Deliver a 5-minute pitch!

In December the folks at the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) asked me to teach participants in their Climate Spark event how to deliver a 5-minute pitch. Ten finalists in this social venture challenge – social/green entrepreneurs with a great business idea – gathered for two days to prepare for a pitch to investors and supporters happening on January 26, 2012.

The challenge: achieving focus

With only 5-minutes to tell a story, participants had to be selective about what they put in and ruthless about what they took out. By their nature, entrepreneurs are passionate about their “baby” and so tend to tell too much. They’re also proud of their progress and so tend to showcase the details. They needed a tool that would give them objectivity.

The tool: ABCaP

I adapted ABCaP – my process for action-oriented communication – to a 5-minute format. To sell the value of it to the group, I set an egg timer to five minutes and demonstrated (in real time) how to structure the content and deliver it to an unknown audience.

Whether talking for five minutes or thirty, the same structure applies.

• Know your audience because it’s all about them.
• At the beginning, hook them with a burning question, tease them with a short answer.
• At the end, make a clear ask.
• In the middle, put in the right amount of the right information to compel the audience to give you your ask.

The basics of ABCaP

Rule One: It’s all about the audience

It’s not about you; you’re not selling to yourself. You’re selling to a very specific audience that has limited time and attention to give you. It’s their perception and their behaviours you want to affect. Thinking about that will help you edit your message down to 5 minutes.

If you don’t fully embrace RULE ONE, not only will you have trouble editing your content, you will send a subliminal message to the audience that you don’t recognize their importance or value their time.

An important point for the Climate Spark group: on January 26, they will pitch one after the other to the panel. If each pitch is not simple and focused, it will not stand out from the others. I taught ABCaP to the product teams at a large pharma company for a similar reason. Once a quarter, the U.S. president drops in to hear back-to-back status updates from all teams – prior to the training, the president could not always distinguish the status of one team from the next.

The beginning

The burning question is how you frame your topic to make it relevant to the particular audience. The strategy is to hook them – like a newspaper headline or the first scene in a movie. You can also use a provocative statement that infers a burning question.

You set up your burning question in a way that is unique to you: with a brief story, an exercise or demonstration, a shocking fact, or a visual. The right burning question will make your audience want to know the answer. It will highlight a gap in their knowledge and engage them right from the start.

Right after you ask the burning question, you give a short answer – a teaser. It might be a simple yes or no, or it might be one-sentence. Your audience will hang in to see how you back up your answer.

The middle

In the middle part of your pitch you lay out a more complete answer to the burning question. The strategy is to inform and inspire your audience so that they’re willing and able to give you the ask, at the end.

You need to fill in the gap with the right amount of right information, so you’re going to have to kill some of your stuff. Writing the middle part is about prioritizing and then letting go.

If you overwhelm the audience with too much information, or fail to make it meaningful, the audience may disengage. The good news is that your burning question will narrow the focus of your talk and make it easier to edit.

A trick to removing content from your 5 minutes is to divert some details to the Q&A, if you are fairly certain the audience will ask for them. Regardless, always make a list of most likely questions ahead of time so you can construct and rehearse concise answers. The Q&A is the final impression so glide (don’t stumble) over the finish line!

The end

Once you get to the end, if you’ve done it right, people will want to help you. But you have to tell them HOW to help you. In specific ways.

This is your ask and it’s a one-time opportunity. Miss it and your “captive audience” will applaud politely and wander off. It’s a matter of knowing what you need to drive your project forward. And having the courage to ask for it.

Climate Spark Testimonial

Inge really delivered. She arrived prepared for our unique audience and their specific challenges. She is dynamic, engaging and knowledgeable, and found a way to help each and every participant to strengthen their presentation and pitch skills. – Eli Malinsky, Director, Programs & Partnerships, Centre for Social Innovation

Start now

Download the ABCaP Cheatsheet. Adapt it for a 5-minute pitch by ignoring steps 3 and 8. If you would like to train your group and have access to specific worksheets, contact Inge.

For more tips for building and delivering presentations, browse the communications category of this blog.