How to Effectively Pitch Your New Ideas for Success

This report delves into the crucial art of pitching new ideas, emphasizing the significance of effective communication and leadership. It highlights the importance of clarity, confidence, and influencing others to adopt ideas, whether in entrepreneurial ventures or internal organizational changes. The report outlines twelve key strategies for a successful pitch, including getting to the point quickly, minimizing the number of slides, establishing the need, using a message map, creating a multilevel structure, stating competition, including a sound bite, introducing the team, knowing when to stop, knowing the next steps, learning from others, and avoiding begging. The report also discusses the nature of ideas, the need for change, and the importance of creating and refining an idea before pitching it. It emphasizes the significance of addressing basic pragmatic questions and provides a primer on idea pitches relevant to various fields. The report draws on insights from various sources, including Scott Berkun's 'How to Pitch an Idea' and examples from successful entrepreneurs and TV shows like 'Shark Tank' to provide a comprehensive guide to mastering the art of pitching ideas.

Pitching New Idea
Sociologist James Hughes said, "The art of communication is the language of
leadership." Nowhere is this more crucial than for individuals pitching an idea whose
success often depends less on what is said, than on how it is said. Every pitch is
essentially an audition for leadership. Do you deliver your pitch in a way that instills
confidence in you and your team? Are you able to communicate your idea, or your
vision, with clarity? If you can't answer "yes" to these two questions, then your pitch
may not be successful.
Pitching is not just for entrepreneurs seeking investor funding. We all have to pitch in
one way or another, whether pitching a change initiative to your team or a proposal to
the board. We all need to influence someone to adopt our ideas and give us the go-
ahead. Pitching is the most nerve-wracking part of the idea creation process, and few
excel at it, but it doesn't need to be so difficult. Follow these 12 pointers for the perfect
pitch.
Get to the point fast.
It's a known fact that attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Whether it's the
length of books, blogs or broadcasts, everything is shrinking. Don't waste time with
preambles. Give them an overview of your compelling proposition quickly, and
succinctly, and you're more likely to capture and hold your listener's attention at the
crucial start of your pitch. You can use the Elevator Pitch Builder
Don't use too many slides.
Just about every venture capital expert will tell you to minimize the number of slides
you use. Recently, Leonhard Widrich and Joel Gascoigne, founders of Buffer, used 13
slides
To land $500,000 in three months. In "How To Create An Enchanting Pitch," Guy
Kawasaki, who was one of Buffer's advisors, provides a ready-made slide deck

that you can download. This 10-slide deck will prevent you from going astray by adding
too many slides. Mint.com also offers a useful slide deck
template. For inspiration, you can also view a gallery of some of the best startup pitch
decks at Pitch envy
Establish the need.
One of the questions that goes through your listeners' minds when they set out to listen
to you is, "What problem are you trying to solve?" Convince them that there is a need.
Give them a definite, concise statement of the problem, with an example or two
illustrating the need. Show them the ramifications; i.e., how it affects people. Then
follow up with your solution to address the need.
Use a message map.
This idea comes from author Carmine Gallo. As he puts it, "If you can’t tell me what you
do in 15 seconds, I’m not buying, I’m not investing and I’m not interested." The message
map is
a tool to help pitch a complex idea, simply and quickly. It helps you explain your idea
visually—on one page—in 15 seconds. This involves creating a Twitter-friendly headline,
followed by three key benefits to support the headline. It ends with a reinforcement of
the three benefits through stories, statistics and examples.
The Business Reality Check
Explore the research developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and presented by
American Express.
Use a multilevel structure to your pitch.
In How to Pitch an Idea
Scott Berkun recommends creating three levels of depth in preparing your pitch: 5
seconds, 30 seconds and 5 minutes. The 5-second version is a concise, single sentence

explanation of your idea. In the 30-second version, you explain how you plan to achieve
your idea by providing just enough interesting detail to help the audience get a clearer
understanding of what you are proposing. Once you are successful in scaling your idea
down to 5 and 30 seconds, you can then broaden it to 5 minutes. Brevity is the key to
the initial success of a pitch.
State who your competition is.
This is a crucial step. What is your competitive advantage? Show them how what you
are pitching is better than what your competitors are offering—or at least, how it is
different. Also show any potential entrants in that space. What is your shield against
those?
Include a sound bite.
A sound bite is a short, catchy phrase. Most people don't remember data, but they will
remember a sound bite. A sound bite is the Velcro that makes the message stick. We all
remember Steve Jobs' famous sound bite, "The world's thinnest notebook" when he
first introduced the MacBook Air. It pays to spend time to come up with just the right
sound bite to catch your listeners' attention.
Introduce the team.
Your listeners want to have the confidence that you have a solid team to back you up.
Some recommend adding the team slide toward the beginning, like this one from Brand
Board
, while others prefer including this at the end, like Cadee
's pitch. It doesn't really matter, as long as it's there. Guard against derailing yourself by
speaking at great length about every minutiae of the team's accomplishments. Keep it
relevant and high level, and include photos.
Take "yes" for an answer.

As any seasoned salesperson will tell us, know when to stop selling your idea. Learn to
read the signs that tell you your idea has hit home. The more you continue to talk
beyond that point, the more you're likely to say something that can reverse the positive
direction.
Know your next step.
Practice your follow-up steps as diligently as you practiced the pitch. People often enter
the pitching situation with misgivings about their chances of success. A positive
response catches them off guard and they sometimes react like a deer caught in the
headlights. Come prepared for the next steps. What happens if you get a positive
response? What do you want your audience to do? Preparation will help you move
forward with confidence.
Learn from others.
One way to hone your pitching skills is to simply watch how others do it. There are
plenty of opportunities to do this online. Here are four examples from individuals with
diverse styles.
Do not beg.
There's a fine line between showing intense passion for your idea, product or service,
and showing nervous fear of losing out. While a little anxiety is understandable, letting it
take hold of you will work against you. It can make you adopt an attitude of begging,
which never serves us well. Remember, the ultimate power is the power to walk away. If
you truly believe your idea has merit, go in as an equal. This is not advocating arrogance.
It's simply asking you to be aware of emotional leakage that may derail you. Again,
watch pitch shows like ABC's "Shark Tank" and "Dragon's Den," a Canadian TV program.
Both show aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their business concepts and products to a panel
of business moguls who have the cash to make it happen. It's easy to see who pitches
with confidence and who doesn’t.

How to Pitch an Idea
By Scott Berkun, February 2005
Coming up with good ideas is hard enough, but convincing others to do
something with them is much harder. In many fields, the task of bringing an
idea to someone with the power to do something with it is called a pitch:
software feature ideas, implementation strategies, movie screenplays,
organizational changes, and business plans, are all pitched from one person
to another. In addition, although the fields or industries may differ, the
basic skill of pitching ideas is largely the same. This essay provides a primer
on idea pitches, and although most of my experience is in the tech-sector, I
pitch to you that the advice here will be relevant to pitching business plans,
yourself (e.g. job interviews), screenplays, or anything else.
The nature of ideas

Ideas demand change. By definition, the application of an idea means that
something different will take place in the universe. Even if your idea is
undeniably and wonderfully brilliant, it will force someone, somewhere to
change how they do something. And since many people do not like change,
and fear change, the qualities of your idea that you find so appealing may
be precisely what make your idea so difficult for people to accept. Some
individuals fear change so much that they structure their lives around
avoiding it. (Know anyone exhibiting the curious behavior of being
obviously miserable in their job, their city, their relationship, but still
refusing to make changes?). Therefore, when your great idea comes into
contact with a person who does not want change, you and your idea are at
a disadvantage. Before you can begin the pitch, you have to make sure
you’re talking to someone that’s interested in change, or has a clear need
that your idea can satisfy.
Healthy and progressive organizations make change easier than stinky evil
organizations do. Smart organizations (or managers) often depend on
change. Leaders in these havens for smart people not only encourage
positive change to happen, but expect people at all levels of their
organization to push for it. It requires more work and maturity for these
managers to make this kind of environment successful, but when they pull
it off, smart people are systematically encouraged to be smart. Idea
pitching happens all the time: in hallways, in the cafeteria, in meetings.
But since most of us don’t work in these kinds of places, the burden of
pitching ideas falls heavily on our shoulders.

Step 0: Create and refine the idea
The classic mistake of would be idea pitchers is to pitch the idea well before
it’s ready. When most people find an interesting idea, they’re quickly
seduced by their egos into doing silly and non productive things, like
annoying the pants off of everyone they come into contact with by telling
them how amazing their new idea is. The thrill of being clever is so strong
that they forget the fact that there are 100 interesting ideas bouncing
around for every single truly good idea. By (my) definition, an interesting
idea takes a novel or creative approach to doing something, whereas a
good idea is not just creative, but actually improves on a meaningful quality
or attribute, in a way that can be practically applied to the world (or the
project).
Good ideas include some thinking about execution and delivery. Saying “we
should build cars that go 1000 mph and get 100mpg and easily fold to fit in
your back pocket” or “We should make a children’s movie that is very funny
and intelligent for parents and children, but also has a deep positive
spiritual and moral message” count as interesting ideas. They’re good
starts. But they won’t be good ideas, in the sense of pitch-work, until
there’s both some logic for how to make it real within reasonable
limitations, and some level of detail in how the convert the abstract idea
(build a breakthrough automobile) into tangible plans (the trans warp drive
I’ve designed improves gasoline efficiency tenfold).

Therefore, until the concepts and hard parts are fleshed out enough to
demonstrate that the spirit of an idea is matched with specifics, the idea
doesn’t have much of a foundation. People can dismiss it quickly just by
asking 2 or 3 basic questions. Always remember that moving from an
interesting but vague idea, to specific and actionable is the difficult part of
creation and invention. (For example, there were lots of people with the
idea for making light bulbs. Edison’s success was not in being the first one
to conceive the idea, but in having the persistence and cunning to be the
first person to solve many of the practicalities involved in engineering the
idea).
Most of the time it’s not worth pitching an idea until you’re able to answer
some of the basic pragmatic questions about it, such as: What problem
does this solve? What evidence is there that the problem is real, and
important enough to solve (or in the corporate world, solve profitably?)
What are the toughest logistical challenges implied by the idea, and how
will (or would) you solve them? Do you have a prototype, sample or
demonstration of an implementation of the idea (aka proof of concept)?
Why are you the right person to solve it? Why should this problem be
solved now? Why should our organization solve this problem? These are all
the kinds of questions someone that gets pitched to on a daily basis are
likely to ask, and therefore, a good pitch-person will have done more than
superficial thinking on their answers.
Step 1: What is the scope of the idea?

The bigger the idea, the more involved the pitch. Big ideas require more
change to take place on someone’s part, and all things being equal, this
means the pitch must be more thorough (or your approach more bold &
risky). The stakes are higher. To convince a CEO to start a new million dollar
project will take more effort than convincing your best friend to loan you
his pen. As a rough guide, here’s how to assess the scope of an idea, from
narrow to grand:
● Tiny tweak to something already in existence
● New feature or enhancement to existing product / website /
company
● A major new area of an existing product / website / company
● An entirely new, but small and simple, project
● An entirely new, but large and possibly complex, project
● An organizational, directional, or philosophical, change to an existing
organization
● A new organization
● A new nation, planet or dimension of the universe (Sorry. But for
how to pitch to the omnipotent forces that run the universe, you’ll
have to look elsewhere).
When you’ve identified the scope of your idea, do some research on how
others pitching ideas of similar scope went about it. You’re probably not

the first person to pitch something of the scope you’re pitching, so go find
out what other people did, and what kind of success they had. Learn from
their mistakes. There are books on pitching business plans, movie scripts,
and of course pitching yourself (job interviewing). Do your homework:
know some of the basic strategies, or industry expectations for the kind of
pitch your doing. In the software development world, talk to people who
have pitched feature ideas in your organization, and see what you can
learn.
Step 2: Who has the power to green light the idea
Make a list of the people that are potential recipients of your pitch. This
could be your boss, your VP, another company, a bank, a publisher, who
knows. Base this list on two criteria: who has the power needed to
implement the idea, and who you might have access to. Here’s a rough
guide, ordered from fantastic to depressing.
● You have the power.
● A peer in your organization has the power.
● Your boss has the power.
● Someone above you in the organization.
● Someone you know in another organization.
● Someone you don’t know and don’t have easy access to.

● You have no idea.
● You are paralyzed on a cold wet basement floor, and your annoying
younger brother keeps poking you in the ribs with the pointy end of
pencil. (See, it can always be worse).
If you have no idea who to pitch your idea to, ask around. There’s no sense
developing your pitch if there’s no one to catch. If you don’t have access to
the person with the power you need, make a list of who has access to
them, working backwards until you can list people you actually know. You
may need to work through this network of people, and make several
pitches, to achieve the results you want. Just getting to the real pitch
situation may take days, weeks or months or preparation and pitching to
subordinates.
Step 3: Start with their perspective
Put your pitch aside. Imagine you have mind-melded with the person you
are pitching to. How do they think about the world? What kinds of things
are they probably interested in? What is their typical day like? How many
unsolicited pitches do they receive a day? Consider how the person you’re
trying to pitch views the world, and keep it in mind while developing your
pitch. The better your pitch fits into their needs, perspectives, and desires,
the greater your odds of being successful (or even being listened to). This
doesn’t mean sell out, or only create ideas that you think a specific person
will like. Instead this just means you have to be aware of how your
perspective is different from theirs, and improve your ideas, and how you

communicate them, based on that awareness. This may help you decide
who to bring your pitch to: The most powerful person in the organization
might share none of your philosophy, but the 3rd or 4th most powerful
person might. The latter is going to be a better place to start.
Step 4: The structure of the pitch
Always formulate 3 levels of depth to pitching your idea: 5 seconds, 30
seconds, 5 minutes (Credit to Ari Blenkhorn for this simple breakdown). The
5 second version, also known as the elevator pitch, is the most concise
single sentence formulation of whatever your idea is. Refine, refine, refine
your thinking until you can say something intelligent and interesting in a
short sentence. “My idea? It’s a way to make car engines twice as efficient,
and 5 times as powerful.” This can be done for any idea: never allow
yourself to believe your thing is so complicated and amazing that it’s
impossible to explain in a sentence. If you were to use this excuse on me,
I’d tell you it means you don’t have enough perspective on how your idea
fits into the world.
If you can get enough perspective of what you’re really doing, have a half-
decent command of whatever language you’re using, and spend some time
at it, you can develop a good 5 second pitch. Practice it on friends, peers,
anyone, by doing the 5 second version, then answering their questions, and

then asking them to help you refine the 5 second version again. (And if
nothing else, the 5 second version comes in handy at parties, when you
need to quickly explain what you’re doing without boring people to tears).
As proof that 5-second explanations are possible, here is some diverse and
complex ideas, and some simple 5-second explanations of them.
Discovering DNA
“I’m researching how human cells
reproduce”
Defragmenting hard drives “It makes computers run more efficiently”
Inventing light bulbs “It’s a way to make light from electricity.”
Writing a brilliant novel
“The story explores twenty something
angst in the digital age”
Improving anti-lock brake
algorithms “It improves automobile safety”
The 30 second and 5 minute versions should grow naturally out of the 5-
second version. In 30 seconds, there’s enough time to talk about how you’ll
achieve what you described in 5 seconds, or provide specifics of the 2 or 3
most significant things about how the effect described in the 5 second pitch
will be achieved. Provide the next level of detail down, adding in just
enough interesting detail that the listener can get a clearer picture of your
idea, and gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of what you’re
proposing. If you can’t distill down what you’re doing in 5 and 30 second

versions, don’t worry too much about the 5 minute version: odds are you
won’t get many people to listen to you for that long.
However, since some people prefer written proposals for pitches, this gives
you a chance to deliver the 5, 30 and 5 minute versions all at once. In this
case it’s often best to keep the same structure: start with your shortest
pitch. Then provide the next level of detail down. And finally, the core of
the paper or written proposal is a point by point detailing of how, giving the
money & resources you need, you’ll achieve what you described in the 5
second pitch.
Also, remember that you won’t always have all of your materials with you
when pitching ideas. At least briefly consider how you’d deal with the
following different kinds of situations, and with the different asset
limitations you’d have in each case.
● The elevator – you.
● The slow elevator – you, maybe something to show from your
pockets.
● The lunch – (you , maybe something to show, napkins to draw on,
alcohol)
● The conference room meeting – (laptop / slides / handout)
● The executive review – (laptop / slides / handout / yes-men /
splunge-men)

Sometimes it can be to your advantage to pitch with partner. Instead of one
person pitching, you’ll be pitching as a team. If you can find a partner who
compliments your skills, and who you can happily collaborate with, it’s
probably worth it (And though your ego may try to convince you you’re
better off alone, you probably aren’t). It doubles your network of
organizational connections, and changes the psychology you’ll have when
pitching. Instead of standing alone you’ll be a small team, and may even
out number the person you’re pitching to.
Step 5: Test the pitch
The longer you spend with an idea, the more vulnerable you are to your
own ego. Get out of your office / cubicle / apartment, and go find smart
people you know to give you feedback. Ask them to pretend they are
whoever it is you plan to pitch to (This can be fun if you can be specific, as
in asking them to behave like Bill Gates, Donald Trump, or your own
caricaturization of your boss). Then go through your pitch, responding to
their questions (or ignoring their laughter). You won’t always get the
feedback you want, but you’ll sharpen both your idea, and the way you talk
about it. If the idea is amazing and groundbreaking and you’re afraid to run
it by other people, find a close friend or parent and use them.
From your pitch tests, develop a list of questions you expect to be asked
during the pitch, and be prepared to answer them.
Step 6: Deliver

Surprise – I do not think there is a ton to know about actually pitching. If
you have prepared well, have a good idea that you truly believe in, and
manage not to get too nervous, most of the work is in the hand of whoever
is listening to you. Be calm, be direct, state your case, and then listen. Like
any kind of public speaking type situation, the more often you do it, the
more comfortable it will become. However, there is not much magic to the
actual pitch. The only people that need to resort to tricks and
manipulations are those that have not worked to understand their
audience well, or do not truly believe in what they are pitching.
The best delivery advice I can offer is to make sure you spend some time
preparing for a positive response. What happens if they say, “That’s an
interesting idea? What do you want from me?” Do you want money? Other
resources? A change in the project plan? A feature added to the feature list.
Know what the sequence of steps are after they agree you have a good idea
and be ready to ask for them. If there are other people involved who’s
approval you’ll need, ask them to set up a meeting for you. If there is a
form that needs to be filled out, make sure you have one with you.
Step 7: What to do when the pitch fails
When things don’t go well, your job is to harvest as much value from the
attempt as possible. Always leave failed pitches with an understanding of
what went wrong. Which points didn’t they agree with? Which of your
assumptions did they refute? In many cases, you might learn there are
criteria for green lighting ideas in your organization that you didn’t know

about. It’s also possible they objected to something about your approach:
maybe they didn’t appreciate that you accosted them outside their office,
waving a stack of handouts in their face. If someone else in the room was
there observing the pitch, ask for their feedback. In short, get as much
learning out of completed pitches as you can. Recoup your investment in
the failed pitch by mining any lessons out of it that you can apply next time.
From a tactical perspective: who else can you give this pitch to? Every
organization has lots of people at peer levels of hierarchy. Would any of
them be interested? Go back to your list from Step 2. Consider
compromising on how much power is needed to make your idea happen, or
how to split your idea into smaller ideas. Maybe focus on the first small
piece of your larger idea, and revisit the rest after you’ve had some initial
success.
Step 8: Do it yourself
In every creative industry you can find people rejected by the system who
went off on their own, scrapped together their own resources, and made
amazing things happen. Scrappy small budget films like Napoleon
Dynamite, Clerks, Pi, happened only because a small group of people
believed enough in their ideas to make the sacrifices, and do it themselves.
Books and novels can be self published. Business can be started on small
business loans or second mortgages. There is always a way to do it if you
are sufficiently compelled by your ideas to take on risks, and make use of
your own (unpaid) time.

If your idea is related to web or software, it’s entirely possible to make a
prototype using Flash, HTML or other development tools. Go crack open
some books, or if you have the money, go hire someone to make a demo
out of your sketches and rough plans. Don’t ever allow yourself to believe
that there is only one way to make ideas real: if you’re truly creative, you
can apply the same talent used to come with your idea, to the problem of
how to make your idea real