Good for saving the day in annual reviews, sales meetings, waiting tables—pretty much any pitching situation.
You were working on ways to be the answer to your audience’s pain. Well, as we discussed, a big part of doing that involves preparation. But in this chapter, I’m going to explain why preparation and practice might be the most important Pitch Power of all—certainly the one that’s most likely to save you when things don’t go as planned.
Let’s start with the continuation of my story of my first time pitching on TV.
After my meeting with Jeff Shimer, I went home to celebrate. Then reality hit: I was going to be on live TV the next day, in front of 20 million people, trying to sell the Smart Mop. Shit. What was I going to do? What was I going to say? Bloody hell, what was I going to wear?
At eleven-thirty the next morning, I showed up at the giant HSC complex wearing my khakis and a blue shirt. I had all the stuff I used at the home shows I worked: my blue bucket, a bucket of water, a bottle of ketchup, a cup of sand, a little bit of bleach, a sponge mop, a string mop, two Smart Mops, and a spare mop head. I’m sure I looked like a custodian.
I walked in and said to the first person I saw at a desk, “I’m here. I’m Anthony Sullivan. I’m on at twelve-thirty.” He rustled some papers, picked up the phone, and said, “This kid’s down here, mops and all. Do you know anything about it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. He’s the kid.” Jesus! They didn’t even know my name. This was back in the day when you had to be a host or a celebrity to be on the air. There were no twenty-four-year-old British kids on the air, period. But there were pictures of Ivana Trump, Jackie Collins, Omar Sharif, and Frankie Avalon—and then there was me! A nobody!
Finally, he said, “Wait here.” So I sat. The clock was ticking: 11:35. Eventually, they pointed me back toward the studios, but as I got there a portly, brash man named Dan Dennis, who was the show host, came storming out. I didn’t know him, and he certainly didn’t know who I was, but he wasn’t happy. “What the heck?” he shouted to his assistant, the director, or whoever would listen. “A freaking mop? This is a freaking jewelry show! Cubic zirconia! I don’t need to have a mop on the show! I won’t make any money today! I don’t need some kid who’s never been on TV before! Whose fucking idea was this?”
This went on for a while until I was pretty pissed off. I was already a nervous wreck, and I needed someone to come in and say everything was going to be okay, not curse me out of the studio. Finally, Dan went back on the air and the crew calmed things down. “Don’t worry about it,” they told me. “Dan’s just pissed.” That sort of thing.
After a few minutes, they walked me into Studio A, and I started to set up on the stage. But as I got my water and filled my buckets, I noticed there was no table. I told one of the crew members I needed one and he said, “We don’t have any tables.” This was an emergency: I needed something to put my ketchup and sand and mop heads on! Somebody found me a table, but now I was running late. I was sweating. When they put the microphone and earpiece on me, I was completely freaking out. Live TV. Twenty million people. No pressure.
Then, minutes before I was about to go live, this guy named Jim came over and said, “Sir, you can’t get the floor wet.”
Are you kidding me? I’m about to have a heart attack while I’m standing here, and you’re telling me I can’t mop the floor? As calmly as I could, I said, “I’m selling a mop, buddy. I’m going to clean the floor. There’ll be a clean spot.”
“Well, you’ll be in trouble.’
“Arrest me,” I replied. Then I realized that there was a better way to handle this. “Tell you what,” I said, “when I’m done I’ll clean the whole studio. I’m good at cleaning floors”.
After that, I stopped talking and focused on setting up my joint, just like I would do at a home show or street market. Only I wasn’t at a home show. I was in a TV studio with robotic cameras that moved by themselves. There was no cameraman. I’d never seen anything like it. I could see Dan over on another stage. All of a sudden he walked over and stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, Anthony.”
“Hello, Dan.”’
“How’s your day going?”
“Good… actually it’s a little tough, I don’t have all my props, it’s my first time…
“Good.”
Then I realized that the robotic cameras had moved into position. The red light was on!
Shit, we’re live.
I felt like an idiot. The only words I could muster were, “Are we on?” Yes, the first thing of any substance that I said on live television was “Are we on?” What a moron! I looked at the camera like it was a firing squad.
Dan turned to the crew and announced, “This is Anthony Sullivan. He’s never done this before.”
For a moment, I absolutely froze. I went full “deer in the headlights.” I didn’t know what to do. I was looking at the camera, looking at Dan, and looking at the camera again. Meanwhile, my brain was screaming:
Don’t fuck this up. Just do the pitch. It’s the only thing you know right now. The only thing that’s going to save you is your pitch. You pitched Jeff yesterday and said you were the guy. You can’t do it? Yes, you can. Just go to your pitch.
At the markets in England and America, when I was ballying a tip and someone was trying to walk past, I’d say, “Sir, what kind of mop do you use?” Nine times out of ten, he’d stop and reply, “I don’t mop, my wife does it.” Then I’ve got him, because he’s engaged me. So out of pure desperation, I said the only thing I could think of:
“So, Dan, what kind of mop do you use at home?”
Dan replied, “I don’t mop the floor.”
A layup answer that I’d heard a thousand times from cocky husbands at flea markets! Perfect.
“Well, who cleans the floor in your house?”
The standard answer; now I’m taking control.
“What kind of mop does she use?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she use one of these?” I held up the string mop, then the sponge mop, and then went right into my pitch. I started working Dan like I was at a street market and he was my tip. Because he had been a jerk to me, I decided that I was going to drill this guy. I was going to make him beg for my mops. Forget the camera. I was going to sell Dan.
I started pitching him and I don’t think I looked at the camera the whole time. Now, back in those days Home Shopping Club would put a five-minute clock on the screen in case a product was bombing and they needed to get the host off the air fast. Well, I was pitching and my time was flying. Suddenly, just like that, my five minutes were down to thirty seconds!
Before I could react, Dan yelled at someone on the set, “Get that clock off the screen, who put that clock up there?” Then back to me, “Anthony, this is unbelievable—this mop is incredible.” It turned out that while I had been fumbling through my first-ever appearance, the phone lines had exploded. I had struck a nerve with the audience at home, who had been falling asleep listening to Dan drone on about cubic zirconia. The sales numbers were screaming.
I kept pitching, and I had Dan completely engaged—“under the ether,” as we say in the pitching business. My appearance lasted just twenty-two minutes, but in that time HSC sold all five thousand mops! It was over before I knew it, but I didn’t care because time stood still. I had Dan under the ether so it didn’t matter to him, either. I probably had all five thousand people at home under the ether, too.
I took home a measly $250 that day for my efforts, but couldn’t have been happier. I was on my way. I had crushed my first-ever appearance on live TV and we had sold out! If you’re in the selling game, you know that selling out is what we aim for. HSC did not have one mop left in inventory. The thing is, I was just trying to save my butt after I froze up. The pitch saved me. If I hadn’t been so well prepared, I would have blown my best chance, and I probably wouldn’t have the career I have today.
This Pitch Power isn’t glamorous, but it might be the most important of all. It certainly saved my butt when my nervousness was off the charts and everything was on the line.
Know exactly what you want to say and do before you go into your pitching situation. This obviously applies to selling or presenting, but it also makes sense in scenarios where advance planning might not seem to make as much sense. Before you call your credit card company to pitch for a better rate, know your opening line and talking points. Before you approach the attractive woman at the club, rehearse what you will say if she declines your offer for a drink. Before you head out to shop for a car, practice lines that will help you get the deal you want, like “My wife is picking me up here at three o’clock, so if we haven’t done a deal by then, sorry.”
Practice is everything, which is why the best way to learn to pitch is to get out and do it. Start practicing somewhere consequence-free, like a bar or club where you can try to meet new people. That might seem fraught with nerves and the potential for embarrassment, but I think you’ll agree it’s better to get shot down by a cute stranger than to blow an interview for your dream job. Pitching is a skill, and the more you use your Pitch Powers, the smoother and more effortless using them will become. Repetition is the key to reaching that point where you’re not thinking, just doing. If you want to persuade people, leave nothing to chance.
Some people worry that too much practice will rob them of any spontaneity. But it’s like the difference between watching an improv comedy troupe and the Royal Shakespeare Company doing Hamlet. Both are entertainment, but only one is art, and the art takes endless rehearsal. When you’ve practiced every part of your pitch so much that you do it in your dreams, that frees you to improvise and be spontaneous, because if you screw it up you can circle back to what you know.
I never stop practicing my pitches, even today. There’s no such thing as too often. A fighter pilot can put a jet down on an aircraft carrier or a Formula One driver can shoot his car around a track at two hundred miles per hour because they have walked that track, flown in the simulator, read the manual, and repeated each step thousands of times. Know what you need to say like you know your own name. Be able to do what you need to do blindfolded. If you’re selling cars, you should be able to get into a Ford Escape, turn the radio to SiriusXM, turn on the air conditioning while putting your seat belt on, and text your sales manager that you’re taking a customer out for a test drive all while making charming small talk.
Appearing seamless and effortless gives you the aura of an expert, because the customer knows you’ve done this countless times. I look at it like this: there are already enough obstacles and barriers between you and what you want, from sales resistance to the sheer numbers game of trying to land a new job. Don’t put more in your way by fumbling with a product or not knowing an answer that you should know.
People love to put themselves in the hands of a skilled expert. Look at Starbucks baristas. Most of those guys can make coffee blindfolded. That’s part of the reason you go there: to watch someone pull espresso like an artist while keeping up a friendly patter. The same goes for a great bartender. He knows every ingredient, mixer, glass, and drink formula. He’s made any drink you can name a thousand times, so while he’s making yours he can keep eye contact with you and carry on a great conversation. Then, before you know it, you drink is done with a flourish, and he’s earned a big tip.
Practice…
1.… what you’re going to say. Every great pitchman has a signature line. Billy Mays’s signature line for OxiClean was “Powered by the air you breathe, activated by the water you drink.” Warms my heart. I use it today as the current OxiClean pitchman. That line takes something that might seem common, a household cleaning product, and makes it relevant and even friendly. But that line came from lots of trial and error.
Your speech should be smooth, confident, and well-paced, and that means practice. Back in my street market days, when I was selling the Amazing Washmatik car washer in places like Croyde Bay in Devon on the English coast, I’d attract a crowd by telling the punters that I was going to “make water run uphill.” That always stopped a few people in their tracks. Once I had them gathered around, I’d say, “Imagine giving your car a shower instead of a bath!” and then show them how to do it. By the time I was done, I always had a few people begging me to take their money. If I’d just stuck to the facts—the “features and benefits,” as so many sales guys say—I might not have eaten that night.
Your facts are like a British secret agent. He’s good looking, with chiseled features and twinkling blue eyes, but he’s driving a Toyota Corolla, wearing jeans and a ripped T-shirt, and drinking Budweiser out of a can. Ugh. Put him in a tux, give him a vodka martini (shaken, not stirred, of course), slip him behind the wheel of an Aston Martin, and now you have James Bond. Same man, different presentation. One barely gets a glance; the other won’t let you look away. That’s the power of a well-rehearsed patter that makes people smile and captures their imagination.
2.… what you’re going to do. From time to time on HSN, I pitch the H2O Mop X5 steamer. It’s a complicated piece of equipment with a lot of parts—wands, heads, you name it—and I’ve developed the perfect pitch for it. Outside of spending about $100,000 to build a set that would make my demonstrations even smoother and more dramatic, I don’t think I could make that pitch any better. I would challenge anyone to beat me at that pitch. But one of the reasons it’s so good is that I have spent hundreds of hours putting that steamer together, taking it apart, swapping out heads and handles, and manipulating every piece until it’s second nature. I’m like a surgeon with the X5. Because of that, I don’t have to watch my hands. I can talk to the viewer and tell them how the X5 is going to help them clean their windows, floors, and carpets while I show them how incredibly easy it is to use. I can maintain eye contact the whole time.
Even if your pitch doesn’t involve manipulating a product, know how you’re going to use your physicality and objects. Are you going to bring printed materials with you, like a resume or samples of work? Where will you keep them and when will you bring them out? If you’re attending an audition, how will you cross to your mark and what will you do when you get there? If you’re a real estate agent showing a house, do you know how to work the surround sound and programmable thermostat so you can wow a potential buyer?
You should be able to perform whatever physical tasks your pitch requires without pausing in your speech or taking your eyes off the crowd. It should look like magic.
3.… what you’ll bring. You’re blowing them away at your audition. You’re the right type, have the right background, your head shots are perfect, and you’re charming the pants off the director. Then she asks you to read the prepared dialogue, and you spend half a minute flipping pages to find the scene, muttering, “Just a second… this is, no… give me one second… I know it’s—here it is.” That’s deadly. You just killed all the buzz you’d created because you didn’t put a two-cent paper clip on the page you needed.
If it takes you more than three seconds to whip out a pen, business card, or resume, or open up a PowerPoint deck, you’re taking too long. Part of preparation means knowing what you’re likely to need for your pitch, knowing where it is, and having it at hand so you can produce it effortlessly, like a magician pulling a coin from behind a child’s ear. Have a mental checklist—business cards in shirt pocket, pen in inside coat pocket, resume in briefcase—and repeat ten times.
4.… what you’ll wear. Steve Jobs was one of the greatest pitchmen I ever saw, and he wasn’t a pitchman at all. He was a legendary innovator, but he also represented something—genius, magic, whatever you want to call it. Part of his presence and pitching prowess was his uniform: jeans, black turtleneck, and white sneakers. He wore the same thing every day, even at his huge national events when he rolled out products like the iPhone. For Billy Mays, it was his blue shirt and khakis.
Plan what you’re going to wear just as intentionally. What kind of impression do you want to make? Who’s your audience? What’s your goal? If you’re interviewing at a buttoned-down, white shoe law firm, you’re going to wear the best suit you can afford. If you’re heading up your advertising agency’s pitch to a new client, maybe something more creative. If you’re going to be waiting on a table of wealthy society matrons and you want to score a big tip, accent your basic black with a piece of vintage jewelry they’re sure to comment on.
Plan your personal presentation as carefully as you plan your pitch: clothing, hair, accessories, everything. Remember, you don’t know what small detail will put you over the top—or sink you. Leave nothing to chance.
You are not the first person to do what you are about to do. That’s something most people forget when they confront a pitching scenario, whether it’s an audition or a sales meeting. But there is a world of people who have already made the pitch you’re going to make and you can learn from them. Remember, according to Pablo Picasso (who allegedly said it), “Good artists create; great artists steal.”
Learn to borrow from the best. Read books about pitching or sales. Study people like Billy Mays and Ron Popeil. Go online and watch old spots for classic products. Watch the shopping channels. Read articles about best and worst things to say at a job interview. Find out who’s the best in the world at what you’re trying to do and steal from them—“butchering,” we call that in the pitching world. Billy used to call me the “Butcher of Bayonne.” You won’t be violating any intellectual property rights. Everyone steals everything in the world of pitching, because the only thing that matters is what works.
Another thing that’s essential to prepare is your voice and delivery. Think about it: the one common element to any pitching situation, from waiting tables to buying a car to pitching a potential client, is that you will have to speak. Tone and excitement and intonation and inflection are critical, because different audiences respond to different deliveries. I’ve had the good fortune to work in a country where people like my English accent, and that’s worked for me. Billy Mays found his crazy volume and intensity that people loved. Chris Rock has an intonation that makes you want to listen. Anthony Bourdain sounds sophisticated but knows when to drop an f-bomb. Sportscaster Joe Buck is in a league all by himself, and even a guy like Howard Stern spent years finding his voice.
A great speaking voice and style is not something you are born with; it is something you develop consciously. Barack Obama is an incredible orator, but you know he’s worked endlessly on that effortless-looking, cool style. Sarah Palin is the opposite. Her voice and delivery are naturally like nails on a blackboard, but she hasn’t made the choice to do something about them. She could work with an elocution coach and develop a speaking style that appeals to people, but she hasn’t. People seem to like that she sounds unpolished, like a regular person. Barbara Walters did the opposite: she has a speech impediment, chose to own it, and she’s one of the most successful interviewers in history.
Find your volume, your sweet spot. Understand the audience and develop a voice and delivery that’s authentic for you but also suits the audience. For example, a motivational speech to a big room will demand a lot more energy than an intimate conversation on a first date. Also, if you have an accent or other natural speech affectation, own it. Own your accent, own your speech impediment, own your style. Own anything that makes you distinct, including your physical look, but be intentional about it.
Be polished, be tailored to the environment, but be memorable. Plan on ways you can surprise your audience and stand out from the crowd. Remember, in any situation where you break out your Pitch Powers, you’re probably going to be one in a multitude. If your ad agency is pitching a new account, you might be one of a dozen shops doing the same thing. If you’re hitting your college professor up for extra credit, you might be one of a hundred students in the same lecture hall. If you’re trying to get a better rate on a mortgage, you’re one of hundreds of thousands of customers. If you’re anonymous, you will get anonymous results. Figure out how you can be surprising, unexpected, and unique. It’s more fun for them and for you.
I gave a keynote speech before a big business group in 2015 and everyone was expecting me to talk about pitching or networking. But I don’t really have much to add on those subjects. So I got up and said, “I want to talk about relationships. Friendship and business. I do business with people I like. In my business, over the last twenty years, I’ve developed incredible friendships. If you run a good business, those friendships can last forever and, all of a sudden, you’ve cultivated this great group of friends who you can depend on through good times and bad.”
The audience was barely breathing. I had them under the ether. I went into my Billy Mays story about The Tonight Show. I took it to the obvious ending, Billy’s death, and said that the friendships you make in your business will help you endure, and you will have catastrophic losses. Whether it’s bankruptcy, a lawsuit, a partner who leaves you, or a divorce, you will have losses. Who are you going to depend on? The friendships, your vendors, the people you work with, your colleagues. Those friendships are going to be tried and tested, and that’s priceless.
I finished by saying, “I appreciate you wanting to come in tonight and talk about networking, but what you’re doing is trying to cultivate friendships. With that, my name is Anthony Sullivan, thank you very much.” The audience went nuts. They had expected me to talk about pitching and networking, but I had surprised them, and they were delighted.
Other scenarios where this Pitch Power helps good triumph over evil:
• A competitive business RFP. If you’re not familiar, RFP is a request for proposal. If you make your living providing services for other businesses, prospective clients will ask you for an RFP if they want you to compete for their business. If you make the first cut, you’ll usually be asked for an in-person presentation. Whether your business is advertising or IT, this is where prep and practice can boost your bottom line. Do your background research on the prospect and know their problems. Find out who you’re competing with and find their weaknesses. Rehearse your presentation and plan for disaster. What will you do if the AV system tanks and you have no PowerPoint? What will you say if your time gets cut in half?
• A keynote address. Public speaking, bigger fear than death, yada, yada. You’ve heard it. Well, if you’d seen what I’ve seen—world-class CEOs and innovators sweating and shaking like heroin addicts at the prospect of addressing an audience for five minutes—you’d know it’s true. So know this: if you’re not a natural or experienced speaker, you will panic and go blank when it’s just you, the mic, and five hundred people. What will save you is preparation. Memorize your speech. Have some cue cards to use as life preservers if you start to sink, but memorize your speech. Know it backwards and forwards. When your heart is hammering, you’ll automatically, instinctively start running through your points. Trust me. Eventually, you’ll realize that lightning hasn’t struck and that you’re actually doing it.
• Extensive traveling. Traveling? Yeah. Here’s why. If you’ve ever taken a multi-week, multi-city, or multi-country trip, you know not everything goes as planned. At some point, maybe multiple times, there’s going to be a lost hotel reservation, a canceled flight, an unavailable rental car, something. When something goes pear-shaped, you’re going to have to persuade a clerk or customer service rep to help you out. In other words, you’re going to pitch, and you’ll get better results if you’re prepared. Know your legal rights as a traveler. Know the other hotels in the same class in the cities you’re going to. Know your credit card company’s policies. Plan what you’ll say to gate agents and concierges, always remembering that a smile gets you more than a scowl.
If there’s a person in the pitching and sales world who has benefited from the power of practice and preparation, it would be hard to top Joy Mangano. Today, she’s the president of Ingenious Designs, LLC, an HSN icon, holder of more than a hundred patents, and the subject of a major Hollywood biopic, Joy, starring Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence. But she started out in 1990 designing her first product, the Miracle Mop, and when she appeared on QVC to pitch it she sold eighteen thousand units in thirty minutes and a star was born. Her secrets? Planning and preparation.
“Planning is an understatement,” Joy says. “You have to live it! I never put a product in front of my consumer unless it is part of me, and that can take years of dreaming and planning and hard work. It’s not hard to know why I fell in love with a product I created. But you have to be able to find those perfect words that convey your product love with the original energy and enthusiasm that led you to create it in the first place. That’s lots of thinking, and planning, and using the product, and talking about it with everyone around you!”
Joy also shares some advice that might seem unusual but that’s really quite smart. “Early in my career, I prepared for a product to sell slowly, and what to do if that happens, but I never prepared for the consumers to fall in love and for it to sell out like wildfire,” she concludes. “So I learned, you have to prepare for the worst AND the best, and be ready for even your wildest dreams to come true!”
One thing you can never be completely prepared for is anger. When I was selling at British street markets, it wasn’t uncommon for someone who didn’t like the product I’d just sold them to come back while I was pitching a later audience and stand at the edge of the crowd, glowering at me. Sometimes, they would be holding the mop or car washer or whatever that I’d sold them earlier or the previous weekend, and sometimes they would be disruptive. Occasionally, someone would try to pollute my joint by saying something like “You sold me this last week and it’s a piece of shit. I want my ten quid back!”
When you’re in sales, you’re going to have unhappy customers. What can throw you is when you strike a nerve in another type of pitch: when you say the wrong thing at a job interview, for instance, or when someone you’re waiting on lashes out at you. If and when that happens, here are a few things I suggest:
1. Keep your cool. There’s nothing to be gained by snapping back at the other person. Think about it like this: it’s your job to keep the amount of overall angst in the room at a consistent level. The more upset the other guy gets, the calmer you should become.
2. Know the reason. People generally don’t lash out irrationally for no reason. Maybe the lady shouting at you had a really terrible day. Maybe the guy on the other end of the phone has been sick with the flu for a week and hasn’t slept. Nobody’s trying to make your day bad on purpose. Remember that and you’re more likely to get an apology than more rage.
3. Consider your audience. Sometimes, the angry person isn’t alone. I’ve had people call up when I’ve been on HSN and tell me they thought the product I was pitching was crap. If I lose my cool at them, 90 million people might watch me do it. So I have to smile and try to help the caller solve her problem, even if she’s rude. At a meeting, a hotel desk, or a restaurant, other people are watching and they’re going to judge how professional and skilled you are based on how you handle an angry jerk.
When I had an angry punter at the public markets, I used that to my advantage. I always asked them to wait until I was done with my pitch and if they did, I would refund their money plus £1, no questions asked. Most of the time, they agreed, and I handed them their money in full view of everyone. It made me look like a good guy and removed any dark clouds of doubt my unhappy customer might’ve cast over me.
The more hours you put in, the better you will get, and the more real you can make your practice situation, the better it will be. You don’t learn to play soccer by kicking balls into a net. You put on your cleats, go down to the stadium when there’s nobody there, and play in the arena, if you can do it. Get yourself as close to the action as possible.
This can involve some strange things. Years ago, I was pitching a vegetable slicer in England and I needed to have my pitch down in a very short time. So I set up a fake joint in my backyard garden, complete with a fake vegetable slicer, all my vegetables lined up, a table, and a “gozinta”—a hole that all the waste and trash “goes into.” I would be back there for hours talking to an imaginary audience and going through every stage of my pitch. My roommates genuinely thought I had lost my shit. They couldn’t understand why I was standing out in the drizzle, talking to an imaginary audience. But nobody was watching me, and I knew I was not ready to go out and pitch this product. There was no way I was going to get up in front of a lot of people with the product and fumble through the demos and not be fluid.
Plus, the blade was sharp and I didn’t want to cut my fingers off. So there was that.
When I finally did go onto my joint with the slicer, I killed it. I sold out. Another old joke was that the slicer was so sharp and could slice veggies so thin that I had gone through the entire summer using only one cucumber in my kitchen. It was hilarious.
But that’s what pitching takes. If you really want to be brilliant at pitching and persuasion, you have to pay the same price you pay to be great at playing the piano, sinking jump shots, or writing: putting in an extraordinary amount of practice. You will drive people crazy. Your friends and family will think you’ve gone slightly mad. If you speak to my friends and family members from back in the day, they had no idea what I was doing.
If you can find a good friend who feels like giving everything to your cause, ask them if they’ll help you out and watch your pitch. Get some feedback. Also, we live in an age when everyone has a video camera, so record yourself. I never had that luxury, but you do. You’ll hate watching yourself at first and think you look and sound like a complete tool, but you’ll pick up areas where you can have more energy or better detail.
Finally, don’t mistake practice for the real thing. Practice will help you have something to fall back on when you stand in front of your audience and your heart is pounding and your palms are sweating, but it won’t stop those things from happening. The first time I ever pitched the car washer at a street market, I was so nervous that I was sure I would faint. But I did the pitch as I’d been taught—and it worked! People gave me money! It was amazing. But assume you’re going to be nervous your first time, maybe your first few times. It’s normal. My friends who’ve been in the Marine Corps have told me that while they train and drill you under combat conditions and with all the gear, no amount of training can ever prepare you for being in real combat against people who are trying to kill you. It’s something you just have to do and survive.
This isn’t combat. This is pitching. You can do it. Prepare, and you’ll survive.
SCENARIOS FOR USING THE “OBSESSIVE PREPARATION” PITCH POWER
Q: You prepared and prepared for the meeting and then it turns out you got the days mixed up. You’re prepared for the wrong meeting! How will you get out of this scrape?
A: You won’t. In a pitching situation, being disingenuous will sink you, and anyone with half a brain will know if you’re BSing your way through a pitch you’re not ready for. Make up an excuse and reschedule. Then prepare to dazzle them.
Q: Word gets back to the company you’re interviewing with that you were asking questions and prying into their history. How do you respond?
A: Be direct: you’re trying to learn as much about them as possible so you can ask smart questions and suggest great ideas—and because you want an edge over the other candidates. People love that competitive fire.
Q: You get five friends to give you feedback on your speech and they all say it stinks. Do you rewrite it, ignore them, or something in between?
A: One opinion is just that, an opinion. The same opinion twice is a pattern. The same opinion three times is a consensus. If five pals say your pitch is terrible, tear it up and go back to the drawing board.