Seduce your clients.
How to make your presentations jaw-droppingly convincing.
First let us just ask Aristotle how to do it.
He thought about these things and from our perspective can be assumed to have started the whole persuasion discussion for us.
Jump in to your time machine and travel back to about 354 BC and land in northern Greece.
There he is! 30 years old. Walking around the Lyceum quadrangle, talking.
You’re not alone in listening to him, but because you’re not from around these parts you can’t tell him about your pitch. You’re just going to have to take whatever intellectual gems he imparts. It’d better be worth it . . .
Blah, blah, biology, classification, cephalopods, art, politics, maths, blah, blah. Wait a minute! Isn’t that Alexander the Great. Well, well it is too.
Oh, what was that – Ethos, Pathos, Logos?
Yep!
Ethos – WTF (who) are you – that is the person pitching – when you’re at home? Your cred.
Pathos – the emotional plea.
Logos – the logical plea.
So Ethos is like: My twelve years of experience in design and advertising have given me an insight into the complexities, irrational emotions, (e.g. over/under confidence, worry, emptiness, panic and worse, lack of panic) that can befall the presenter faced with an imminent and important pitch. I’ve won blue-chip FTSE 100 client pitches. I’ve beaten some of the biggest agencies in the UK in head to head pitches. And of course I’ve lost many too.
That’s Ethos. It’s them knowing that you are the right person and company to be pitching to them. So before the actual pitch even starts they will have opinions about you. They already know the headlines; the fact that you’re pitching is an indication that you’ve passed a few hurdles, the technical ones at least.
There’s more you can do. And it depends a bit on where you are in the process but as a rule of thumb you want to let them know one way or another about your recent successes. Have a talk. Brush up on all of your and your company’s relevant credentials yet again and think about how you can present recent successes to them without appearing too boastful.
It’s worth it for you, taking time over this prep. If you win this pitch it’s a major plus. It’s so worth preparing well, over-preparing even. Fail and you will have to live with it amongst your peers, your paycheck and the next pitch opportunity all on your own. Win and you’ll feel just a whole load better within yourself. Start preparing properly and start right now. Get a pen and pencil and start writing ideas down of what to say and the process. It’s shit when you lose. Absolutely great when you win.
That is Pathos. It’s an argument that asks them to understand why it is important for them from an emotional point of view. It’s a touching the heart/anger/competitive/fear/greed strings that they have shown so little of to date. It’s quid pro quo, tick follows tock that if you can answer the written and unwritten questions that they are going to throw at you, and that you do it in style and in a professional manner that they’re going want to take it further.
Ok. So I sneaked in a bit of Logos in the description for Pathos. It’s the logical argument for why they’d buy your pitch. In your case add some real facts and figures. Analysis of data. That sort of thing.
Thanks Aristotle.
That’s a great start.
But there’s a whole load more to seduction that needs to be explored after you’ve done the basic prep.
See you later, reader! Good luck if I miss you before your big day.
Let me know how your pitch went and what tips and lessons you learned from it.
Reference:
Examples of Ethos, Pathos and Logos from yourdictionary.com
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-ethos-logos-and-pathos.html
A bit of Aristotle history from Biography.com
http://www.biography.com/people/aristotle-9188415#science
Posted in: Pitching for business
Comments are closed.