Make a Powerful Pitch

Nearly every business team leader has experienced it at one time or another.  You have just 15 minutes to make a presentation to upper management about an initiative your feel deeply about.  You work hard to prepare the perfect presentation, only to met by the executives with stony silence after you are through.  What happened?  

In my work with change leaders over the past decade, I’ve seen some great examples of what works when it comes to gaining executive support.  I’ve also been witness to more than one failure.  To find out from the source what works best when presenting ideas to senior management, I interviewed several leaders in both private industry and the public sector.  

The executives agreed that when mid-level leaders attempt to make a case for funding or other support, they often provide far too much information.  Many pitches fail because executives don’t have the time or interest to delve into every aspect of an initiative.  Most executives don’t want or need to know each and every task your team is working on.  They don’t want to have to weigh in on every decision.

The following are three best practices for making a case to the senior leadership team.

1.    Use PowerPoint to summarize your main points.

A PowerPoint deck is a great briefing tool because it requires you to summarize your points into brief bullets.  Keep your points at a high level and mentally prepare stories, anecdotes, and illustrations to bring depth to the words on the page.  Plan to spend no more than 3 minutes per page during your pitch.  Bring backup information with you, but pull it out only in response to questions about the details.  

2.    Group your main activities, goals, or steps into “buckets” or categories.

I recently saw one team leader list every activity his team planned to work on in 2009 in his pitch to executives.  Instead of strengthening his case, all of the details turned off the executives he was trying to influence.  One leader even spoke up to tell the team leader that they didn’t want to know all of the team’s tasks.  They just wanted to know the priorities.

I find it helpful to group goals or activities into categories.  For example, you might say that in 2009, your team will focus on cutting costs, streamlining processes, and developing bench strength.  You could then list examples of goals in each of the three categories.  This helps the executive team quickly focus on the strategic impact of your team’s work and enables them to weigh in on whether they believe these are the right areas of emphasis.   

3.    Concisely summarize what you need from the executive team in order to move forward.

Too many presentations to executive teams are informational in tone.  The team or project leader provides an update and asks for any questions.  They hope (and pray) that the executives will somehow jump to offering funding and support, which almost never happens.

Instead, conclude your pitch with a slide that summarizes specifically what you need.  This might be money, a decision, or dedicated resources.  Yes, there is a risk that your request will be turned down, but it’s better to know that now, than to keep spinning your wheels.

In the 1990’s a team of external consultants worked with General Electric to develop a change acceleration process.  The team came up with a four-step formula for effective elevator speeches:

*    Our project or initiative is about  . . .
*    It is critical to the company because . . .
*    What this means for you is . . . .
*    Here’s how you can help . . .

Use this approach both in one-on-one conversations with stakeholders and in your formal pitches and presentations.  You will find that your ability to argue for your case will improve as you learn to focus on these key elements.

By keeping your pitches to senior management short and crisp you will be able to focus on strategy, not tasks.  When you are clear about what you need senior management will understand up front what it is your team proposes, what you need from them, and how it will help the organization.

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