The 1 Absolutely Necessary Ingredient for Your Big Pitch

What is the one thing most necessary to a successful pitch? Most people, I suspect, have this answer right away: "Know the material front and back."

And that would be the wrong answer.

Not that you don't need to know what you are talking about, of course. But I'm assuming that if you have arrived at the stage where the pitch comes next, you already have the particulars down cold. No, what you are preparing for are the inevitable counter-arguments and the queries about how you would execute your proposal.

The worst thing that can happen at your Big Pitch is to get caught flat-footed by someone's response, whether it be angry ("I can't sell a crappy product like that!"), defensive ("You're invading my territory!"), reactionary ("But we've never sold those before!) or even well-reasoned (We don't know how to approach those types of customers.")

Harvard Business School professor emeritus John Kotter, author of Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down, says lack of this type of preparation is the single biggest reason good pitches fail.

"Rehashing what we already know does not prepare us to avoid sounding defensive, frustrated, or perhaps even disrespectful when fielding question after question on our proposal. In fact, we often don't even know we come off this way. And this kind of rehashing also does not prepare us to parry attacks of confusion, delay, ridicule, and fear-mongering -- the four tactical categories dissenters use against us. So we find the discussion easily derailed and difficult to get back on track."

Here is what works.

• Practice. Enlist a coworker to attack the proposal, and rehearse your responses. Your colleagues in this endeavor must provide honest feedback on your performance for this prep to work well.
• Visualize. In addition to determining responses to obvious objections about cost, resources and time, figure out who will be in the room, and then anticipate questions based on what you know about them personally. For example, says Kotter, Sally may raise an objection because a similar project that she led failed. So be prepared to clarify what is different today or how your idea would avoid the same outcome.
• Notes. If it makes you more comfortable, jot down notes to guide your answers through the stickiest moments.

Read Kotter's full piece on the subject, If You Think You're Prepared, Think Again.

How do you prepare for a Big Pitch? Please share some winning techniques.

Related Reading

• Marc Andreessen's Perfect Elevator Pitch
• Begin Your Speech in the Middle
• The Most Important 2 Minutes of Any Presentation