Why You Must Think Of Your Proto-Pitch

A good pitch can be in development for quite a while.

Many early attempts should be considered prototype pitches.

A beautiful way to think of your pitch when launching a new product.

There’s a Sales paradox here. Everyone seller I know loves the concept of prototyping. Yet permit use on their deal only of the fully-formed.

Your first stabs are like our human ancestors creating implements from rocks and flint. Those proto-human tools which helped our species grow took a fair while. Cultivating your protopitch that can help your sales grow may well do too.

Even then, what you may think of as a polished, finished pitch probably remains a model in primitive form.

One (of sadly many a) preaching that troubles me greatly when I see new product sessions in Sales Conferences, is the lack of nuance in the taught “pitch”.

For starters, it is never ‘one-size-fits-all’.

You need different pitches for different delivery.

The ‘what’s new?’ and “what you selling today?” queries require separate treatment for instance.

I thought on this after recently listing a dozen micro-pitches.

There needs to be an accepted, explicit recognition that from first use, a new product pitch remains “on the benches”.

As management guru Chandler is rightly lauded for saying, the winners are those that not only learn, but apply what they learn.

It’s not just about the workshop frolic of crafting pitches that progressively use an extra word.

It is the circumstance in which they are deployed.

Nobody likes a smartie-pants, trying to be clever through some verbal sleight of word.

So do you know when to set up a teaser? Properly encourage a follow-up that starts genuine conversation? From either a dab of mystery, or nailing the problem which the listener may well acknowledge?

More importantly, have you got emerging protopitches for each scene?