TV Presenting V Pitching

        Occasionally I get asked what makes me qualified to talk to small businesses about how to pitch.   I’m not a business expert,  I have never worked in mergers and acquisitions, balance sheets are not my preferred bedtime reading, and yet I work successfully with lots of businesses to develop their pitches, and win them funding.

        What’s the first thing you have to do when faced with a panel of investors?    Answer – Get their attention.

        Do you know how long a TV presenter has to get your attention before you reach for the remote control?    Time yourself with your own remote.  Hop around the channels and see how long you give each presenter before you decide whether to stay and listen or switch over.   It’ll be a maximum of….10 seconds.

        That’s me on Sky News, and all I get to keep the audience's attention is.....10 seconds.   So broadcast journalists and presenters like me know a fair bit about how to grab people’s attention. The headlines at the top of the news?   They’re attention grabbers.  And we have to write them.  They have to make you want to stay to hear the rest.    Just like a pitch, you have to get their attention at the top and then keep it.   Investors are like TV viewers, they have a surfeit of choice, and they are easily bored.  

        Back to TV -  on a daily basis journalists like me have to take a blizzard of information, on almost any subject under the sun and turn it around very fast,  into short snappy scripts that are easy to understand.   We translate the information for the audience.   It has to be easily understood by everyone who watches, from any background.    Pitchers have to pitch to all kinds of investors, with different backgrounds and different levels of experience in the pitcher's field.   So the easier the pitch is to understand the better the pitcher's chance of keeping the investor's attention.

        The next time you're watching the news and are easily following some complicated economic story, or a science story, or even a showbiz story, remember that the journalist is pitching you the story.   And if you are still listening at the end, that journalist has done a good job.    That’s what we do, and those are the skills we can pass on to help businesses pitch better.