government buildings. He followed this slide with Tresit’s revenue model: a one-time installation fee and annual renewal fees for each school or institution that purchased it.
You can include in your business model slide any commitments you have from customers or sales you have already made. The “All is Well” app was already being used in thirty schools at the time and Cole highlighted that fact here.
This explains how you will reach your customers and who is involved in the decision to buy. Tresit is a B2B company whose target customers are school superintendents, airport or hospital administrators, and possibly local governments. But others can influence the decision to purchase local law enforcement, parents, other districts, and community influencers (ministers, nonprofits, etc.), so they are listed as well.
This slide has the basics of your financial projections in simplified form, including a three-year forecast of sales, revenues, profit and loss, and key metrics like number of customers and conversion rate (note, many investors will be interested in your monthly cash burn, so if you do not include this on your slide, be ready to discuss it in your presentation). Tresit used a graph of projected revenues and EBITA designed to give Cole a spot in the presentation to review his financials.
You need to make clear to investors that you are aware of who your competitors are, what they offer, and the significant advantages of your product or service. I have found that the best way to do this is to use an x/y axis grid with short, easy-to-read descriptions of the criteria. Your company should appear in the upper right-hand quadrant as the best option, while your competitors are in the other quadrants.
This slide should have a photograph of each executive team member, with titles and short descriptions of any valuable past experience. This is one of the most important slides as your team can give investors greater confidence in your business. Tresit highlighted the law enforcement and school security experience of the founders, along with the web and mobile app design skills of the lead engineer. It noted that two team members had already worked on previous start-ups.
This slide outlines clearly where you are in your business development, your funding needs, what the funds will be used for, and a timeline for next steps. If you have other investors already, put those investment amounts on this slide.
Tresit emphasized the fact that its founders already had bootstrapped through two years and the creation of an MVP and were now seeking $700,000. Funds would be used to create a new version of the product and hire more key personnel with the goal of increasing revenues to $6 million in two years.
The final slide has the business contact information along with any other images or testimonials that reinforce the value of the business and the exciting opportunity it represents to investors. Tresit closed with two powerful testimonials, including, “Not having Tresit is like not having 911.”
You might want to have a few additional slides in your deck, to be used if investors have specific questions on your financials, for example, or the exit strategy you propose, or if you have any strategic partnerships in place. That way, if a question comes up, you can simply bring up the appropriate slide as you give the answer. As part of your presentation, you also should bring with you a packet of supplemental information, including your executive summary and business plan, current financials with three to five year projections, recommendations and/or testimonial letters, and any detailed market research on your target market. If you already have purchase commitments from customers, bring copies of those letters or purchase orders.
You now have the pitch layout that resulted in Cole getting his initial funding from two angel investors…I call that an Irresistible pitch.
Once Cole had his content pitch perfect, I worked with him on his delivery and how to answer questions in a way that showed he was confident, but not arrogant. This process involved reverse engineering Cole’s thought process; figuring out what he wanted the prospects he was pitching to think, what he wanted them to feel, and finally, what he wanted them to do. This exercise and thought process will work for you, too, as you work on delivery.
The conclusion of your presentation should be a confident declaration of the great potential of your company and how excited you are to move forward to the next phase. You then end with an invitation for investors or buyers to join you on the journey.
Here are a few keys things to remember when working on your presentation:
Always take less time than you’re given. The most valuable asset investors and buyers have is their time. Neil Patel points out that as an entrepreneur, if you show respect for investor’s time, they may equate that to a willingness to treat their investment with respect also. Thus, if you are told you have fifteen minutes, take ten; if you are promised thirty minutes, take twenty. Better to end early and leave time for questions than to rush through and forget something important.
Above all, remember to tell your stories with energy and passion. There are academic studies showing that investors respond more favorably to founders who demonstrate passion, because they believe these entrepreneurs are more likely to stay the course when their startups face tough times. Don’t be afraid to show investors excitement about your idea and commitment to making this business successful.
Investors and buyers want to see you have a vision for your business as well as the confidence to make it happen. From the moment you walk in the room to begin your pitch, you have to exude confidence that your idea is going to work and investors are putting their money in the right place. The only way to create this level of confidence is to prepare, prepare, prepare.
Tennis star Serena Williams said, “If Plan A isn’t working, I have Plan B, Plan C, and even Plan D.” Athletes don’t wing it before they get to the Olympics, they practice. So do musicians. So do actors before getting onstage or in front of the camera. If they need to practice and rehearse, so do you. You must practice your pitch until it’s second nature.
To practice effectively, do the following. First, figure out what works best for you when preparing your presentation. Some people write out every word while others prefer to use bullet points. Whether you start with a written script or bullet points, eventually you should work without notes and use the slides from your pitch deck as a guide for delivering your pitch.
Once you have your presentation outlined or written, practice it with your pitch deck so you get used to delivering your presentation while running the slides at the same time. When you’re somewhat confident with what you’re saying and how you’re saying it (while running the slides), do your presentation in front of one person or a few people, team members, family, or friends. Make sure they are clear that this is not a feedback session; it’s simply to allow you to get used to presenting to a live audience. Once you’re feeling more comfortable, ask one or two people whose opinion you trust to give you feedback. You don’t have to adopt everything they say but listen to their input and see if it is valid. If so, change your presentation accordingly.
Finally, do a full-on dress rehearsal for a few friends or team members. Wear what you plan to wear when you present. Walk into the place you will be presenting as if it is the investor’s office and greet people as if they were the investors (from the moment you walk into a meeting, you’ll be evaluated how you look, dress, shake hands, introduce yourself, and so on, so practice it all). Set up your laptop, projector, and screen and test your equipment just like you will in the real pitch. Then go through your presentation without stopping, just as you would do in front of investors. If anything goes wrong, deal with it and keep going. Make sure to include questions and answers as part of your dress rehearsal. Put together a list of the toughest questions you can imagine investors asking, and then have your friends or team members ask you those questions so you can practice handling them effectively.
Many times people have a great pitch to win new business or get a start-up funded and blow it during the Q&A.
Three mistakes to avoid during Q&A:
Do as many dress rehearsals as you need to feel confident. If you follow this schedule, by the time you walk into an investor’s office or conference room to deliver your first presentation, it’ll be easy; you’ll feel like you’ve done it a hundred times already.
The goal in rehearsing your presentation thoroughly is to appear confident and natural, even if you’ve never spoken to investors before and it’s not in your comfort zone. While your presentation should feel like a conversation, your goal is to take people on a journey with you, to keep them engaged and persuade them to say “yes.” You can call it a “heightened” conversation, one with energy and impact.
To that end, when you practice your presentation, keep these tips in mind to be a more effective speaker:
Doing the superhero pose helped Mallory Dyer, Founder and CEO of GraphLock, win a pitch contest in 2016. Right before she went onstage, she took a few moments to stand in her superhero pose and remembered her moments of certainty. “The judges, the MC, and many people from the crowd told me my pitch was by far the best and I was the most steady and confident out of all eight,” she remembers. Mallory also won two of the three awards presented that night. SECRET SAUCE: While holding the superhero pose think of your moments of certainty. This combination is powerful and makes the two minutes fly by.
A great pitch displays key business information with powerful visuals in a pitch deck. Then that information is wrapped in a compelling story and presented confidently with passion and energy. But remember, you are selling yourself as well as your business, so create and deliver a pitch presentation that’s right for you. It’s far better for you to devise a presentation based on your own natural strengths than try to be someone you’re not. As long as you have a strong business model and a cohesive story, and you’ve practiced your presentation enough that you have confidence in your ability to deliver it well, then you are well on your way to becoming a revenue Rock Star.
I will leave you with one final story to inspire you to start thinking of yourself as an artist who tells stories and not just a salesperson. If you’re going to be great at pitching and storytelling, you might as well become the Picasso of pitches.
I had the opportunity to meet Françoise Gilot. In the 1940s, Françoise was in her twenties and had a mad love affair with Pablo Picasso. The late Spanish painter and artist was in his sixties at the time. They had two children together, Claude and Paloma (yes, that Paloma Picasso).
While they were together, Picasso painted endless portraits of Françoise and she painted prolifically as well. When I met her in her New York apartment, it was filled with both of their works. She highlighted some of them and told me, “In the 1940s, there was a shortage of canvases, but our urge to create was so great that we would sometimes paint over our paintings, our masterpieces, and the painting you’re looking at on the wall is the fifth one I did. I think my favorite is the third one underneath it.” I thought, “Wow, no one is ever going to see that.” Françoise’s great passion to create is what led her to paint over her masterpiece.
In sales, you may have to paint over your masterpieces sometimes, too. You think you have the perfect model for a presentation, then something changes with the client. Their budget changed, or someone new is added to the decision process and now you have to redo the pitch. Remember, the world needs what you offer, which is you and your particular passion. So I want to invite you to think of yourself as an artist. Go out and become master storytellers who sell and paint a picture that allows you to become the Picasso of your pitches.