How a Pitch Is Built

A pitch is two weeks of work that ends in forty minutes. Most studios spend the two weeks making slides. We spend them avoiding slides.

Day one: write it in a sentence

Before anyone opens software, we write the idea in a single sentence. Not a tagline, not a campaign line. A sentence a stranger could repeat to a colleague. "They should stop selling the building and start selling the weather inside it."

If we can't write that sentence by Wednesday, we haven't got an idea. We've got a mood. Moods lose pitches.

The shape of the story

We build the order of the pitch on paper, with index cards. Six or seven, no more. Something like:

1. What we noticed about them.

2. What we think the problem actually is.

3. The idea.

4. What it looks like.

5. How it behaves in the world.

6. What happens first.

Notice what isn't there. There's no slide of our credentials. No logo wall. They already know we exist, or they wouldn't be in the room, and if they don't, a logo wall won't change that.

One thing to see

Whatever the idea, there is one thing in the room that the client can look at. A printed board, a prototype, a single object on the table. We don't project. A screen draws every eye to the same place and ends the conversation before it starts.

A physical object invites a hand. People pick it up, turn it over and argue with it. That's the pitch working.

Rehearsal and questions

Rehearsal. This is where it's won. We rehearse out loud, standing up, with a timer, at least four times. The first run is always bad, and the second is bad in a different way. By the fourth, the cards have worn smooth and we know where each of us pauses.

We rehearse the first sentence the most. If the first sentence lands, the room settles, and so do we.

Questions. We leave a third of the time for questions, and we prepare for them like a separate performance. The three hardest questions we can imagine. The one the finance director will ask. The one the founder hates. We write out answers and then throw the answers away, keeping only the principle.

What we leave out, and what comes after

What we don't do. We don't bring a larger team than theirs. We don't bring a second idea "in case". We don't say "we're really passionate about". And we never pitch for free work, a position that has cost us a few opportunities and earned us a few better ones.

After the room. Whether we win or lose, we write down what happened in the room within the hour. Who leaned in. Which card did nothing. What we would say differently. Over the years, those notes have become our real training.

Pitches aren't won by slides. They're won by having something to say, and the nerve to say it plainly.