The answer is easy.

Create a great pitch.

Why?

Well all successful businesses have to build a network early in their lives:
• supporters who encourage them, advise them, advocate them to others, and maybe
lend them money or make investments in them (Often this is just family and friends in the
very early days)
• loyal customers who like them and recommend them (Facebook fans for example)
• suppliers who understand them and do their best work on their behalf
• partners who can help them distribute their products and expand

You never stop building this network , however big the business grows. As the business gets bigger you have new things to add to your network though:
• quality employees who get what the business is about
• supporters in the conventional and digital media
• professional investors and banks

My approach to doing this in all businesses I have been involved in has been to pitch the business to everybody I know and everybody I meet. All the time, continuously, at every opportunity. You never know where such a pitch can lead eg:
• “that’s great I’d love to get together to find out more”
• “when can I sign up”
• “I’m going to introduce you to someone you should make that pitch to”

Of course you don’t always get such a helpful response, but if you have a great product , and you pitch it well often enough, you will get enough good responses to build the network you need. Sometimes all you get is great feedback and often that’s the most valuable thing of all.

The problem with all this is that the world is full of pitches. Just this week I’ve listened to 10 (I’ve made a few as well!). Of the 10 , 3 were in meetings where I was expecting to be pitched to, 3 were unsolicited phone calls from people I knew and 4 came through the email from people I didn’t know. We all suffer from pitch fatigue and yours has to stand out to be heard.

You have to demonstrate your product meets a real customer need, and it does that better than the competition.
You have to deliver the pitch with clarity and conviction. It has to be quick to avoid boring the listener (I aim at 90 seconds) and your enthusiasm has to shine through.

This is not easy , but it can be done. I’ve been developing pitches like that for myself for 25 years and I’ve helped a lot of people develop their own pitches in recent times. It’s very rewarding to do that.

Developing a great pitch is a creative act. In developing the pitch you discover what makes your product great, what’s different about it (so it beats the competition) , why you are enthusiastic about it and why you have what it takes to deliver it. Developing a great pitch changes everything – it’s truly a transformational process.

This is a picture of the Garlik team , taken on 23rd December 2011 , after an all night negotiating session finally clinched a deal to sell the company to global data giant Experian. It was a deal that worked for everyone and it reminded me  that of all the glittering prizes that come with business success there is none more satisfying than an unpredictable result achieved by  a team which worked brilliantly together.

In fact I would suggest anybody looking for glittering prizes from business needs to be able to put such a team together – almost all worthwhile results come from teamwork.

Individual business owners should not despair at this point, you can create a virtual team of  suppliers, distribution partners, JV partners, investors, informal supporters, mentors and even key customers as well as anyone you might employ or partner with. You will find a virtual team coalesces around you almost effortlessly if you can excite people by what you are up to and if they see you can be relied on to do what you say and to get results even when the going gets tough.

Exciting people by what you are up to is what my Perfect Pitch workshop is all about.

Becoming relied on to do what you say and get results even when the going gets tough is the subject of another workshop – The High Performance Coaching Master Class.

It’s everything I’ve learned about leadership and getting results packaged up into a four hour workshop which is designed to give you an immediate and lasting  boost to your capability to get results with resilience and speed.

I run this workshop every three months or so and I have a few tickets left for  24^th February from 1pm to 5pm at The Hubworking Centre ,5 Wormwood Street, London EC2M1RQ -near to Liverpool St Station. I used to run these events in the corporate world at £500pp . The small business rate is £200 plus VAT.

Participants leave the Master Class with:

- a few simple insights , which will make a huge difference to their performance going forward

-a workbook with a number of processes designed to deal with the stickiest and most difficult of issues

-a 3 month plan to get breakthrough results

You can get tickets here.

I really enjoyed presenting the last one on November 22^nd.  I had 40 participants and in four hours of presentation, interaction and practical demonstration  I gave them everything I know about how to get great business results with speed and resilience. As I told them: “ it has taken me 35 years to make things this simple without losing any power”.

Participants leave the Master Class with:

- a few simple insights , which will make a huge difference to their performance going forward

-a workbook with a number of processes designed to deal with the stickiest and most difficult of issues

-a 3 month plan to get breakthrough results

Tickets are available below for 24th February .There is a big discount if you book before the end of 2011.

see some reactions from participants

And here’s what other participants had to say:

“Very powerful stuff!
Your last slide gave me goose bumps and made me really excited about somehow being involved in what you are about to do.”

“Woke up this morning feeling like a loaded gun! The best thing that I got from last was the idea of focus and attention in business being very similar to that required in sports”

“Thank you for one of the most important evenings I have ever spent – SO much material – and oh, SO simple,  BUT ….. delivered and shared from that place of deep and extensive professional experience…..I was just hungry for more!”

“Incredible session. The biggest thing I got from the day was MASSIVE clarity! Really looking forward to taking action”

“Mega session thank you Mike, you’re advice is always amazingly insightful. I’m inspired. Thank you.”

“Really enjoyed Mike’s coaching last night, gave me crystal clear strategies to break through the potential car crash that is looming at our board meeting next month!”

“Excellent session, clear and usable tools = back in my ‘purposeful’ zone”

“Thank You  for the coaching session on Tuesday, particularly for sharing my favourite type of tools; simple and powerful when applied”

“I didn’t quite realise on the night how much impact the process had on me. It wasn’t until the next day that I began to feel the effect! “

“I really enjoyed your real life examples from EGG and Garlik .
They gave me practical insight into some current issues that I’m facing and clarified next steps.”

It’s a four hour workshop which I run for MBA students at world class business schools (for free) and in large companies at £500 per person ex VAT. I’ve now decided to run a series of workshops aimed at business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious employees of organisations of all sizes. I’m pricing these (for the moment) at £150 pp ex VAT. It’s possible I’ve underpriced this I suppose but I’m keen to make it accessible.

I’m collecting names of people who may be interested in getting priority booking for future workshops.

Please email me at mike@findyourlightbulb.com if you are interested.

About the Master Class…

When I talk about high performance I mean the speed and resilience with which a leader drives a business forward to meet its goals and fulfil its mission.
The Master Class is based on everything I’ve learned about leadership and about what works and what doesn’t in coaching. It’s taken all of my years of business experience to create high performance coaching insights which are simple and memorable enough to be usable every working minute while not losing any power.

Think of the workshop like a high performance driving course- it’s designed to help you drive your business at high speed, with safety and resilience built in. If you have read my book you will know that this requires maintaining a balance on the edge of reason: having the discipline to confront all of the issues facing you right now, however grim (very rational) while never doubting for one moment that eventually you will succeed in whatever challenge you have set yourself (somewhat irrational).

Participants in the workshop:
• Learn a simple but powerful technique for detecting their current state of balance , even in the middle of dealing with a difficult issue or in the heat of an important meeting
• Learn what knocks them off balance and how their reactions to that are often dysfunctional
• Learn how to rapidly get back in balance and take powerful actions which regain speed and momentum
• Learn how to build in resilience and safety using the smart risks principle
• Leave the workshop competent in applying the approach in their own business

Staring in this video are a number of small businesses well on the way to becoming iconic :
The doctor who is redefining the experience of women who feel helpless as they grow older.
The Executive Coach who is transforming how leaders in financial services organisations employ their strengths
The graphic designer who creates a visual experience for people to be known and seen for who they really are.
The movement specialist who leaves her clients feeling brand new
The Personal Trainer who transforms London business men from being in a mess to being amazing.
The letting agent who creates fantasy rental homes for high end tenants.
The Martial Arts inspired fitness trainer who leaves people feeling drop dead gorgeous
And although she’s not on the video A woman plumber who is on a mission to change the perception of women across the world – starting with an all woman plumbing company called Stopcocks!

I’m often asked if the techniques and tools I used to create Firstdirect, Mercury and Egg can really be applied to small businesses. Can business owners who work alone or maybe with one other person really cause something new and different to happen, really become a symbol of excellence to which others aspire, really become the stand out brand for their segment?

The answer is yes – on the video are a few small business owners at a Becoming Iconic Workshop which I run. Note the difference in the experience they are delivering in the way they describe their businesses at the beginning of the workshop and at the end. They are so much more alive! As they start to implement designs which deliver this experience to all of their customers just watch their businesses go into orbit and watch their own enjoyment of doing business soar as well.

The theme of the conference is Inventing the Future and it is focusing on the role of the entrepreneur in creating wealth and societal value. Looks like a good line up with interesting speakers and good panels. I think there are some tickets still available.

My topic is high performance leadership – a skill crucial to any entrepreneur . I’m running some workshops at LBS on this topic for their MBA students (past and present) which is how I got to be invited to speak at their flagship conference. The speech will be filmed and over the next few months I’ll be sending out little snippets from it (with some advice on how to use them) to people who have subscibed to my mailing list

“Ex Googlers suggest that when Facebook began to gain traction among web users it was dismissed inside the Googleplex. It was considered frivolous ,a distraction and worst of all not a nobel pursuit”. A classic “that will never work” reaction from an incumbent to a new idea. People who have worked with me or heard me speak will know “that will never work” is almost the universal response to a powerful new idea in its early days, particularly from experts.

The words Google are said to have used about Facebook are almost identical to those used by Telcos about the Internet in the 1990s and  by IBM about the PC in the 80s.

I spent 11 hours last week on pitches. Either pitching business ideas myself, preparing myself or others to pitch, or listening to people pitch ideas me.

I reckon I’ve spent at least that amount of time on pitches every working week for the last 20 years and it’s often been more time than that.

If you are successful at business: life is truly a pitch. You are constantly seeking to get others’ support for your ideas or listening to others tell you how they can help you. In my view success in business is more than 50% determined by the quality of your pitches and your judgment on what pitches to back

6 hours pitching time last week was Garlik related; in the remaining 5 hours I helped one entrepreneur prepare a pitch for funding, and I listened to no fewer than 14 business ideas being pitched to me.

12 of these ideas came at an event called Pitchfest. I put together a team of professionals – a top VC, a lady who owns a PR company, a major angel investor and one of the UK’s leading young entrepreneurs, and got people to pitch to an invited audience of 100 people and the panel (chaired by me) .

We listened to 12 people pitch ideas at us for up to 4 minutes each. The 12 were chosen from a group of 50 small business owners and entrepreneurs who had spent just one day with me in May in a Perfect Pitch Workshop.

I hadn’t seen them since . I’d done the work with them and sent them off to practice for 6 months with the Pitchfest as the goal. Someone else had chosen the top 12 for me.

There was no specific requests in the pitches , they were just trying to interest us in what they were up to and get some feedback on both their pitch and their business. We gave them feedback and scored them Strictly Come Dancing style. The winner got a prize , the top 5 a slightly lesser prize.

There’s great freedom in giving a pitch like this at every opportunity to everyone you meet. You can get a lot of different sorts of results, for example:

1. Rejection/disinterest – which doesn’t tell you anything so you just discard it
2. Understanding and acknowledgment – useful in building rapport and a personal network, briefing suppliers, recruiting staff
3. Valuable feedback –someone with expertise says: to make that work you will need to ..OR that will never work unless…

1. A customer
2. A partner who can get you loads of customers –this is most small business owners dream!
3. An investor
4. An evangelist, a well connected person who goes round telling everyone what a fabulous person/idea they have heard

I was nervous about the pitches on Tuesday. These were people who, on the whole when I met them in May, were not good at pitching their businesses or ideas. I’d only spent one day with them and I was putting them in front of a panel who were used to hearing and delivering world class pitches. I need not have worried. The panel was impressed. The VC said at least half of them were better than most pitches he gets from companies seeking investment, and remember companies that get to pitch to VCs have already had to get through a rigorous appraisal which 99 out of 100 fail .

All but one of the pitches on Tuesday was at least “good”, one or two flirted with “excellent”. That’s  a great result as in my normal business life it would be the other way round ie 1 pitch in 12 might be good. “Excellent” is so rare as to be a  cause for celebration!

I also felt a little frustrated in that I could see with each pitch exactly what needed be done to take it up a notch , but I haven’t got the time and most of them  haven’t got the money!

I think every pitch got valuable feedback. 3 interested at least one of the panel members from an investment point of view. 3 others got the PR lady excited about how she could get them on TV and make them famous.

Several pitches got new customers from the audience and two got me as an evangelist – I haven’t shut up about them since Tuesday.

Best of all everybody , including the panel had enormous fun. We shall do this again!