When it comes to pitching, your first meeting with Mr Big, you never know when you are going to be cut off. Don’t leave it to chance, get your important big WOW statements out first.

Fundamental to crafting effective pitches is a fundamental principle of journalism called the inverted pyramid of information. In short this means:

When it comes to pitching, your first meeting with Mr Big, you never know when you are going to be cut off. Don’t leave it to chance, get your important big WOW statements out first.

Fundamental to crafting effective pitches is a fundamental principle of journalism called the inverted pyramid of information. In short this means:

1: Start with your headline story – the wow catcher

2: Give use the most important facts real quick – short 10 – 30sec statements – your sound bites

3: Then fill us in on the detail expanding out the “important facts”

Remember your challenge is generally not what to say, as much as it is ‘what not to say’. Prioritise the ‘important facts’ and then cull and shorten down.

It’s not what you say that is important, more so it’s what ‘they remember’ and can be bothered to pass on to other people. Boring and ho-hum do not cut it.

The key when meeting people for the first time is to let them do most of the talking, and when you say something make it high impact. The power of your message is inversely proportional to the number of words you use - i.e less words more impact.

Build your Sound Bite Arsenal

1. Write your headline story about hitting the big time.

Script a headline (less than 10 words) and opening paragraph (less than 200 words) for an article in the New Zealand Herald about your business after you have just one an award.

2. What is your wow statement?

What is the most impressive thing about your craft - your work? How could you create a great tweet (160 characters) about you to say LISTEN this is important?

3. Create a bullet list of why someone should buy your product or service.

Now delete 60 percent of the words, or rewrite it in a shorter form.