Two questions for your pitch preparation

If you’re a B2B, Business development manager – one of your core skills is to generate business from new clients.Happy Screaming Man Raising Arms After Team Wins Imagine this happened. Out of the blue you’ve been invited to deliver a pitch presentation for a very large piece of business, against competition. You have 14 days to prepare for it. What would go through your mind? Whatever thoughts would go through your mind, what if you could get an edge in winning this big piece of business, by perfecting how you plan, stage and deliver the Pitch-day presentation? Assuming you agree that ‘top performers always want to improve if only they knew how’ – I invite you to take my 75 second,10 question, pitch diagnostic (please click the blue button below, “Pitching for new business. Find out how you can improve’). After completing the diagnostic you’ll get a score and recommendations. Here are two questions from the diagnostic. – ‘Have you devised a compelling, opening hook for the Pitch-day presentation?’ – ‘Do you know who should be on the pitch team and how to strategically choose members of the team?’ A point to ponder: You are always – pitching. Pitching yourself. Pitching your ideas. Pitching your products and services. In a pitch for a major piece of business, against competition, small improvements that you make, extra things that you do –  can mean the difference between winning big, and winning second place. Your CALL to Action/HOW to apply for this post: As suggested, take the pitch diagnostic (click the ‘Pitching for new business’ blue button below). Reflect on the recommendations. Contact me if you have any questions you want answered from that reflection at: michael@kellyspeech.com.au or on 0418 215 049.
Check out my 2009 BRW Letter to the Editor about Malcolm Turnbull  

How to pitch a meeting to a senior exec

A few month ago I sat in a presentation where a Executive General Manager of a major bank told a group of IT people to ‘Be more seen’ and ‘Be famous for something’.senior businesswoman He said that ‘working hard is not enough. Working hard won’t separate you from everyone else. Everyone is flat out and working hard’. With that EGM’s  advice in mind, I suggest to my junior and senior clients that they carve out a dedicated 30 minutes every week for ‘Be more seen/Be famous for something’ planning time. That is, that they make a weekly priority to plan and find people who they can learn from/can help them in their career – and then contact those people, in order to buy them a coffee, breakfast or lunch. Here is a sample email template. Subject line:       “New contact/Your wisdom – my learning/20 minutes” Message text: “Karen, We haven’t met before. As you are a top performer I feel you’d be an ideal person to help me grow as a business person. I work in Solution Delivery for WAC. If you can spare 20 minutes (I’ll fit in with your schedule, including before or after hours) I’d love to buy you a coffee at a café near your city office – to tap your wisdom.  Whatever time-frame works for you would be fine with me. Please let me know if you would be open to arranging this meeting. Thank you for your consideration. Cheers, michael kelly 0418 215 049” Now this is just one template to use. You would want to adapt the language to your style. If you get the meeting, make sure you plan well for it.  After the meeting make sure you thank the person. (Posting a greeting card to the person is one way I thank people). I recently used the above template to arrange a meeting with a senior person I had worked with 20 years ago. I’ll be meeting with him later this month. Your CALL to action/HOW to apply’ for this post: Begin scheduling a regular 30 minute ‘Be more seen/Be more famous’ time slot. Once you have identified people to meet. Contact them for a meeting. Don’t be put off or stop contacting people if you get rejected or get no response. If you persist, you will find people who will meet with you –  you’re on your way to Being more seen/Be famous for something.
Check this prior post on ‘Obama’s preternatural calmness’ http://kellyspeech.com.au/obamas-preternatural-calmness/  

6 strategies to improve your skills from Anders Ericsson

Skills are specific. You only get great at the skill you practice. Chess champions become good at chess from practising chess, not by practising tennis or practising public speaking. Multicolored silhouette of a brain The above statement is my paraphrase of a key message – from eminent, peak performance psychologist K. Anders Ericsson – on what drives individual improvement (that was shared in David Schenk’s book The Genius in all of us). The statements ‘Skills are specific’ and You only get great at the skills you practice’ may seem obvious. Yet some people confuse activity with practice. For example, you get better at a task by doing it rather than reading about it or taking a course where someone tells you how to do it. In a prior career as a speech pathologist, I had worked with people who stuttered. These people only reduced their amount of stuttering if they talked out loud, followed by my feedback on their level of fluency. Writing spoken words didn’t help them improve. Listening to fluent speakers didn’t help them improve.  Talking to themselves inside their head didn’t help them improve. Ericsson’s other themes for driving individual improvement include: – Practice changes your body. That is, physical change occur in heart, and other organs in those who have shown profound increases in skill level – The brain drives the brawn. The changes in the brain are the most profound (versus changes in the body) for skill level increases – even among athletes. – Practice style is crucial. Its takes a special kind of practice to get better (not ordinary practice). For example, to help my executive clients listen and speak under pressure I video record them while I drill them in the types of challenging, changing, interactions and presentations that they face in their work. Then, while watching the video footage with the client, I analyse and give them feedback on their word usage, message structure, voice, face and body language. – Objective feedback (through observing video footage, audio recording or through other person feedback) is more powerful than subjective feedback. – Short-term intensity can not replace long term commitment. Physiologically, it’s impossible to become great overnight. You CALL to action/HOW to apply for this post: Assuming you want to be a better communicator and better speaker, on a daily practice, intentionally practise speaking well, and get feedback on that practice.
Check out this post about renown architect Renzo Piano’s working technique Below is a photo of me with luminary emcee Scott Williams (in yellow) with delegates at a recent client event. Blog Picture