How to master the art of pitching and persuasion

And I was waiting for my boss to walk over to me with that, you know, I'm about to fire you look in his eye. Yeah. >> So that I could whip out the letter first and say, I've decided to resign. >> Right. So you you you got you were going to get ahead of it. You were going to the cool guy. >> Don't want that on my record. >> I don't want this on my record. This job's not good enough for me. >> Yeah. >> What happened? >> Well, I didn't get fired. And there's one reason I didn't get fired and it's a story. And the story changed the entire trajectory of my life and my career. [music] Hello everybody and welcome to the CIM marketing podcast. I'm delighted to say we're back in the studio and we're going to be talking about how concepts become reality. Most of all, how we make our brilliant concepts turn into a reality, turn into a new account, a new project. And that, of course, the interface is the pitch. Something that's familiar to many marketers. It doesn't matter how good your concept is. If you can't sell it to your customer, if you can't sell it to your audience, it will never become reality. And today to discuss this highly important topic, we have none other than the pitch guy, Danny Fontaine. Danny is author of Pitch: How to Captivate and Convince Any Audience on the Planet, and he's with us today. Danny, great to see you. >> Great to see you, too. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. >> Your book title says a little bit about yourself, but you're going to tell me a little bit more about yourself, I hope. >> I certainly can tell you lots of things about myself. Um, let's start with the fact that I have been obsessed with the topic of pitching for the last 20 years. It's been like what I've dedicated my life to, but I wasn't always. So, I've got a bit of an interesting story and I think some of the people listening might be able to relate to this. So when I was younger, I just wanted to be either a world famous rock star or a world famous artist. They were one of the two and I would have been pretty happy. So uh I went to art college when I was 16. Um >> you weren't bothered which you you >> not too bothered. I would have chosen rockstar. >> You preferred the rockstar. Okay. >> But for me it was crazy that at 16 I was allowed to only study art and drop all of the other subjects. It was the the greatest thing in the world. Um and then I went to university and I studied fine art. I did a degree in oil painting. All right. >> And um joined various bands and life was going well. And in my early 20s, um I got married quite young and I was even though I was out every Monday evening playing pubs in North London to four or five people, the music just wasn't bringing the money in that I needed for my family. So essentially I was forced to kind of get a career outside of being an artist or a musician and I kind of just fell into the world of digital agencies and digital consulting. And my first agency role I was fortunate enough to basically try every single job within the agency. So I was a project manager. I did UX. I did research. I did UI. I did a bit of coding. I tried absolutely everything that I could. And a lot of that was kind of enjoyable but not fulfilling. It didn't fulfill that creative side of art and music that I've always had kind of flowing through my veins. And then one day my boss said to me out of the blue, "Danny, I think you might be good at sales." And I thought, "All it's like the last thing that I would ever want to do." Like, "Don't you know I'm an artist, darling?" [laughter] >> So I said, "No." And he said, "Well, you will get commission on top of your salary if you do sales." >> And I said, "Yes." And that's how [laughter] I got into sales essentially. Um, but when I started sales, I was so bad at it. It was all so foreign to me. And I just filled my time, again, some people will be familiar with this, uh, with busy work. >> So, not caring how good the work was, how valuable, not caring whether it had any impact on the sale itself, but just doing as much as possible. So, if anyone said, "What have you been up to?" so I could show them a wad of stuff, hundreds of pages of powerpoints and word documents. Uh, but that wasn't going so well. It was hard to keep up that pretense. And I basically I knew I was I was going to get fired. I knew so much that I was going to get fired that I printed my resignation letter and I had it next to me at all times on the desk. >> Your heart your gut was saying [laughter] to you, you're a goner. >> Yeah. You suck. you're an impostor. What are you doing here? >> Get ready cuz you're going to get booted out. And I was waiting for my boss to walk over to me with that, you know, I'm about to fire you. Look in his eye >> so that I could whip out the letter first and say, "I've decided to resign." >> Right. So, you you you got you were going to get ahead of it. You were going to look at the cool guy. >> Don't want that on my record. >> I don't want this on my record. This job's not good enough for me. >> Yeah. >> What happened? >> Well, I didn't get fired. And there's one reason I didn't get fired and it's a story and the story changed the entire trajectory of my life and my career. >> Cool. What happened? [laughter] >> The story of British Rail, which I'm sure you are probably familiar with. >> I am. Yeah. >> So, I'll tell you the story. It's a short story, but the year was 1979. British Rail were a publicly funded company. So the taxpayers were were forking out and they had loads of problems. Their trains were late. Their trains were run down. The customer service was absolutely awful. And in their wisdom they said we need a PR campaign. >> Uh now at the time Sachi and Sachi were the the gi I mean they're still giants but they were the giants in the advertising industry. They were so good they just helped Margaret Thatcher get elected as prime minister which I think says quite a lot. and British Rail wanted to hire them, but you couldn't just hire a company. Just like today, there's procurement processes in place. They had to go out to tender. They had to get multiple agencies into pitch, which to them was a formality. >> But there was one agency called Alan Brady and Marsh or ABM. And they were a pretty new agency. They've been around a couple of years. founded by this guy called Peter Marsh who had zero background in advertising. He was actually a a theater guy. His his background was amateur dramatics and he was very enigmatic and very flamboyant and he knew >> he was an artist. >> He was he certainly was a lot like me. Yeah. >> He knew that he had to do something completely disruptive if he wanted to topple the giants that are Sachi and Sachi. So the day of the pitch arrives and the British rail men arrived at the ABM offices. It was 1979. They were all men. Uh and they they rang the buzzer to be let into the building and no one answered the door. They rang the buzzer again >> and still no one answered the door. And this is the chairman of British Rail and his goons, a better word, stuck outside in the rain. >> Oh gosh. >> For three minutes getting really pissed off. So the door finally opens and they walk in and they approach the receptionist and the receptionist is on the phone and she looks up at them and she is visibly annoyed that they are trying to interrupt her phone call which was a gossipy phone call. >> Yeah. and she waves them away to the waiting area. And so they're in this waiting area a lot like this and they look around them and there's dirty coffee cups on the table and there's magazines and newspapers from two months ago and there's an ashtray with cigarette ends just stinking the place out. It's just disgusting. And again, they just have to wait. And after a while they stand up and they approach the receptionist again and they say, "Where is Peter Marsh?" And this time she's literally filing her nails while she's cradling the phone under her chin. This is all a true story and I can tell you how I know the facts in a minute if you want. And she just shrugs at them and they said, "That's it. This is ridiculous. We are leaving. You have lost our business." And they stormed towards the door. And at that moment, Peter Marsh bursts into the room and he says, "Gentlemen, you have just experienced what your customers go through [laughter] every single day. Now, shall we see what we can do to put it right?" >> That is absolute genius. >> And they win the work. And it's the British ad the biggest deal in British advertising history at the time. >> Massive public sector client. Must have been the biggest account near enough you could win >> ever. Exactly. Goodness me, that's genius. >> Now, I heard that story and I thought, hang on a minute. That's that sounds like so much fun. >> That I would have loved to been involved in that. And it was so incredibly persuasive as well. >> If they had just shown the British Rail guys PowerPoint or overhead projector with slides, they wouldn't have won the work. And it made me realize that a pitch is simply a speech or an act that attempts to persuade someone to do or buy something by any means possible. >> So when we pitch to someone, we can do anything. We've got an hour, half an hour, even three minutes with another human being in a space where we can do anything that we want to persuade them of our idea. But instead we default to these huge hundpage PowerPoint presentations with reams and reams of information and audiences all over the world are bored to tears listening to it and presenters all over the world are tired and stressed and you know nervous about getting in front of the audience. And so my whole ethos and what the book is really about is that there is a better way that we can enjoy ourselves, believe it or not, when we pitch that our audience can enjoy themselves. But the sum of those two things is that we are also infinitely more persuasive in doing it that way as well. >> Before we took this amazing journey with British Rail, we left you about to get sacked in your [laughter] office. >> Right. So let's rewind back to that. What happened and how did BR save your job? >> My entire paradigms changed and I began to work on crazy, >> right? I began to come up with big ideas that no one ever wanted to do. My colleagues, no one ever wanted to do it. Everyone said it's too risky. And this is another lesson I've learned. It's kind of cool, but come on. It's so different from what we normally do. And I was persistent. I was belligerent until someone let me try a little thing on a small account. And every time we tried to do something different, it worked. >> Yeah. So you you had no you thought you had nothing to lose. >> Unless I unless I do something out of the ordinary, unless I do something extraordinary, >> right? >> I'm going to get I'm going to get the boot. >> Exactly. >> So that's what I'm going to do. That's it. >> I'm gonna I'm gonna throw away the rule book. I'm gonna throw away the 100page documents. I'm going to kick out the spreadsheets and the PowerPoint. >> That's it. >> And I'm going to channel my inner Peter Marsh. >> That's it. Exactly. That is it. Exactly. >> So, let's hear some more out of those from your pictures then um of your experiences of using that sort of paradigm to win business. Well, I've got a number of f one one of my favorite I can't name names for any of these examples unfortunately because of NDAs, but uh they're in the book lightly disguised, [laughter] >> but there was one of my favorites was we were pitching >> You can give them a moniker. Give them a different name. >> Well, let's call them company X. >> Company X. >> So, we were pitching >> the well-known company X. >> Company X who were a major European luxury retailer. >> Yeah. Luxury PLC, >> right? Yeah, >> exactly. >> I know them well. Yeah. >> Now, they uh didn't even want to hear our pitch. We wanted to talk to them about how to improve their customer experience, how to bring innovation into the stores, how to do all of this modern, contemporary, new stuff that works so well with other clients and they just said, "No, we can't risk it. There's, you know, our our customers are high netw worth individuals. They know what they want and we know what they want. We've been this way for many years. We're not going to make any changes there. And we persuaded them to at least come and listen to us for an afternoon to to do a kind of a workshop with us. And um I spoke to the CIO and I said, "I can't tell you anything about the agenda though." >> Right? and he was really uncomfortable with this and he said that that's fine but what I don't want you to do is just try and sell us any of your products because I'm sick of it. Your sales guys are ringing me every day. Don't want to hear it. So you've got the afternoon but his expectations were like on the floor essentially. >> Yeah. >> Sound like he just wanted it over with really. >> He didn't want to do it at all. He was like he was doing someone a favor in the company and and be because that was a bit of a nothing to lose situation. I was lucky enough that the uh team I was working with at the time allowed me to do this disruptive thing. So we get in the room and everyone sits down and we've got company X boards all over the place and we even got some vasees of really big uh bouquets of flowers in the two colors of company X as well. So they walked in and it was the whole room was branded their their colors and and and logo everywhere. So I open up PowerPoint and the first slide on the the screen is how company X can succeed with our products. >> Oh, right. [laughter] Gosh, >> I didn't really need to do that, but I just thought it was hilarious because the look on the guy's face on the front row, the CIO was going, "You >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, so then I I started for about 15 seconds on an incredibly dull slide and then out of nowhere on the screen I got a FaceTime call on the same screen I was presenting on. >> Oh, okay. >> I said, "Oh my goodness, I'm so incredibly sorry about this. Let me just get this so I can tell them I'm busy." And so, uh, a lady appeared on the screen and she's like, "Danny, how you doing?" And I was like, I'm in the middle of something at the minute. Actually, I'm with the people from company X. And she said, no, I know. That's why I'm calling because I got to tell you about this dream I had last night. It was so good. I dreamt that I had a massive European retail department store. And it was just epic. It was the best customer experience. And it my dream inspired me so much that I've decided uh that I'm just going to buy one. >> Right. And so this morning I purchased a property. It just happens to be next door to company X's building. Uh same square footage, same kind of departments. Um but we don't have any customers and we don't have any technology. And so I really need some expertise to help me figure out what to do because my main thing is that I'm better than company X. And I was like, man, okay, I don't know how we're going to do this. And she said, well, I've already taken the liberty of hiring everybody in the room to work for me. don't worry, I've doubled their salaries. So, if you can just start working on some of these points, that would be great. And then she said, "Bye." And she hung up. And at that moment, a guy uh with a baseball cap with uh the the new logo on there. Well, I could tell you the new logo because it was made up Brmpton Place. It was this other one. And had Brmpton Place on the baseball cap. >> And he had a huge thing of balloons. Huge thing of balloons with Brmpton Place on them. delivery for Danny and he gave me these balloons and then meanwhile someone else had taken all the company exports and flipped them round to say Brmpton Place. We turned the flower vase around halfway and it was the colors of Brmpton Place and all of a sudden we transformed this room at least enough for their imaginations. And this is a key point. Uh you don't have to do much to get people to imagine that they are immersed in a parallel reality. And I think that people think you got to spend tons of money and have this huge production, but a few balloons and baseball caps absolutely does it. >> And they're there. They're suddenly there. >> They're there like that. >> Yeah. >> So then we spent the afternoon with these people and their prerogative all afternoon was to find ways of being better than their own company at all the things we wanted them to be better at. And my friend came on screen every now and then and gave them a new task. and we ran some design thinking exercises and they came up with hundreds, literally hundreds of ideas. And then towards the end of the afternoon, my friend came on screen again and she was all disheveled and she was at the airport. Oh. >> She's like, "I'm really sorry. Um, the sales fallen through. This obviously just wasn't for me. It's not going to happen. Um, I don't know why, but uh, she said, [laughter] "I'm off to Antigga to see Hall of Notes." >> Oh, right. It's an interesting aside. [laughter] Yeah. >> I mean, to me it meant something because during the breaks I'd been playing Hall of Notes. I don't think anyone would have ever connected those two things, but uh, it's in the details, right? >> It's the details. >> She said, "But don't worry, you've got all your your jobs back at company X and feel free to use the ideas." Yeah. >> So then the last part of the day they were in teams and they used the ideas from the day about how to be better than their own company to actually figure out how they could use them in their company >> and pitch these great ideas back. And then at the end of the day, my my friend who had been on the call actually walked into the room in person because it was all pre-recorded and there was a bottle of champagne for the winner. And they went forward not just with one idea with us but with many ideas. We filled a backlog of ideas that they refused to even entertain listening to a few weeks before >> and just capturing the imagination of a client >> driving into their emotions. >> Absolutely. >> And also capturing their imagination >> and it's memorable. I'm sure those people will remember that day for years to come. >> We've had some fantastic guests on the show recently. one of whom was Steven Woodford who is chief executive of the advertising association and he says that we assume when we make decisions as human beings we think we feel and then we act. Um but actually that's not the way that we make decisions. What he says we actually do is we feel then act and laterally we think. So we're actually postrationalizing our decisions. >> We're we're justifying >> we're intellectualizing our emotions really an emotional reaction. And some of these great anecdotes you've given to me today really speak to that, don't they? And that presumably is the sort of c the core of your book that the art of the pitch is about grabbing the hearts of people rather than necessarily their minds. Well, it is and it isn't. It's an interesting topic and I get this question a lot which is you know how can you just be emotional? People want to see governance slides and commercials. There's no doubt about it. But really um the interesting thing for me is the order of it. But let's talk about emotion first. So there's a phenomenon in psychology called the backfire effect. And this basically says that if someone has an opposing view to our own. So if you don't agree with me on something and I try to convince you with logical arguments, evidence, facts, figures, no matter how good my argument and evidence is, you will actually sit back even further in your own belief and you will push back against it and leave the room uh even more convinced that I am wrong and you are right. And when we're in a pitch, this can often be the situation. If there's a uh an audience that wants to choose a competitor, for example, or an audience that wants to do things in a different way to the way we're proposing, even though we know it's the best way because we've done it before, >> we end up getting into an argument where we leave the pitch with them thinking even less of us than when we entered it in the first place. >> And the way that we shortcut that backfire effect is emotion. That's why it's so powerful because if I make an emotional connection with another human being, then it opens all sorts of things up. You like me for starters. You immediately like me. When you like someone and you have a bond with them, you warm to them. You want to hear more about what they say. And certainly when we're pitching in business, it means that you'll want to work with me as well. Now, some of this ideally we're doing before the pitch. So, we're not just trying to create a brand new relationship within that moment. Ideally, we're creating relationships, but in a pitch, if we can create that emotional connection, it's memorable. It makes people like us. And then they think, right, well, my heart is essentially now saying, I want to work with you. Could you please give me some evidence so that my head can back it up? >> So, this is how we pitch. should always start with that emotional connection, but then we need to back it up with the arguments of logical facts and figures so that there's no cognitive dissonance in our audience. So, it's not just emotion, it's both, but it's emotion first, information second. >> You you strike me more as someone who does the emotional grabbing, but you actually you're you're willing to get down and dirty with the with the evidence and the hard stuff as well, or do you leave that to somebody else? No, I I don't leave anything to anyone else. >> Right. >> I work with lots of >> You're the one-stop shop. >> Well, not exactly. What I mean is I I work with lots of teams, lots of different teams all the time, or very talented people. Um, and we've all got our specialtities and our roles, but my job is not to come in and create a spectacular firework and walk off. It's uh you know really I believe everyone on a pitch team should understand the entirety of what we're trying to do and the rationale why and we should all know the facts and figures and we should all understand and ideally be involved in the emotional part as well so that we come across as a single cohesive team with chemistry not sales guy first developer second we get it it's it's all of us and anyone can tell an emotional story. Anyone can create an emotional connection. >> So, to intertwining emotion and intelligence is [snorts] the key to success. >> Correct. >> Um, you know, that's essentially could be sort of tied up in this notion of storytelling. It's a lot we talk about storytelling a lot on this show. It's very interesting to marketers. It's seen as a sort of golden thread, a way that if you can tell a story, if you can link the hearts and the minds, then you're in a you're in a winning position. Um you talk about in the book about creating heroes. You know who is the hero of the piece. When you go into um uh uh uh the BR example, I was thinking well the real hero of the piece was a heroine who's a receptionist. I mean she's she is a stoogge there that she is creating this perfect example you know okay anyone can leave a sort of uh pile of faguts around and finished coffee cups but she she's this brilliant stowge who's creating a sort of you know this sort of resistance about what the way that people felt when they were dealing with that organization customers felt um when you went into the other the luxury PLC anecdote I thought well the hero of the piece there was almost the first of all it was the lady who joined on the call, but then he became the people themselves. The custom customers themselves became uh the hero of the piece because they themselves were generating ideas. And in a sense, you'd gone into a pitch and you'd let them pitch to themselves in a genius way of doing so. What you've done is you'd spar their imagination. When we're trying to create that story, how do we decide in our pictures who the hero should be? Should it be ourselves? Should it be a customer? Or should it be a third party like the receptionist? >> So, it's pretty straightforward. So I would argue that in the British Rail story, the hero >> of the story of the British Rail story, you might say it's the receptionist or a number of people who played a part. But if you're British rail or the heroes, not the receptionist, the hero is the British public. ah >> they're understanding what the British public face and why it's not just an advertising campaign >> but why real people's lives have been affected all over the world they've been put through it themselves and that's the answer the the hero is the audience and the audience's customers depending on who you're pitching to. So if you're pitching directly to a customer then the hero is the customer. If you're pitching directly to a business then usually they are the hero because they are also the ones who can help their own customers if you like. Now the mistake that we make all of the time is by making ourselves the brand or the company the hero and we walk in and we say we're the best company in the world. Let me tell you about how many awards we've won and all of these other things. And it's such a boring story because the audience wants to hear about themselves. >> So there's lots of storytelling frameworks of course and you know we're sort of alluding to the the hero's journey by Joseph Campbell here. And a lot of people be familiar with the hero's journey. A hero has a desire, meets uh friends, meets an enemy, meets a mentor, and goes through trials and nearly fails and has an apotheiois and then conquers it and returns home transformed. Now, when we're telling stories, we are not Luke Skywalker. >> We are Obi-Wan Kenobi. That's the best way I can put it. So when I'm talking about um a story to a business, I will talk about them and how we can help them to achieve what they desire, how we can help them overcome their obstacles so that they can be transformed and this is then an incredibly uh interesting story. So it's interesting, isn't it? Because what you're doing is you're and in in the luxury P the luxury PLC example was a perfect example of that. What you're actually doing is you're trying to bring the best out of your customer. No PR agency, no marketer can actually do the job for the company. What they're trying to do, they're trying to they're trying to pitch to say how can we help you do the job for yourself. Presuming that's a mistake that lots of pitchers make is that you come in as marketers and you think gosh we have got to solve this company's problem. >> Right. >> But you're not solving their problem. They're solving the problem. >> They're solving their problem. Exactly. Now I am a total storytelling nerd. I've read all the frameworks. Well maybe not all of them but as many of that I'm aware of. Um you know big fan of Kurt Vonagget and his shape of stories and all sorts. And I in the book I've come up with my own framework which I call the story coaster. And it aims to specifically give you a six-step model to create your own story in business for any pitch that looks at the emotion first and then the information last. And it purposely contrasts constantly between positive possibilities and negative pitfalls because it's that contrast between good and bad that keeps our audience engaged and that makes a compelling story. >> Shall I walk you through it really quickly? >> Yeah. >> So, we start off in the pitfalls. We talk about our audience and their problems, the world that they're in and the challenges that they face so that we can convince them that now is the time that something has to be done. They must act now. And then we contrast that with a glorious vision of the future, a utopia where all of those problems are totally fixed and they're making money and they're delighting their customers and they've got the latest technology, speed to market, all the rest of it. And then we dip again and we say, but getting from where you are to that utopia isn't going to be easy. You're going to face all of these challenges along the way. We know this because we've helped a lot of people before. But then we contrast again and say, "But here's our proposition. This is how for you we can take you from where you are to where you want to be and overcome those challenges along the way." And then we say, "But we can't just do this to you. You're involved in it with us. There are dependencies on your success that you own. So these are the things that you must do if we're going to be successful together." And then the final box is the information part and it's the bit that people often start with. It's the secret source that we have. It's we've told you the story. We've told you the journey. Now let us show you why we are the only company in the world who you can trust to do this. And this is where we stack the evidence, the awards, the case studies and all of the rest of it. And at that point, they should be already drooling at the prospect of working with us. And that seals the deal. >> It's it's an amazing analogy. You use the Luke and Obi-Wan analogy. And Luke is the guy who actually did the shooting. He went to the Death Star. He shot the >> He's the hero. >> He's the hero. He that's the client. Luke's the client >> 100%. Uh Obi-Wan is the marketing agency, the guide creating the map, >> co doing the coaching, showing the way >> to allow the hero to succeed. >> Because without Obi-Wan, there is no Luke Skywalker. >> Well, there is, but he doesn't succeed. He doesn't do >> right. He's not a Jedi. >> He's not a Jedi. No, >> he doesn't discover the Force. No. >> Yeah. >> No. >> So, that's really that's a really interesting analogy. People will be listening to this and watching this and thinking there's some great anecdotes. There's some great guides here. This guy's had a lot of success. Is there such a thing as a perfect pitch? And if so, how do marketers get to it? >> I mean, the short answer is no. >> And this is where I disagree with a number of books and and things out there. And the reason being that I could pitch to you right now and you could say to me, "That was the perfect pitch. I've never seen anything so entirely convincing in my life. Here is a blank check. I could do exactly the same thing to somebody else tomorrow and I can say, "No thanks. Don't like that." Because we're all humans. We're all individual and things change over the course of days and weeks and months and years. Things change depending on the audience, the weather. It's like this, you know, there's infinite possibilities in the world and sometimes we can deliver a pitch and it is perfect, but there's no repeatable method. So, you know, there's things that we must do to get the best pitch possible, but you can't create it once and do it a thousand times and expect the same results. But the number one thing with that in mind is research is huge. And this is something that a lot of people don't do enough of because they've had success with a particular PowerPoint and a particular story. And so when they're pitching it to the next company or the next person, they just do a save as and change the names >> and sometimes they'll use the same deck for years. >> Not only does it get very stale, but it does not have the same effect on a different audience. So I always say treat every pitch as a brand new pitch, as a brand new opportunity. It makes it more exciting as well. >> And start with research. Research the audience, the companies, their customers. You know, if I'm pitching to a taxi firm, then you better believe I'm taking their taxis to see what the experience is like before I offer my opinion on where they are against their competition. >> Market agencies do that. All agencies do do that because it's a it's a shortcut. You know, they've got, as you say, they had a successful pitch >> and they repurpose. >> And a lot of people are saying will be thinking, "Oh god, I do that." You know, should I do that? Should they just do should they only do one-offs? So, should they should they if they have a successful pitch, should they maybe take some headline learnings and then chuck away the document? >> Not necessarily. >> Or Okay. So what? >> So here's the thing. I think that um another mindset shift is where do we start with a pitch? And a lot of people start in PowerPoint. >> And when you've already got a PowerPoint and you think, well, I know there's some good in that, so screw you, Danny. I'm not going to throw that away and start with a blank sheet of paper. Cool. I get that. How about don't think about PowerPoint or Keynote or the medium whatsoever yet, >> right? >> Start with the research. Build your story. Figure out how you're going to differentiate yourself. Figure out, you know, what the big themes are that your audience is going to like. Build essentially what you're going to say and do in the pitch first. And then think what visuals if any but admittedly normally we do need visuals but what visuals are now going to elevate that story and that script that I've created that slide from that old pitch deck. That's great actually. So we'll keep that one. But the story is a bit different. So we need to make a new one here and there. So it's not starting with a blank sheet of paper and throwing anything away. But it's creating the story for the specific audience, the specific brand and then deciding whether there are things you can reuse for that and what needs to be new. So the so the the check on your mind is don't reach straight away for that last pitch that you did to client A because it was successful. Just just get off. Leave it. Leave it. Leave it. >> Research client B, the new the new prospect. Think about what it is they're wanting. create an idea in your mind of how you're going to pitch your your agency to them and then go looking back through the archives to see if there's any bits of that material you can potentially reuse. I would go even further than that. There's a step in between after you've decided how you're going to do it. Literally write the script, >> right, >> for your entire pitch. Imagine that you're in a scenario where all the electricity goes off and there's a fire alarm and you're outside on the fire escape with your client and they go, "You're still going to have to do the pitch because we've only got half an hour." >> Yeah. >> And so you do it without any supporting materials. How good can you make that? Because when you then add visuals, you're just elevating and accentuating something that couldn't be more powerful without them. And that's the key for me. One other thing, if you're using the same pitch that you've used before, even if it's brilliant, you're never coming up with new ideas for pictures. If you have a new brief and you leave the PowerPoint and you actually go for a jog or a swim or do a jigsaw puzzle and do something else all together, you'll find that your mind will wander and your subconscious at bloody 2:00 a.m. in the morning usually for me. Yeah. >> Will say you should do this in the pitch and you a genius. And you >> make a note of it, >> right? And you make a note and then you're like right well I'm awake now but it's worth it. >> Yeah. that's probably more exciting for you and it's probably more compelling for a client than the save as of the deck before, even if that one was good. So, do yourself a favor and don't get bored of your job by >> always doing the same ideas as well. >> When we're pitching, we're often up against other agencies who are also very good. >> That's right. Let's be honest, many competitors will watch this show. We're going to have three or four or five or six or seven agencies in at some point in the future who have seen this show and we'll think, "Oh god, I'm going to use those tips." >> And they'll end up beating me. >> They might even end up beating you. You might have given >> long as they tell me afterwards what they [laughter] did. I collect stories to be honest. >> That's it. That's it. I mean, at least you get something out of it if you beat they beat your own your your own agency. At least you you felt that you've shared you've shared the wealth in some way. But they'll take the tips and if they listen to the tips and they act upon them, they may end up in a in a similar place at least in terms of technique. One thing we're always looking for in marketing is this golden word of differentiation. >> Um, you know, we don't just have to be as good as our competitors. We don't sometimes just have to be better than our competitors. We have to be different to them so we stand out. you know, if we're the one that stands out and there's many good agencies, we've got a bigger chance of winning. How do we get there? So, this is huge and it's not an easy answer to tell people watching how they can be different. They're going to have to figure it out themselves. But there are a couple of things that we can do when we think about differentiation. And just for the record, you can win by not being different if you're the cheapest. >> True. >> Not always, but it's often are you the cheapest or are you different? And if you're not the cheapest, you've got to be very different in terms of the value that you're adding for the extra money. Especially in today's climate, a lot of people are going for the cheapest option. >> Now, the bar is very, very low. I love your optimism that people are going to watch this and start doing crazy ideas. Um, and I don't mean to sound negative, but in my experience, I still see very little of it. Even to people I teach in a classroom for a day, they go, "That's brilliant." And then they kind of carry on sometimes. >> Why? Why is that? Is it do they go back to their office? >> It's easier or or there is internal pressure to do >> not to do that to do what they've always done. >> Both. >> It's easier. It's more work to do it my way. And it takes uh it's more risky. It takes more courage and things like that. It also >> takes um advocacy from others to allow you to do it. >> Yeah. >> It's accountability. If you do something wild and it doesn't work because of course my methods don't guarantee 100% win rate, >> right? >> Then people go, "Okay, Danny, we tried the crazy thing. It didn't work. Thanks very much. Let's go back to how we've always done it." There's a ton of reasons not to do it, but there's so many more to try it. But anyway, my point with that is actually that the bar is so low and actually yes, we're up against brilliant competition, but they're often doing things in the same way that we are. It's PowerPoint versus PowerPoint versus PowerPoint, which often uh reduces to well then price or existing relationship with the client. Now, if we're going to beat price and if we're going to beat someone else's existing relationship with the client, we've got to be different in at least two ways. One is genuine unique value that we are offering that our competitors are not offering. So, when you write down a list of all the things that you know are different about your company, you got to be your own biggest critic. Because when I write things like we're trusted or we're really great at this technology or we're experienced, these are all things that our competitors will say. So >> say and they'd probably be true >> and they're the truth. Yeah, >> we're not lying, but there's table stakes that people confuse with differentiation. >> So what is genuinely different? If you put yourself in the client's shoes and you know who you are up against and it was your money, would you really choose yourself to do the work? If you don't know the answer, then you got to think more about the differentiation. And differentiation doesn't always have to be we are the best at the technology. We can prove it because we've got one more award than someone else. It can be, you know what, every Thursday we bring our dogs to work and it can be a cultural alignment with another company. And this is why the research is so important because your differentiators aren't always the same either. They depend on the audience. Sometimes it's culture, technology, people. People is something that can never be directly the same in any of these things. But we often don't um elevate the people in the pitch as much as the technology and the information in the pitch. So that's really important. So how do you find your unique differentiation? Make a list. Can you put your competitor's name there? Cross out everything that you say yes to. Look harder. Look deeper. And then the other way we can differentiate is what we've been talking about for most of this episode, which is how do you show up and make your audience feel something? Because if you've got three companies saying essentially the same three things, but one company did something, that means when you get home this evening and you're sitting around the dinner table with your family, you say, "I got to tell you what happened at work today. who was mad. That is the litmus test because that means that you are remembering and holding on to that emotion that you felt from that pitch today. >> The others were good but they weren't as memorable, >> right? >> And that's your differentation. Um, you great at convincing. You use the word convince and we've talked about persuasion >> a lot today. When do we cross that line from being convincing, being persuasive to being manipulative and how do we avoid it? >> Yeah, it's uh it's another question that I get. I mean, for me, it's it's not a long answer either, unlike most of my verbose answers to you today. I think >> I think um >> you can use these techniques to manipulate people, >> right? However, what is manipulation? Manipulation is persuading someone of something to their detriment and our advantage. Now, if I truly believe that my company is the right company for the client and I use these techniques to persuade them and make them understand that we are the right people, then there's no manipulation because all I'm trying to do is genuinely give them the answer. I'm the Obi-Wan again. I just want them to succeed and I think we can do it together. So, that's not manipulation. If I'm trying to do something to the detriment um by convincing them when really I don't really know what I'm doing, but they're buying, so we'll figure it out later. This is this is interesting, isn't it? Because what if they're going shopping, that doesn't mean that you should sell to them. If you don't in your heart think that your agency is the best agency for this client, you're basically saying to me, don't pitch for it. >> Bingo. There's a huge well, not huge, there's a whole chapter in my book dedicated to qualification. The other problem with this is that if we're spending our time trying to win work that we don't even think we're very good at, we're not spending our time on the work that we do think we're good at. We're spending half the time. So, we're not dedicating ourselves to the work that we really should be winning. Quick anecdote. I I had the pleasure of speaking to Simon Synynic. I interviewed him. >> Yeah. >> And he told me a story about when he first started out in marketing and he was pitching to a company and they were like, "We think you're great. Can you do this as well?" And he said, "No." He say, "Oh, can you do this and this?" And he was going, "No." "Oh, no. I'm terrible at that. Oh, I'm awful at that one." But I've got I know another agency, a competitor who are really good at it. By being that genuine, the amount of trust you earn from that client means that they don't only buy that piece of work, they see you as a trusted adviser and they will keep coming back to you. And that's that strength of that relationship is when we get a new client, we want them forever. >> Not one year, make as much money as possible and hopefully not see you in court, but goodbye. I always liken it to the the great waiter or waitress in a restaurant that you love that he or she won't always recommend the most expensive bottle of wine. In fact, they'll sometimes say, you know, that's not worth the money. >> Absolutely. >> Don't have the, you know, don't have today's special. You know, it I've tried it. It's not that great. Have this instead. And it might be a cheaper option. The reality is you then trust that individual. You trust the place and you're more likely to return. So in the long run, even in the medium run, that restaurant's making much more money out of you than if you're getting bad advice. >> Exactly that. >> Right. So we've got all that. We we we know about how not to don't you're not manipulating if you think you're the best. We know emotion comes first and then bring their evidence afterwards. We know about telling a story. One people will be ask desperate for me to ask you about this which is a thing that you know strikes fear into the heart of anybody who's doing a pitch which is the curve ball. >> Oh yeah. >> You know the curve ball. You're standing there, we've all had them. I've had them. You're standing there. It's going so well. You're 20 minutes in. You're 25 minutes in. You're thinking, "Oh, we might get this account here." And then suddenly in it comes the dreaded curve ball. And typically it's from the chief executive or the chairwoman or someone pretty senior. and you just don't know the answer to it. [laughter] You can't go read it back to your computer. You can't check a spreadsheet. You can't pick up any notes. You're there. You're effectively on stage. How do you handle it? So, that's quite a specific scenario. I think that if I can talk about a slightly wider scenario, there's often times when we are we've prepared a pitch, we've rehearsed, we've timed ourselves, we've practiced with each other, we're ready to go. 20 minutes in, someone says, "We've already heard this bit. We don't want to talk about this. Can we talk about something else entirely? We really want to know XY Z." You know, so it's a curveball, but hopefully one where we at least know the answer. I'll just park that there for a second. >> If we don't know the answer at all, then it's about keeping your cool and your calm and either asking them clarification questions because why don't you know the answer? Is it that you don't understand the question which if it's from a you know a red personality type and they go >> sometimes you go I don't really know what that means I'm on the spot. So >> asking a clarifying question not only helps to clarify it obviously but it also gives you that moment to just breathe and when the air comes back into your lungs your brain starts firing up again and you might find that you do have the answer. If you really don't know the answer, then you're gonna just have to say, "Look, I'm gonna have to come back to you on that one." I think it's a brilliant question, but can I email you an hour after this meeting? Just keep your cool and your calm. But if I go back to this bit, >> yeah, >> the curveball, the mistake people make is that they hear this question about something else altogether and they think, "Nope, I'm going to stick to the script. >> I got to stick to the script, mate." [laughter] cuz uh I don't like how that makes me feel. And they kind of go, "We'll come back to that." And they plow on. >> Yeah. >> And they spend half of a pitch going telling someone something that they don't want to hear. >> Yeah. It's >> ridiculous. You're not going to win that way. So, how do you get around that? Well, it actually comes down to um being quite Buddhist about it. All right. So, rehearse, practice, get to time, all the things I said before, and then trust when you walk into the room, let it go. When I walked into this interview, you know, I'd seen a couple of the questions beforehand and I was thinking, right, this answer, this answer, and there's too many things to hold in my head really. Anyway, so you just come in and you breathe and you trust that you know your stuff and you stay in the moment. That's the most important thing. You've got to be in the moment. You're in the room with another person and when they ask you something, you got to think, what did they actually say? I'm going to listen to what you've actually said and consider it. And then if I need to pivot, I'll go with the pivot that you've requested. Calm, deliver what they want. Which brings up one other quick side note. If you've got half an hour to pitch, do not create half an hour of content. >> No. >> Great tip. >> Pitching is about listening as much as presenting. >> I can say a few things and then ask my audience, does that make sense? Is this what you wanted to hear? Is this what you expected to hear? Or you can say, I've made an assumption. Tell me if I'm wrong or not. The more a pitch can be a conversation, a collaboration, the more you know you're going to give the right answer because you're getting feedback loops, but the more you're going to create that emotional connection and chemistry with your audience as well. >> It's fantastic. That is a great tip, by the way. That really resonates for me is there is a tendency in agencies to think we're going to be there for an hour or going to be there for 45 minutes. >> Make sure we've got a show that lasts 45 minutes. Yeah. And as you say, you never get to the run through the show because it's an interaction or it should be, >> right? >> I mean, some of the best pitches I've ever done. >> And again, it takes a bit of courage. If you got an hour to pitch, >> do 15 minutes of content. >> Wow. As little as that. >> As little as that. And don't go deep on any of it. >> Yeah. >> But give your killer headline, your killer unique point of differentiation for each one. and then say, "Right, we've got 45 minutes for you to ask us anything about any of those topics because we could spend an hour on each one and we want to make sure that we're answering what you want to hear." >> Absolutely. How do you cope with failure? You know, you can do all of this stuff, can't you? Let's be honest. You can do all of this stuff and, you know, you can still not win the account. >> Well, yeah, of course. >> In fact, most of the time you won't win the account, >> right? I mean, a good win rate is one in three pitches. Yeah. It's a very strong win rate. Yeah, >> you got that. You should be feeling great. That means that you're failing 66% of the time. >> And you've got to embrace failure. That's it. I mean, I think, you know, this is not a any new fangled idea. This is something that, you know, Thomas Edison, uh, Ford, you know, people much further back have talked about. The only way we can learn is to fail and get feedback. And again, this comes back to using the same pitch every single time. We're never learning new things. We're learning that some people like that pitch and some people don't. But if we change it every time to try new things and get new feedback knowing that failure is good because it's the only way that we can learn then it you know it helps teams to come out of a blame culture come out of a blaming a single person or making one person accountable. If you all agree as a team that we're going to try something new if it works we can use it again and we can build on it. If it doesn't, then we won't. But you can't know until you're in the live pitch scenario if someone something's going to flop or be a huge success. >> You can't um we want to maximize our chances of success. You've got your own podcast. You speak to some really senior brains uh in the industry, Rory Southern, and you've mentioned Simon Synynic. And of course is your of course is yourself your own experiences. Um we've run out of time today on today's show. But before we go boiling down all of the testimonies you've heard from the southerntherlands and the sinax and the fontains of your in your own head and your own experiences. What is your best piece of advice you would give to anybody who's got a big pitch coming up? What would you tell them? I would tell them to imagine that the pitch is like creating a surprise birthday party for your best friend. Because if we create and plan a surprise birthday party for our best friend, what are we thinking about? We're not thinking about how good we're going to look at this party. We're thinking about what's going to make them laugh and smile and be surprised and be emotional and in a good way. >> In a good way. And we get excited thinking, "Oh, if we did if we I know that they really like this band, so when they walk in the room, we'll have that song on. Oh, I know what their favorite food is, so we're going to do a special cake that's just made out of anchovies and put that in the room. And I know what their favorite colors are. or when I know they like magicians and elephants and we plan this thing and we think right well the first thing when they walk in the room everyone's going to be standing here so when they walk in we'll shout surprise we better practice that let's practice doing that and we cannot wait for this surprise party because we cannot wait to see the look on their face when they walk in a room and we jump out and they see all of the things we've planned for them and the look on their face and the emotion that we're going to have as a one unit in that moment. Now imagine that was a pitch trying to make your audience feel like that. How fun is it to create that experience? How fun is it for your audience to experience it? It's all about joy and like I said at the beginning, we will also be infinitely more persuasive if we take that mindset. >> That's really interesting because you're you're you're anticipating pitch day. You you can't wait for it. That's almost the sort of emotional test to oneself is that am I looking forward to this thing and if the answer is no then you probably need to do something else. You know you probably you've got more work to do. If the answer is yes, I'm really looking forward to coming and and talking to these people. >> Then you've probably got that surprise birthday mentality in your head. >> So I mentioned earlier when I told you the British Rail story that I knew it was true and other people have said to me, "No, that's not British Rail, that's British Airways." Yeah. Oh, hang on a minute. I'm I'm going to write about this in a book, so I got to be right about this. And I researched and researched and I managed to find a guy who's now uh in his 70s who was the 20-year-old account exec. I don't know whether my maths is right. It's about right in the in 1979. And his job was he came in after the British rail people and sat next to them and exchanged looks with them like, "Yes, this is disgusting. What the hell is this?" And then when he saw they were about to leave, he got up first and told Peter Marsh they're about to leave. And I did a very long podcast episode with him because I was fascinated. We had to cut it down a lot. But he walked me through that day and they were so excited >> about doing that pitch because they'd rehearsed it and practiced it. They knew how much they were going to piss these people off. Yeah. >> But they anticipated how good it would be at the end. >> That's the fun of the pitch. >> And a lot of this stuff is, let's face it, when you're trying to sort of convince your agency about it is, you know, we some of this stuff is seems pretty high risk. I mean that's kind of the sort of your resendetry. You've got to take risk with this stuff. You know, get rid of the traditional formula. Get rid of the the old documents and and start a fresh and think differently. You know, someone's going to have the job of leading the pitch team. You know, they've got to carry this risk. They've got to they've got to prepare the team for taking a risk. They've got to prepare the team for failure, being able to defend it back at the agency and all that sort of stuff. What are the essential skills of that person? the person whose job it is to lead that pitch, the leadership skills to get this sort of formula in and working in your agency. >> I mean, there's a few things, and it's not all necessarily related directly to the formula, but certainly you've got to be uh willing to put your neck on the line. You got to say, right, because it might not have been your idea in the first place. It could have been a junior account executive g, I've got this wild idea. And you go, okay, I'm going to defend you to the people below and I'm going to to the people above, sorry. And I'm going to inspire the people below to all come together as one team. And you got to own it as much as anyone. And you've got to make sure that you are all in it together as a team as well. You've got to make sure that you are, you know, I'm a big believer in servant leadership essentially. I don't want to be a dictator. I want to constantly make sure that I can enable my team to do the best work of their careers and figure out how to allow them to do that. I've got to build chemistry in the team. I've got to make sure that I'm not Sometimes people have got to work till 2 a.m. for three nights in a row. I wish they didn't, but this is deadlines, right? So, how do you make sure that at the very least we're breaking that up with some kind of social thing that everyone enjoys? And you know, the mistake that some teams make is that the leader likes going to the pub. So, they go, "Team, don't worry. It's Friday. Well, I'm taking you all for a drink at lunchtime." You got to be aware, just like you have to be aware of your audience, of not what you like, but what the team likes. They might none of them might like going to the pub, but they might really like playing N64 Golden Night at lunchtime. So figure out those little rewards that are uh representative to them as well. But you've also got to be decisive as well. You know, I think servant leadership doesn't mean you're a total democratic team. It doesn't mean you have to always take a vote on things. As a leader, I think you've got to say it's my vision with all of your input, but I'm going to make tough decisions when I need to. Two people have conflicting ideas. I will choose one. Done. And now we move on. So there is a balancing act of listening and giving everything to everyone as much as you can but also having that authority and decisiveness to make things happen to determine a course of action. >> Absolutely. Embrace the fun. Danny Fontaine, thanks very much indeed. >> Thank you. >> So that's a wrap on another fantastic season of the CIM Marketing Podcast. It's been an incredible journey and we've welcomed many brilliant guests on the show. We'll be back in a couple of months with six brand new episodes welcoming some of the biggest names in the industry. If you can't wait until then, CIM has lots of fantastic content available to access over the break. Go to cim.co.uk/newsletters to sign up for our three regular updates. CIM Insights, CIM Newsroom, and CIM Connect. Keep an eye out for our member exclusive webinars which where we take a deep dive into the skills you need to stay ahead of the competition. CIN members can access our full back catalog of member exclusive webinar recordings as well as our exclusive membership magazine Catalyst. Finally, we'd love to hear your suggestions for the show. Fill out the survey. We do read your answers and we do act upon them. So, this is your chance to shape the future of the podcast. Thanks for listening. We're delighted to have you with us and we'll see you next time. [music]