You were born to pitch

baby pitching

Pitching is one of those things that some of us love and and some of us hate. But, we all know it is a necessary part of startups and economic life in general. Here’s something many people don’t know – everyone is good at pitching, everyone is doing it everyday, and in fact, it was the very first thing we did the moment we were born. Yep, the first thing you did as a human being was pitch. Here’s how it went:

You were born into the world scared and alone as you exited the womb. You desperately wanted to stay alive, and immediately went into pitch mode. You cried for your mother to hold you, cuddle and warm you, to provide your first taste of breast milk. You put on your most adorable sad face, and used the only assets you had at your disposal – facial expressions and noise. You didn’t even have any words, but you made an immediate connection through passion and fear and hope – you connected. And it worked – you are here.

It goes further than that. You probably pitched a few times already today – proposing what to have for dinner, which movie to watch with your partner, or what to do on the weekend. You may have pitched to a work colleague on which place to get a coffee in the morning or what time to go and why. Proposing ideas, suggesting activities, it’s all a manner of pitching. And once we start to pay attention to the fact we are constantly pitching, then we can start to understand our own technique and bring it into the more formal circumstances. The best type of pitching we can do, is to bring our casual daily approach – the same approach that helped us survive in life up until now – into our business life. We need to take our natural style into those formal pitch moments. When we do this we become more endearing, believable and affable. The trick is that we need to be our natural selves. We need to embrace our natural style and personality – that same one that helped you make friends.

If you want to learn to pitch, then the best thing you can do is pay attention to the pitches you’re already doing. Take note of yourself and then take your existing informal method  to places where it matters formally. You’re already a gun pitcher, you just need bring your subconscious behaviour to a conscious level.

One thought on “You were born to pitch

Comments are closed.