Business Topics: Pitches

One thing I've observed time and time again working with professionals in France is very often they are lacking the tone of voice communicating emotion and passion when giving presentations or speeches. I have sat through more presentations than I can count that droned on and on, with no accentuation or punctuation. Often these are sales presentations, presenting a bid for tender, pre-sales or answering a RFP, and putting myself in the potential client's shoes makes me want to take a long walk off of a short cliff! Alas, it is my job to push on through these presentations, fix the mistakes, and push them out the door -- in the short term, there isn't very much that I can do. Long-term though, we've got a plan of attack that has been in place since just before December that is very nicely progressing, and that plan is "perfecting the pitch".

The first step: we talked about the "bones" of a pitch -- what is is? I think the first thing you need to do when working on presentations in a foreign language (okay... and maybe in your native language too...) is to ask yourself why? Why am I taking the time to give this presentation or speech? What is my objective? So with a pitch, we always identify that the objective is to be convincing.

The second step: We brainstorm our jobs and our teams. While brainstorming, we look to answer these questions:

-- Who are we?
-- Why are we important?
-- How will we be successful?

The third step: We give three or four arguments supporting any of the strong, positive adjectives we have thrown around when answering the questions. If a student says that their team is amazing, I make them follow it up: because...?

We practice linking with "because", "thanks to", and regular relative pronouns like "which", "that", and "who" to show a direct path between their statement and the example supporting it.

The first lesson was spent talking about pitches, brainstorming and presenting their ideas.

The second lesson was more interactive and less "business-y" :
Students wrote everyday nouns (mostly objects but concepts/ideas are OK depending on how advanced the group was) on little pieces of paper. We mixed all the papers up and students each chose one piece of paper. They took 5-10 minutes to plan a pitch to convince the others in the group of the value of their object.
The audience played the role of an uninformed audience, as if they were hearing about the product for the first time in their lives.

This was a lot of fun and the exercise could be repeated multiple times over the hour. I like for the students to come up with the nouns on their own because it allows them to use vocabulary that they have learned in class or outside class, to learn words from each other that they might not know before, and to be creative with their ideas.

The third lesson steered back towards business. I prompted the students to present a new "best practice" to their company, and the other students in the group took the role of a hostile/uninterested or even aggressive audience. This was a lot of fun.

Here are the prompts I gave:

--You want a new desk.

--You need a new chair.

--You want to recruit an assistant for your department.

--You want to start a “nap time” policy from 2 to 4 pm.

--You think you deserve a raise.

--You think the work day should begin later in the morning.

--You think lunch time should be shorter.

--You think the bosses need to share more of the “wealth”.

--You think it’s more efficient to work from home.

--You think men and women should have separate open spaces.

--You want the company to open a child care center in the building. 

--You want the company to open a canteen in the building.

--You think the company should move to a “no email” policy. 

Again, they had about 5-10 minutes to prepare their argument and present to the class. After their pitches, they had to face their difficult audience. As a group we discussed with points in each pitch were strong and valid, and which ones needed to be more expressive, better linked to the argument, etc. I asked each student if they were convinced and if so, by which point? It made for an interesting debrief.

The fourth lesson on this theme was still about general business topics but dealt more with presenting in general rather than concentrating on a short pitch. Working in pairs, students were faced with a challenging business problem and had to brainstorm solutions. After finding a solution to the difficult subject, they had to practice presenting these by putting forward the most positive aspects possible and speaking optimistically. They were also asked to lead a discussion at the end of their presentation to gauge the degree to which their audience was following.

Here are the prompts from this lesson:

1) Your company has just merged with a company of equal size. All new employees from the merger will be transferred to your site. You have to present a plan to the existing staff to tell them how you are going to fit all the new workers in.

Things to think about:

What can you say to make this sound more positive?

What can you say to motivate people to get “on board” with your idea?

2) The current system for filtering incoming CVs is not working. Qualified potential employees are going unnoticed and the staff turnover is very high. Anybody can receive a CV and do with it as they please. Some departments make appointments to meet with applicants when they have no need to hire somebody. All departments are over budget.

Things to think about:

How can you stay positive?

What solutions can you pitch?

3) Your company currently has offices in New York City that manage administrative operations and not production. The Board of Directors has decided that they will be relocated to your country. There are 30 staff members and only 10 can be relocated. The ten that are relocated will require training and assistance in their new country and the other 20 staff members will need an unemployment (severance) package. The Board wants you to present a report on this idea.

Things to think about: 

How can you stay positive?

What solutions can you pitch? 

The fifth lesson hasn't taken place yet but I'm going to test it out next week and see how it goes. The objective of the lesson will be how to put forward a feature of a product. First we will practice the "five-second" pitch where I will give them words, concepts, ideas, places, and they will give me a one-sentence explanation that highlights the value of the given word. For example: Pizza: It's a delicious Italian meal that will fill the whole family's stomachs. Done. We'll do a few rounds of this exercise as a warm up and then move on.

Next, students will be given every day nouns (this time proposed by me, and not by their peers for simplicity's sake) where they will have to add a feature of their choice and pitch the advantages of their add-on to the group. I will also use a sand timer to make sure that their presentations are short and sweet, focusing on the timing of a pitch and the impact of each word they choose. As always, the goal is to speak positively and simply which isn't always easy when working with groups of experts!

The final lesson hasn't been outlined yet but it will more than likely be up to the students to pitch a professional subject of their choice to the audience of their choosing. They will have the time that it takes for an elevator to climb the building and the possibility of using whatever they have on them to make their pitch. We will incorporate all aspects of the lessons leading up to this moment and I'm really looking forward to seeing how they'll do.

My next unit will be about spontaneity and improvisation so stay tuned for more useful speaking exercises!