Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Love In An Elevator

Pitching is so hard...part audition, part performance art, part product description, and part sales job. You have to take that gem of an idea you're trying to sell, work out all the details...then take those details and distill them down to a coherent, concise, entertaining, interesting, and intriguing presentation.

Oh, and it should be fast --- think the length of an elevator ride. Some people call this the 'quick and dirty version', but most know this as 'the elevator pitch' (as in that's all the time you usually have to convey it to a network or studio or company exec) - a quick dynamic engaging verbal description of your show.

Easy to talk about, really really hard to do well. But practice definitely makes it easier, and your story or idea will always become better as you try it out on more and more people. And I'm a big believer in 'learning by doing'. Yes you can be taught the key elements to highlight, like your hook and your angle and why you want to tell this story, but only when the words come spilling out of your mouth and you have people reacting to it will you really know if it's actually connecting or not.

I wish I could find a decent 'how to pitch' video link, but I've come up empty. However, there's this link to how not to pitch:



Sometimes hearing what not to do can be as effective as being told what to do.

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