Your 1-minute pitch

Let’s face it, you sit at a networking event and as everyone does their 1 minute, you either worry about what you’re going to say or the fact that your competitor is in the room. Or you’re enjoying a sense of relief, that you’ve done yours and can sit down again. Does anyone really take in what anybody else says?

So how can you make your 1 minute less painful and more memorable? The answer is actually pretty straightforward because most 1 minute pitches break the first rule of copywriting…they are all about you! Flip things on their head for a moment and it all gets a bit more interesting.

Re-writing the rules 

Many networking hosts will invite you to to, “Tell us who you are, what you do and what you’re looking for today”. In my humble opinion, that’s a bit of a bum steer. So next time you go networking have a think about the following:

Think about your audience (copywriting rule #1)

What challenges do the people in the room face that you can help with? Each networking group might be a little bit different. I know that some of the events I attend are mainly made up of solopreneurs and time is their biggest challenge. At other groups it might be technical skill. If I know what they’re struggling with, that’s what I major on.

Make it about them and focus on benefits (copywriting rule #2)

If you’ve networked with me, you’ve probably heard me say, “Let’s talk about you. Who here didn’t get round to writing that blog or newsletter you were going to write this week? Again.”

I can guarantee that as soon as I say ‘let’s talk about you’, people look up and there’s some nodding of heads. The bonus is that that means I immediately know who to go and talk to in the break!

Use stories and visual language (copywriting rule #3) 

You’ve got to try and make it memorable but not naff.  Using visual language and real life examples that they can relate to is key. An example I gave at my workshop this morning for a proofreader was:

“Imagine you’ve just written the perfect mailer or blog. It’s going off to some people you want to impress but as you hit send you realise there’s a glaring typo. Argh!! (At this point you might physically bend over to demonstrate that sick pain you get when it happens to you).  It actually hurts doesn’t it? 

Next time just ping it over to me first. It’s an affordable way to make sure you never send something out with a typo again.”

That takes well under a minute. It’s visual, memorable and straight to the point. The chances are you also have plenty of stories you can tell.

Make it conversational and lose the jargon  (copywriting rule #4) 

In my workshop this morning, everyone did a 1 minute pitch and it was interesting to see how many people slipped into third party, you know the “I help people that…”. Try and make it personal by using “you” and not too formal. Make eye contact, smile and be human and like-able.

The other interesting point that came out of this morning was what a low tolerance to jargon we have. On top of which, is the fact that there’s a very low entry point for what counts as jargon or white noise. What was perfectly clear to one speaker in her 1 minute, was not necessarily clear to the rest of us. The words used were accurate short hand for those in the industry know but didn’t explain to people outside the industry, what the concept behind the words was.

Keep it super simple. There’s a lot of information to take in at a networking event and complicated terminology or words we don’t really understand will mean we tune out.

Tweak it according to your audience (copywriting rule #5) 

If you go to  a networking event filled with CEO’s and larger businesses, you won’t necessarily use the same language as a local event of solopreneurs. I might talk about their over stretched marketing teams and white papers at the first, and their blogs at the second. The differences may only be small but they matter.

And what else?

Plan and practice! Everyone re-wrote their 1 minute this morning and the results were brilliant. But what was clear is that you do need to plan, prepare, practice and perfect your notes … in advance of the meeting.

Do stick to one hat (however tempting) and make sure your notes are easy to read “at a glance” so that all you have to do is to quickly look down if you forget what you’re saying.

Asking questions, giving tips or bringing something physical to show can all be very effective. You want the audience to engage with you and that’s exactly what happened this morning when everyone flipped their pitch around and made it about the audience.

Finally, we did spend a bit of time this morning talking about Aristotle and your butt cheeks. Believe it or not, both have an important role to play in your public speaking. But I’ve run out of room to deal with that in this blog, so just get in touch to find out more!