Having won a few high stake competitions in my company and elsewhere, I was planning to do an article on how I created most of those 10-15 mins pitches, with a ‘believable’ story telling to convey my ideas.

But before I could pen my thoughts, Scott Dadich, Editor in Chief of Wired, articulated it better than what I could have. He wrote in his editorial of Jun 2015, how he chose the cover story on Artificial Intelligence from a number of other pitches.

To rephrase what he said in 7 points regarding selling of an incredible idea in a time when ideas are plenty and execution debatable.

1. Firstly, imagine you are writing a one page pitch, under 500 words, for your cover story to an editor in chief. You are selling your story and he has that tough task of selecting the best one among a deluge of good material from people like you. Now, how would you go about it?
2. Establish quickly why you are a Subject Matter Expert and why you know your story well inside out.
3. What is unique in the story as compared to similar ones read or heard earlier – USP!
4. Is this the future? Case in point where we are seeing some adoption points.
5. Like a short story – A conflict between the current popular narrative and thought process and the story in hand – This is where the idea has to be elaborated and told how it works out.
6. If this clicks, what is the impact that we are looking at.
7. Applies only if you are selling your idea to someone else for a spot in the final story telling – How will you present it and what more could be in store – time and condition permits?

Now the above points have been made extremely (field) agnostic, from a technology parlance, so that it can be applied to a cover story you are writing, a technology business pitch you are selling to an audience judging you (something like shark tank 😉 ) or you are part of the deal team selling a multi year outsourcing project to a company with many competitors in the bidding process.

Ultimately, in my opinion, story telling is vital to every single individual irrespective of the field of practice we are in.

Would love to hear whether this helps you out to make your next brilliant pitch!

 

~ Trilok R. ~