How to work with personal branding pitches

Ola RyngeThe Rynge GroupLeave a Comment

”Short and clear pitch – interesting and clear brand”

The statement above is the core message of this post. Maybe it is all you need, or maybe you want to read the whole post. The choice you made depends on your interest for the subject, your relation to the author (that’s me) and your curiosity of what the rest of the article is about.

News articles are written in pretty much the same way for two reasons

  1. to keep the interest of the reader
  2. to make it easy for the editor to remove the less essential stuff

Even commercial messages have started to see the advantage of this, just look at this site for the car brand Mini. The key here is to match the message to the audience and the time frame at disposal, which is often controlled by the recipient of the message. So what can you do to make your pitch work in several situations.

Purpose

Always start with the purpose. Why am I doing this. What are the desired results and outcomes? For what context is this useful?

Multipicth

First, make very clear what you want to communicate and what you want the other person to remember after your pitch. Then define situations for when a

  • 60 second pitch would be suitable (introduction of a presentation, when someone ask you to explain what you do, etc.)
  • 30 seconds (formal networking with timeframes for each participant, etc.)
  • 15 seconds (phone call introduction, networking introduction, etc.)
  • 5 seconds (tagline, end of presentations, cliff hanger, business cards, etc.)

It is hard in the beginning to see what is the purpose and possible situations for each pitch, but bear with me, the ends justifies the effort.

Be personal and professional

The pitch is about you, do not hide behind a formal title that can mean very different things to different people. Imagine what you think of when you hear ”sales executive”, I am sure that most people do not have the same idea of the title as the bearer. So your pitch should describe you, but also contain a professional message (if this is the purpose of the pitch).

No-one is interested in what you do

Maybe this is  an over-statement, but the reality is not far from this. The reason why you are interested to others is that you are or can do something for them. It could be just listening or being there when needed, but when we talk pitches always think of how the recipient will receive the message. What´s in it for him/her? How can you help them achieve their goals? This is extremely important in all brand building as the brand is defined by how others perceive you.

The cliff-hanger

Try to define once again the very core, preferably in two statements. This serves two reasons; to be something that you can add to the end of a discussion for the other person to remember you by; and for your self to remember what the core of you and your offering really is.

Here is my pitch when working with personal branding:

Better self-awareness, clearer brand

Feel free to add your cliff hanger in the comments.

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