IdeaSelling

Successfully Pitch Your Creative Ideas to Bosses, Clients & other Decision Makers

Sam Harrison

• Publisher: HOW Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781600616693
• eBook ISBN: 9781440309847
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Design Allgemein

Don't let your creative ideas get picked apart and put down!

If you're like most creative people, chances are high that you've had your share of ideas rejected by clients or decision makers. While we sometimes make the mistake of believing ideas should sell themselves, the fact is that the better and bolder the idea, the more it needs selling. This book contains powerful techniques to help you sell your ideas to those with approval power. You'll find tips from designers, writers, marketers and other creative professionals, along with meaty advice from selling and branding gurus. In no time, you'll be able to convince those who hold the purse strings that your ideas are worth pursuing and investing in.

"Designers have a little known secret: Designing something is the easy part, getting others, specifically clients, to embrace that design is the real hard part. Harrison has put together dozens of tips that, if applied correctly, independently or in unison, will help you get those great design ideas approved."

—Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio, authors of Graphic Design, Referenced

6

How to present
A POWERFUL PITCH.

“The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.”

—Philip Crosby, ACTOR

LET A WORLD LEADER PITCH
your next idea.

Sir Winston Churchill was a world-class speaker and salesman for ideas.

Here are his five guidelines for successful presentations:

1. HAVE ONE THEME.
Develop a concise, focused, overarching theme.

2. MAKE A STRONG START.
Grab the decision maker’s attention right from the beginning.

3. USE SIMPLE LANGUAGE.
Your words should not be simplistic, but they must be clear and conversational.

4. PAINT PICTURES.
Plant images in the minds of decision makers so they visualize your solutions.

5. ADD DRAMA.
Build anticipation and excitement that fit your ideas and audiences.

1. HAVE ONE THEME.

I sat down for a financial planner’s presentation. After fifteen minutes, I yearned for an ejection seat.

This guy was all over the place. He started by talking about stocks and bonds. Then he jumped to life insurance. A quick hop to disability coverage. Back to stocks and bonds. And, wait, let’s not forget estate planning…

There was no central thread. Just aim a fire hose in my direction and hope something hits. Instead, he drowned my interest with disconnected data.

Needless to say, I didn’t sign up. He knew his stuff, no doubt about it. But without a central theme linked to my needs, he sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher: “Waa waa waa… waa waa…”

Study the decision maker’s needs. Connect with a solid theme.

Know what you want
TO HAVE HAPPEN.

When preparing to pitch, we usually start by asking ourselves: “What am I going to say?”

A better first question would be: “What do I want to have happen?”

Sure, you want to sell the idea. But how do you see that happening? What reactions do you want? What questions would you like answered? What interactions? Action steps? Timelines? Approvals?

When people presented to Walt Disney, he would ask, “What’s the end frame?” He viewed life through a cartoonist’s eyes, with the end frame as the payoff.

What’s the end frame of your presentation? What do you want to have happen?

KNOW THE ANSWER, AND YOU’LL KNOW YOUR THEME.

KNOW WHAT YOU WANT
TO SAY.

After Harold Macmillan made his first address to Britain’s House of Commons, Winston Churchill had this to say:

“Harold, when you rose you didn’t know what you were going to say, when you were speaking you didn’t know what you were saying, and when you finished you didn’t know what you had said.”

Know what you want to say, and say it. DON’T RAMBLE.

HELP CLIENTS
visualize your ideas.

“When presenting, we strive to create an experience and help clients visualize ideas as reality,” says DJ Stout, a partner at Pentagram.

When Lexington, Kentucky, asked Pentagram to develop an identity reflecting the Bluegrass Region’s personality, Stout and Michael Bierut conjured up a mythical mascot, Big Lex. To create Big Lex, they took the majestic horse in Edward Troye’s 1868 portrait of the great racehorse Lexington and switched its color to blue.

“When we showed city leaders Troye’s horse colored bright blue, their initial resistance was evident,” says Stout. “But then we displayed examples of ads and billboards—and a prototype of Big Lex as a small model that could be sold in gift shops.

“We also showed how Big Lex could be a mascot, with a person wearing a blue horse suit and educating school kids about the racehorse Lexington. The decision makers began to visually experience where we were going with the idea. Before long, everybody in the room was suggesting ways Big Lex could promote the city.”

Helping clients visualize success is customary at Pentagram, says Stout. “I remember Paula Scher presenting packaging ideas for a technology product. In the conference room, she had shelves stacked with product boxes of competitors. Paula opened her presentation by placing an unadorned orange box on the shelves.

“‘Look how your box would attract attention,’ she said. Then she slowly applied graceful graphics to the box, helping clients visualize how refinement and simplicity would pull in buyers and easily explain the box’s contents.”

FOCUS = SACRIFICE

“Too many presentations look like they have been put together by lawyers,” says Al Ries, branding expert and co-author of War in the Boardroom. “The presenter takes all the reasons why a client should buy and lists them one by one, hoping one will hit a home run. It seldom works.”

Ries notes that even some lawyers have learned the lesson of focus. “Take Johnnie Cochran in the O.J. Simpson case,” he says. “‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.’”

Powerful brands are built by focusing, Ries points out.

“Federal Express became the largest U.S. air cargo carrier by focusing on overnight delivery,” he says. “BMW became the world’s largest-selling luxury car brand by focusing on driving. Target became a worthy competitor to Walmart by focusing on well-designed merchandise.

“The secret of a good presentation is sacrifice. In other words, focus.”

Fast pitch.

“If I can’t pitch a book to my wife in about three sentences, I’m in trouble,” author John Grisham told interviewer Charlie Rose. “I spend a lot of time with the story to make sure I’m focused on a theme.

“Take my book The Firm. One day in the kitchen, I said to my wife, ‘I’ve got an idea for a book. This young lawyer joins a law firm, and once you join that law firm, you can never leave it because it’s secretly owned by the Mafia.’

“My wife stopped what she was doing and said, ‘Say that again.’ I repeated the sentence. And she said, ‘That’s a good book.’”

BREATH TEST.

IF YOU CAN’T DESCRIBE YOUR CONCEPT WITHOUT HAVING TO TAKE A BREATH, YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T NAILED YOUR THEME.

Yes, it’s possible—filmmakers do it all the time with their thirty-second “high concept” pitches for two-hour movies. See if you can identify the following films from their one-sentence themes:

1. Scientists clone dinosaurs to populate a theme park, which suffers a security breakdown and releases the dinosaurs.

2. An unemployed actor disguises himself as a woman to get a soap-opera role.

3. A police chief, a scientist and a grizzled sailor set out to kill a shark that is menacing a seaside community.

4. A woman and daughter open a chocolate shop in a Fre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• how to deal with DECISION MAKERS.
• begin by boosting YOUR BELIEVABILITY.
• learn by asking ALL THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.
• find out what clients want BY LISTENING.
• success = opportunity + PREPARATION.
• how to present A POWERFUL PITCH.
• how to handle OBJECTIONS.
• and then it’s FOLLOW-UP AND MORE.
• END NOTES